Germany | Wow. Unexpectedly, US craft brewer Stone has sold its Berlin brewery and taproom to Scottish craft brewer BrewDog. The transaction was announced on 5 April 2019.

Poland | Carlsberg Polska, the local unit of Danish brewer Carlsberg, hopes that 2019 will be another bumper year for brewers, with beer sales (by value) nudging up 2 percent to 3 percent. At 40 million hl, Poland is the European Union’s third-largest beer market, behind Germany and the United Kingdom (for the time being).

United Kingdom | BrewDog’s staff must share the founders’ profound sense of irony if they can be persuaded to wear t-shirts at work with slogans taken from negative reviews.

United Kingdom | Ask people if they have heard of AB-InBev and most likely you will draw a blank. This has irked AB-InBev for a while, which is why it has taken the step to boost the company’s profile by changing its name to Budweiser Brewing Group in the UK and Ireland.

Ireland | Third time lucky? Competition among cider brands is set to intensify, as Diageo has launched a new brand to challenge C&C’s Bulmers and Heineken’s Orchard Thieves.

Germany | A change of mind? AB-InBev has called off the sale of two of its breweries – Diebels and Hasseröder. All discussions with interested parties have been terminated, AB-InBev announced on 20 March 2019.

France | After Elliott Management announced it had spent about USD 1 billion to build a stake of more than 2.5 percent in drinks company Pernod Ricard at the end of 2018, the New York-based hedge fund called for improvements to Pernod Ricard’s margins and governance, which it claimed needed more outside influence.

Germany | It is a confusing system. Why do retailers charge a deposit EUR 0.25 (USD 0.28) for beverage containers that can be returned for recycling, whereas beer bottles that are returned to be refilled only command a deposit of EUR 0.08 (USD 0.09)? The explanation is to do with who determines the deposit.

Italy | It must have been a labour of love. Or why would anybody spend years to write a three-volume (over 1,000 pages in total!) compendium on beer? As the authors are Italian and the books are written in Italian, you cannot rule out a pedagogic purpose.

Belgium | No-alcohol and low-alcohol (“NOLA”) beers are considered a boom category and not just during “Dry January”, when people are urged to abstain from alcohol after the assumed excesses of the previous month. But they are still small fry.