Maybe it was swinging from liquor to beer, but then prohibition sent it back to liquor?
It looks like estimates are that overall consumption dropped during prohibition (and it was kind of amazingly high before prohibition), but I think what consumption there was, was moved back to liquor? But I can't currently find a cite for that on google, so maybe I was wrong!
It certainly makes sense to me that if you have to smuggle it, you're not going to be smuggling beer cause the risk/reward is so much better smuggling liquor. But sometimes 'common sense' is not a good guide...
That does track with how cocktails were supposed to have gotten much more popular during prohibition at speakeasies, as the alcohol quality was much lower and they needed to cover the poor taste.
Here's a graph I found, it looks like prohibition happened at the end of a huge swing from 90% liquor in 1850 to majority beer in 1915 (with wine always a tiny slice):
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/alcohol-consumption-per-p...
That doesn't have data during prohibition, consumption was obviously not zero, and I'm sure it swung towards hard stuff. But I think there are estimates, maybe 30-40% of pre-prohibition levels (with some lasting effect, but not huge, 1980 above the 1910 peak). I also believe that consumption in say 1700 was considerably higher than 1900.