kolkata rohit banerjee an it employee and his friends who visited a popular bar at sector v on saturday evening were disappointed when their favourite brands of lager beer were unavailable when the group moved on to a neighbouring bar they met with the same response similarly businessman partha roy went to park street on saturday and had to settle for whiskey as his favourite lager beer was not available this has been the story at most city bars and offshops over the last two weeks beer has been scarce at most outlets due to a disruption in the supply chain triggered by a switch in the distribution pattern while the stateowned bevco had been the sole distributor of liquor in bengal since 2017 private distributors are now being readmitted sources indicated the situation may persist for a few more weeks because demand has surpassed supply it would take some time to restore the balance though most breweries in the state are running close to full capacity there is a bigger shortage of lager beer since it constitutes only 56 of the total beer production in the statepresident of hotel and restaurants association of eastern india hraei sudesh poddar who owns songhay manthan and ms bar lounge pointed out the association had earlier written to the excise department about the shortage the supply has improved marginally over the last 10 days he saidmoloy dutta partner of opium bar and restaurant in sector v said they too were facing a shortage this is the case in most bars in sector v a lot of our customers are not getting beer of their choice he saidthe beer crisis started during the change in the distribution regime we feel the situation could have been handled better said a bar owner in central kolkatasources in the beer industry pointed out there are multiple reasons for this shortage the peak season for beer is between march 15 and june 30 which sees 6570 of annual beer sales this year there has been a change in distribution structure that led to some disruption in the supply chain the beer companies use the nonpeak time of december and january to build up their inventory which did not happen this time another reason is the spurt in demand following the drop in prices said a source beer prices have been slashed twice since october 2020 and now lager beer is cheaper than strong beer according to sources bengal used to be a market for 80 lakh85 lakh cases of beer but this year it could go to 12 crore cases because of spurt in demand the production capacity of beer in the state is 18 lakh cases per monthbut the demand is more than 18 lakh cases this month as of now it is more severe for lager beer because it takes 1516 days to mature compared to 67 days for strong beer said a source