Germany’s beer industry is facing a crisis as members of Generation Z turn away from alcohol, accelerating a long-running decline in consumption that has already forced dozens of breweries to close.
The market, which had been shrinking by about 2–3% annually, slumped by 6.3% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier.
For the first time since 1993, brewers sold fewer than four billion litres in a six-month period.
The main reason is clear: younger Germans are drinking far less.
Only 38% of men under 25 now drink at least once a week, compared with 55% a generation earlier and 85% in the mid-1970s. Among young women, the share has fallen to just 18%, down from 54% fifty years ago.
Stefan Blaschak, managing director of Oettinger, one of the country’s five biggest brewers, said the trend had struck the industry like a “landslide.”
Among the smaller breweries we are seeing bankruptcies on an almost daily basis. It will hit the bigger ones, too.
Between 2023 and 2024, 52 breweries closed nationwide—the steepest fall in three decades.
Oettinger itself is shutting its Braunschweig plant.
The shift in habits reflects a broader trend across Europe and the United States.
Red wine sales in France have collapsed by 90% in half a century, while young French people now drink only half as much as millennials—the generation preceding them.
In Germany, the average adult consumes 88 litres of beer annually, compared with 126 litres in 2000.
Changing health attitudes are a key factor. For many in Gen Z, beer is no longer a daily ritual but an occasional indulgence—and increasingly in non-alcoholic form. More than 800 varieties of alcohol-free beer are now available in Germany, with production almost doubling in the past decade.
Demographics may also play a role. About 5.5 million Muslims live in Germany, accounting for 6.6% of the total population, with 9% of 15- to 25-year-olds identifying as Muslim. While 14% of the overall population in Germany is younger than 15, the proportion rises to 21% among Muslims.
Since Islam prohibits alcohol, the growing number of young Muslims is likely to reinforce the trend away from drinking.
