Which is the most popular beer in Hungary?

Lovers of beer have surely noticed the rise in the number of ‘special’ beers by mainstream manufacturers in shops. Index argues that this is a reaction to the popularity of craft beers which has introduced a great deal of change into the Hungarian beer scene.

For some reason, there was a delay to craft beers getting significant popularity in Hungary. It was much faster at other places in the world, but they still became a sort of threat to mainstream manufacturers. In order to keep their customers and market numbers, these mainstream companies had to adapt. The situation in the USA can be taken as an example: there the dominant companies started buying up small craft producers or tried to undermine their values through marketing, labelling them as ‘lame’. In some cases, companies chose the less malign method by coming up with their own recipes.

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As people like beers that are a little bit more complex than the simple lagers, the latter strategy proved to be the best.

Big companies are coming out with more and more beer specialities which are even though more expensive than ‘ordinary’ lagers, are still cheaper than the craft beers.

Index found out from the three biggest Hungarian manufacturers that in the summer of 2018 every fifth or tenth beer sold by them was from the new beer-line. 90 percent of all beers sold in Hungary were produced either by Heineken or Dreher or Borsodi. Next to them competes the only Hungarian-owned company, the Pécsi Sörgyár. The Pécsi Sörgyár only focuses on high-quality craft beers, which appears to be profitable, considering their 2017 sales.