Alcohol-free brands have become more popular while sales of beer and wine took a dip in the second quarter of 2010 according to figures released by the Systembolaget this week.

Sales of beer in particular started out flat against 2009 with a drop of 0.4% for the first three months. The trend worsened slightly in the second quarter as total beer sales fell by 6.2% over the same period in 2009.

These figures are posted against a backdrop of a small rise of 2.2% in total sales of alcohol in the monopoly for the first half of 2010 and an increase of 2.5% in the total number of customers compared to 2009.

The biggest winner in a quiet 6 months sales period are alcohol-free brands – which includes beer brands such as Estrella Damm Non-Alcoholic and Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Alkoholfrei– with sales jumping over 27% on last year for the first six months of the year to 545,000 litres.

Relatively small in the bigger picture perhaps but a significant trend that the Systembolaget’s Press Officer Lennart Agén is happy to note.

He says: “It is naturally pleasing that demand for our alcohol-free products is so large. It demonstrates that many customers are interested in their health (Ed note: this rather suggests that drinks with alcohol in them are not good for us Lennart, which is not necessarily the case) and that more people would like to eat and drink well without alcohol being involved”.

Of the 107,991,000 litres of beer sold so far in 2010 it’s not possible to see what percentage of this is craft beer. My gut feel from talking to several of the Swedish microbreweries is that this is a great year for sales with more and more beer drinkers breaking out of the ‘stor stark syndrome’ and trying quality brews. If you’re a craft brewer reading this then let us know whether your beers really are bucking the trend here in Sweden!

Other than the usual figures released by the Systembolaget that prove we’re still happy with it (I always feel a mild sense of desperation when I read these stats, as though the monopoly is like one of those ‘career kids’ at school that desperately wants everyone to like them) the most interesting fact I could find involves midsummer.

Apparently a jaw-dropping 2.5 million of us paid a visit to the monopoly during the annual midsummer celebrations week in June, with 1.1 million people stocking up the day before midsommarafton alone – the most visits to the monopoly in a single day ever!

In a country with a population of just over 9 million that’s a pretty impressive figure don’t you think? It also sheds some light on the nation’s current relationship to alcohol, with the country’s unofficial national day one of its booziest too.

I’m sure Mr Bellman is looking down on us all right now with a big grin on his face. And a large glass of something extremely not non-alcoholic of course.

One of the most comprehensive and informative pieces of beer blogging I’ve seen recently is an analysis of the Systembolaget’s launch plans for beer during 2010.

It’s not exactly light reading but Ofiltrerat’s Magnus Bark has saved you the trouble of wading through the Systembolaget’s 47-page document and done a fantastic job of summarising what to expect to see in the beer section of the state monopoly’s stores next year.

If you’re interested in beer (and if you’re in here reading this you should be) and can read Swedish then get started here.