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There are a number of alcoholic drinks that are popular in Britain.

As well a being a major location for beer for centuries, Britain has developed other alcoholic drinks such as the spirits gin and whisky, and cider or scrumpy. More recently Britain has started to make wine natively alongside continuing imports of wine from abroad.

For centuries, the British market was the main customer of sweet wines like sherry, Port wine, and Madeira wine. English wine has been available since the Roman era, and was once considered poor^{[citation needed]}. In recent years, reflecting perhaps the improving palate of the British people^{[citation needed]}, the quality of native wines has increased. In 2004 a panel judging European sparkling wines awarded most of the top ten positions to British wines - the remaining positions going to French Champagnes.

The majority of British beer tends to be bitter, with domestic pale lager brands generally serving the lower end of the market.

However, any establishment catering for the middle of the market will tend to have a range of continental-style lagers available; the Belgian-owned Stella Artois brand, for example, is one of the most common. Some of these lagers are, despite their Continental origins, brewed under licence in the United Kingdom with others, such as Budvar from the Czech Republic, being imported.

Many drinkers, however, consider bitter to be superior to lager. With the increasing range of high-quality lagers available the strength of that opinion is weakening somewhat^{[citation needed]}. There is also an opinion^{[citation needed]} that the limited quantities of beer produced by the growing number of 'independent' British breweries and microbrewries is of higher quality to that produced by large corporate brewers who formerly dominated the market. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has been influential in encouraging the 'independents'.

• Guinness and other Irish stouts are also common.
• Gin
• Scotch whisky
• Mead
• Cider