It Will Take Years for Beer Drinking in Europe to Return to Normal

On a typical Friday evening in May, the White Horse pub in London’s Brixton neighborhood might go through 20 or more kegs of lagers and ales as hundreds of revelers stand four and five deep at the bar and spill out onto the terrace into the wee hours.

But with London in lockdown, the pub has been shuttered since March 20, when owner Matt Ward—knowing he had to empty the taps—offered happy-hour discounts and at the end of the evening started pouring pints for free. And he was one of the lucky ones: Some pub owners who couldn’t sell their beer had to dump it down the drain. Ward now worries that when he reopens this summer, social distancing guidelines will force him to cut occupancy by about 90%, to just 30 patrons. “I try to keep positive,” he says. “But to go anywhere back to anything like it was before, with social distancing, you just can’t do it in a pub like mine.”