Lead indicators: Early signals for beverage volumes, with what each one is and is not · built 04 Nov 2026, 05:50
Lakh bulk litres, April 2025 to March 2026. The state's own excise table, the one official monthly beer series found. One year only, so no year-on-year yet.
Growth of UPI value in each category minus growth of all UPI, 3 months on 3 months, percentage points. Shown from January 2025: before that the liquor-shop category did not exist (it starts Nov 2023) and bars has gaps, so early growth reflects coverage, not spending. Direction only: cash and cards are missing and it is value, not volume.
Production volume, % change 3 months on 3 months. Output, not sales; Germany and France only because Eurostat has nothing at this level for the others.
% change 3 months on 3 months. All retailing, not drinks: a backdrop for demand, not a beverage signal.
% change on a year earlier; January and February are one combined figure. Restaurant spending in yuan including food and prices, not beer volume. The free mirror is only about a year deep.
Consumer prices, % change on a year earlier (Eurostat harmonised index). Price is half of every value series on this page: catering and on-trade revenue are price times volume, so a flat revenue line with rising prices means falling volume.
China has no free equivalent: the statistics bureau's price index only reports food, tobacco, liquor and dining out as one group, and the free mirror holds about a year of it. The nearest thing is revenue per hectolitre in company results.
Search interest by country and beverage category, from Google Trends. It measures what people looked up, not what they bought or how they feel, and it is only worth watching if it tracks something real. The table under the chart tests that.
Average change in the Google Trends index, % . Each term is indexed to its own peak within its own country, so compare changes, never levels, across rows or columns.
A dash means that term has not loaded yet: Google throttled the Denmark and Sweden queries and Poland iced tea and kombucha, and they will be filled on the next run.
What it costs to make the product: the World Bank's monthly commodity prices plus the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's price tool (FPMA), which carries feed barley, the closest free proxy for malt, after the World Bank stopped publishing it in August 2020. All in US dollars, so a stronger dollar lowers the local-currency cost. Hops, malt itself, glass and PET have no free source.
| Commodity | Why it matters | Latest | Price | Year on year | Against 5-year average |
|---|
Since January 2025.
US dollars per tonne, annual, FAOSTAT, latest year 2024. The monthly feed-barley prices in the table above are current to September 2026.
What the grain actually costs in each country, in local currency, from the same FAO tool. Levels are not comparable across countries, so only the change on a year earlier is shown. Where several markets are reported, the median. Index: average of 2022 = 100.
| Series | Used for | Latest | Year on year | Index, 2022 = 100 | Markets |
|---|
| Series | What it is | What it is not | Latest | Prior use |
|---|
Every source in the build prompt was tried. Those that did not give a live series are logged with the reason.
| Source | Status | Latest | Note |
|---|