Rainy summer puts Germans off their beer

A rainy, mild summer lacking big sporting events to booze along to has put Germans off their world-famous beer, official data showed Monday, as consumption slipped in the first nine months.

Breweries reported sales of the national thirst-quencher down 3.1 percent year-on-year between January and September, at 72 million hectolitres (one hectolitre = 100 litres), federal statistics authority Destatis said.

While that figure included barrels, bottles and cans destined for export to foreign fans of a frothy brew, domestic consumption also fell, dropping 2.7 percent to 58.9 million hectolitres.

Beer consumption has been falling in Germany for years, but this time "it's the weather that has eaten into breweries' revenues above all," Holger Eichele of the German Brewers' Federation told news agency DPA.

The land where every village and city district seems to boast its own suds was afflicted in 2017 with a rainy, often mild summer with little power to stoke a thirst.

But the brewers remain optimistic for the last three months of the year, betting on "a sunny autumn and solid Christmas and New Year business," Eichele said.

Bad weather didn't put off visitors to Bavarian capital Munich's renowned Oktoberfest recently.

Some 6.2 million visitors put away around 7.5 million one-litre glasses of beer -- over 13 percent higher than 2016's figure.