Budapest Downtown Beer Festival Awaits Visitors with over 250 Types of Beverages

With over 250 types of beer, craft specialties from Hungarian breweries and international beer from importers, the Downtown Beer Festival (Belvárosi Sörfesztivál) awaits visitors between September 3 and 8 at Budapest’s Liberty Square (Szabadság tér), aiming to make quality beer consumption trendy again among young people.

Beer consumption in Hungary was around 100 liters per person per year around the end of the Communist rule (1989), but has now fallen to around 70 liters, reports Turizmus.com. However, the current range is incomparable to that of the past. Despite the rising prices and the still low market share of small breweries (3-4 percent), the Hungarian small-scale/craft beer segment is still booming from a consumer perspective, noted Gábor Knap, editor-in-chief of the beer magazine Beerporn.hu.

Small breweries, which regularly come up with new products, are predominantly in the premium or super-premium segment, where demand has fallen only slightly despite price rises. Gábor Knap also pointed out that this is not only the case for small breweries: according to data from the Association of Hungarian Brewers, bringing together the four largest Hungarian producers and distributors (Borsodi Brewery, Dreher Brewery, Heineken Hungaria Breweries, and Carlsberg Hungary), the Hungarian market is still moving towards quality, with private label and low-end products being squeezed out in favor of higher quality beers.

In 2023, 11 percent less beer was sold than a year earlier, but last year the audience could taste hundreds of beers from 50 exhibitors at the biggest Hungarian beer festival.

This year’s Downtown Beer Festival, taking place between September 3-8, will offer an even wider selection of beers than last year’s, emphasized Dániel Kurucz, the festival’s chief organizer.

In addition to over 250 different beers at this year’s festival, there will also be one that has been voted for by the event’s followers.

The official drink of the Downtown Beer Festival this year, Festival Hippie, will be a light domestic IPA made with German, American and Australian hops and will be available for the first time at Liberty Square in Budapest.

Via Turizmus.com; Featured image via Pexels