Interbrew has set about buying the German brewing industry in chunks. Although purchase of the Löwenbrau brewery of Munich was the headline grabber there have been six other acquisitions this year, to make the great leveller the largest player in the German market. You can tell this is serious because all the industry hacks have been busily piecing together league tables of top producers so as to bring better informed news of fresh disasters as they occur.

The effects of Interbrew in the Czech Republic are also being felt. A recent week-long trip to Prague revealed a sereies of sugar-water beers replacing once great names in the cellars of increasingly Euro-floss soul-free cafés. Well done!

Heineken has sacked more workers at Brand, as well as at its larger plants. The Guide's take on this, which may be way off the mark, is that we think they are building up to declaring the Dutch breweries non-viable in the new Europe and will move to Poland or somesuch eastern European centre of cheap labour, to make their beers.

Meanwhile S&N Alken-Maes are doing some very strange things. Mort Subite Oude Gueze, which used to be the sort of top-rate beer that was found only in cafés hidden even from the Guide, has started to appear on Belgian supermarket shelves. Then they started promoting Hapkin, the Duvel-like beer that used to be produced at the Louwaege brewery until the family cashed in its chips. Not bad either. Then Akila Stout, Louwaege's thin and sickly sweet but ostensibly authentic West Flanders stout hit the market again. This coincided with the parent company making a song and dance of the fact that in England it sold off all its pubs and deleted a range of ghastly lagers, so as to concentrate on better beers. Rumours continue to circulate about improvements to brewing quality at its Union brewery in Charleroi. Watch this space. They cannot seriously be contemplating heading in the opposite direction to Interbrew, surely?

Meanwhile, strong evidence is emerging to support the idea that the most predictable effect of cut-price mass-production beer making is beginning to occur. People in Belgium and Holland are going off beer.

The latest annual figures show that beer consumption in Belgium is down to 95 litres per head per year, down 25% on 1990. The greatest fall is in lagers, followed by wheat beers. Apologists for the big brewers hint that this is due to a fall in alcohol consumption due to healthier living but the actual alcohol consumption figures show nothing like this drop. Interestingly stronger beers such as abbey beers and Trappists have expanded their sales.

In the Netherlands consumption is down to 80 litres per head.

When are shareholders in these mighty institutions going to wake up to the idea that the cost of perpetual expansion is going to be the death of the product?