Finnish craft beer, any numbers?

I’m trying to get a sense of how craft beer is doing around the world, but am struggling to find any decent numbers on Finland. I found Alko’s statistics page, but it doesn’t tell me anything. Does anyone have any figures? Craft beer sales, number of breweries, number of Finnish beers, anything.

Thanks!

--Lars M.

Alko (the monopoly for alcoholic beverages > 4.7% ABV) just released their sales statistics for the last year about a week ago. Total beer sales are down 6,1% from last year, and are now 9.347 million litres per year. The top 10 most sold beers are all bulk lagers and make up to 74% of the total beer sales in Alko (6.9 million litres). The most sold beer outside the large breweries was Laitilan Kukko Vahva Pils (#11, 84 913 litres). Demand for craft beer is rising in Alko. Last year they had quite a nice success with launching 10 completely new Finnish microbrews to celebrate their 80th anniversary. The beers sold out in a few weeks, and this year they are repeating it with another 9 new brews.

Valvira (the National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health) estimated that the total sales of ales was only 1,1% of beer sales during Jan-Oct of last year. However, last week Helsingin Sanomat reported that Valvira has also estimated that the sales figures for ales has grown 36% during the last year and lager sales are down 6%.

There are currently about 20 active microbreweries in Finland, and the number is rising, slowly but steadily. Olutopas.info (which has been around for about 6 years) currently has 724 Finnish beers added to its database. The total number is probably still a lot higher, since oh6gdx has 787 Finnish beer ratings on this site alone. I would estimate that during last year the number of new beers was around 70-100. That is despite the fact that they can only sell their >4.7% ABV beers through restaurants or Alko (which has a highly bureaucratic and lengthy process for selecting the products). There has been some discussion about the Finnish alcohol laws lately in the public, some want to lower the Alko ABV limit to 3.5%, some want to raise it to 5.5% and some would be happy to just let microbreweries sell all of their beers at their location.

The craft beer scene in general is quite active at the moment, and there are a number of great bars in nearly all of the major cities, especially in Helsinki and Tampere.

TL;DR: Lagers still dominate the sales, but the interest for craft beer is rising.

Thank you so much! This is very, very helpful.

The Olutopas database sounds like a useful resource. I tried looking at the site, but it’s encrypted (in Finnish). Do you know if there’s someone there I could contact for more information?

Yeah, just try messaging [URL=" http://www.ratebeer.com/View-User-9509.htm" target="_blank">sayravai[/URL] (the admin of the site).

Thank you! :-)

Total beer production of small breweries in Finland was 8,5 million litres in 2011. It has been tripled in few years. In 2008 it was 3 million litres. In 2011 it was still only 2 % of all beer production in Finland. But same time it is rumoured that the cheapest Finnish chain brand lager, Pirkka Lager was sold 8 million litres annually. Also of that 8,5 million, Laitila brewery produces probably 60-80%.

I made a quick calculation and I think there are 28 active craft breweries in Finland now (there are few which are not retired but I don’t count as "active" like Lapin Voima, which produced beers for 101 Beers pub for a while). Then we have 3 macros (Sinebrychoff, Olvi and Hartwall).

The latest brewery is Alahovin cidery/winery which has started to brew. Last year debuted Rekola and Ruosniemen Panimo. Alex brewpub in Lahti was closed. But more is coming - new big brewpub to Helsinki plus at least 4-5 other rumoured breweries.

I counted to 203 new Finnish beers added to Ratebeer in 2012.
This excludes ciders.

Latest additions:
- Bryggeri Helsinki
- Pyynikin Käsityöläispanimo (ex-101 Beers)
- Rousal Brygghus

Waiting for:
- Jacobstads Breweries
- Olutverstas
- VK Brewery

So it is about 31 active craft breweries now.

VK Brewery has marketing name Kiteen Panimo - the first beer is out very soon. Panimoyhtiö Hiisi is also debuting in coming weeks. So it is about 33 active craft breweries now.