Alcohol available for consumption in Australia

Data sources

The Apparent Consumption of Alcohol collection considers the availability of beer from three sources:

• Domestically produced beer that is intended to be sold in Australia.
• Internationally produced beer that is imported into Australia.
  • Note that this excludes beer that is imported into Australia only to be exported to another country.
• Homebrewed beer created in non-commercial premises.

Each of these sources of beer uses estimates from different data sources to calculate the total amount of beer being made available to people living in Australia in each financial year.

Domestically produced beer brewed in commercial premises

All beer produced in Australia in commercial premises attracts an excise, according to the amount of alcohol in the beer. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is responsible for collecting this information and publishes excise data on data.gov.au (ATO 2024).

For all commercial, domestically produced beer, the first 1.15% of alcohol content does not attract an excise. To adjust for this, an average alcohol strength of beer in each excise category is sought from major producers in the beer industry. The alcohol strengths used in 2022–23 estimates are shown in Table 1.

For more information on the category definitions for beer, see ATO (2024a).

These alcohol strengths are used in conjunction with the ATO excise data to estimate the total amount of beer, and of alcohol in the form of beer, produced in Australia in each financial year.

Note that it is assumed that all beer produced in a given financial year is made available in that financial year. Everything that attracts beer excise is included, so other beverages that fall into this excise category (for example some seltzers) are defined as beer for the purposes of the Apparent Consumption of Alcohol collection.

Imported beer

Beer that is imported into Australia attracts customs duty at the same rates as the domestically produced beer excise duties. Both the total volume of beer and the total amount of alcohol attracting customs duty are captured by the Department of Home Affairs. Data were obtained from a customised report (ABS 2024).

In this case, as the total volume of beer is also captured in the data, it is possible to calculate the amount of alcohol exempt from duty without using an estimate of the average alcohol strengths for each excise category. For more information on specific import clearance items, see ABS (2018) appendix 6.2.

Note that everything that attracts beer customs duties is included in the beer category, so other beverages that meet this definition (for example some seltzers) are defined as beer for the purposes of the Apparent Consumption of Alcohol collection. Beer stored in bonded warehouses and subsequently exported is excluded from the collection.

Homebrewed beer

Homebrewed beer (beer brewed in non-commercial premises) is not excised, so no direct data source on the total amount brewed is available. Instead, it is estimated as a proportion of the total amount of domestically produced beer. This proportion is reviewed periodically: it was initially based on a survey of home production of Foodstuffs (ABS 1992) and was revised to 2.2% in 2008.

Methodological considerations

Domestic beer produced in commercial premises for non-commercial purposes

In previously published results, the 2 tariff items for beer brewed on commercial premises for non-commercial purposes were used separately in calculations. These were:

• 1.15 – Beer produced for non-commercial purposes using commercial facilities or equipment, alcohol volume not exceeding 3%.
• 1.16 – Beer produced for non-commercial purposes using commercial facilities or equipment, alcohol volume over 3%.

The available data combines these tariff items into a total number of litres of alcohol produced for non-commercial purposes. Historically, a vast majority of this alcohol fell under the category of tariff item 1.16, with only a small fraction having alcohol not exceeding 3%.

As a result, the Apparent Consumption of Alcohol collection now assumes that all beer brewed for non-commercial purposes is full strength, causing a slight change to beer availability estimates. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has used this method to calculate beer available for consumption back to 2006–07, when the tariff items first came into effect. This ensures that the time-series is not broken by this change in calculation approach.

Published estimates for alcohol available from beer will be slightly different to those previously published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from 2006–07 to 2017–18.