Changing consumer habits such as a growing preference for at-home drinking poses an existential threat to traditional formats of draught beer in the UK, according to a new report. The 'SIBA Craft Beer Report 2022', produced by trade body The Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) and released today (17 March), lays bare the impact of the COVID pandemic on small-batch brewing in the country. The report warns that although production recovered among small brewers in 2021, volumes remain below 2019 levels. Whilst overall beer sales across the whole of the UK last year were down 14.2% on 2019 pre-pandemic figures, the picture was much worse for small independent brewers, who saw production levels drop by an average of 40% in 2020 and by 16% in 2021 when compared to 2019, according to SIBA figures. The report notes that during the pandemic, many of the country's small brewers turned away from cask beer as a serving format in favour of kegged or canned products. This change, necessitated by the closure of the on-premise for large periods of 2020 and 2021, has led to a collapse in cask beer volumes among small brewers. By contrast, the volume of SIBA members’ beer going into cans has more than tripled since 2019. The trend towards home-drinking brought about by the pandemic has also meant more small brewers are opting to offer online or takeaway sales from their own physical shops, according to SIBA. A third of the organisation’s members have launched a webshop for the first time during the pandemic. The trend mirrors reports from the US, where The Brewers Association believes simplifying D2C shipping laws would help brewers to tap into growing demand for home consumption. “Cask beer was sadly a casualty of the pandemic, as when pubs close small independent breweries lose the only place they can sell traditional cask beer,” said SIBA’s chief executive, James Calder. “Because of this, we have seen a huge wave of breweries creating webshops and on-site brewery shops, and many putting their beer into bottles and cans for the first time.” The beverage consumer trends to watch in 2022