[HN Gopher] World Beer Index 2021: The Cost and Consumption of B...
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World Beer Index 2021: The Cost and Consumption of Beer Around the
World
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 27 points
Date : 2021-02-28 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.expensivity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.expensivity.com)
| vitabenes wrote:
| Czech Republic #1 as always.
| enw wrote:
| I've heard Czechs drink beer even for breakfast? Is there any
| truth to that?
| forinti wrote:
| Surely they can't drink that much. Could this be explained by
| tourists or maybe even selling across the border?
| cambalache wrote:
| Yeah, the creators of the Pilsner must not drink that much.
| chrismcb wrote:
| I take it you've never been to czech?
| dvh wrote:
| Cheapest beers starts at 0.29EUR/0.5l in Slovakia:
| https://www.zlacnene.sk/akciovy-tovar/napoje-alkoholicke/piv...
| Havoc wrote:
| >Beer is cheapest in South Africa, where a culture of buying in
| bulk
|
| That makes little sense given the data provided. SA is cheapest
| at the hotel bar (where you can't buy bulk) but not cheapest at
| the super market (where you can).
|
| Alternate theory: Cheap labour, cheap local inputs. Plus loads of
| capacity. Up until recently the worlds 2nd biggest producer was
| SABMiller. The SAB part stands for South African Breweries.
| [deleted]
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| Bar price for beer in Portugal (over $8)is nonsense also
| supermarket price for local beer is way cheaper Overall at least
| half the quoted $5
| gumby wrote:
| Strange that the great beer drinking nation of Australia is
| excluded.
| gok wrote:
| Using national capitals as a proxy for country is...
| questionable.
| ysleepy wrote:
| That average beer price is to be taken with a large grain of
| salt. It is the _un-weighted_ average of some random prices they
| found.
|
| Weighted by volume sold it would probably be a lot closer between
| countries.
|
| In a super market, brand beer is usually 0.79EUR/0.5L, store
| brand is at less in germany. That 4EUR figure is what you pay for
| a beer in a moderately expensive restaurant.
| srfvtgb wrote:
| The gap between off and on-license prices (i.e. supermarket
| versus bar) will differ depending on country as well. As
| anecdata, I found that in the UK, buying beer from a
| supermarket tended to be more expensive than my home country of
| New Zealand, but buying beer in a pub was usually cheaper. I
| guess in New Zealand we charge a much higher alcohol tax to on-
| licenses rather than off-licenses.
| cambalache wrote:
| Mexico, 1 Bottle = 4.12 USD
|
| Yeah, no : https://super.walmart.com.mx/cerveza-vinos-y-
| licores/cerveza...
|
| 1 USD ~ 20 Mexican pesos
| joefourier wrote:
| Those numbers are distorted by the fact that the cheapest (and
| most popular) beers generally aren't the well-known brands they
| counted in their study. In the Czech Republic I've seen beers go
| lower than 0.30USD for a 500ml bottle, and if you were to spend a
| full dollar on a bottle you'd be getting a fairly posh local
| beer.
|
| Also, no-one buys 330ml of beer except Americans.
| srfvtgb wrote:
| Pretty sure Americans buy their beer in ounces. 330ml is very
| popular in New Zealand and the UK.
| ginko wrote:
| Using well-known brands is such a terrible idea. This
| completely distorts the price for some countries. The most
| extreme example is probably China.
| morsch wrote:
| > Also, no-one buys 330ml of beer except Americans.
|
| 500ml bottles are typical in Germany, but you'll find 330ml
| bottles in every supermarket, they're not rare at all.
| ginko wrote:
| They'll be more expensive per liter than half liters though.
| mattmanser wrote:
| Not at all, in UK supermarkets the cheap beers often came
| in what we call 'stubbies', 330ml bottles. They were
| usually some generic unspecified supermarket own brand
| labelled 'beer de alsace' or something. Per litre they were
| significantly cheaper than the 500mls. They've now
| disappeared from shelves, but even today, one of the
| cheapest beer at the moment available in most Tescos is a 6
| pack of 330ml cans of moretti.
|
| Why talk so confidently about something you're ignorant
| about?
|
| It's easy to see price per 100ml in the UK as the
| supermarkets have to show it on the price labels.
| ginko wrote:
| Grandparent was talking about Germany, not the UK.
| mattmanser wrote:
| And the great-grandparent was saying nowhere has 330mls
| apart from America. You're both wrong, many countries
| have 330ml beers, and they can be the cheap beers.
| ginko wrote:
| I don't care what great-grandparent said. I just added
| that _in Germany_ a 33cl bottle will usually be more
| expensive by volume than a 50cl one since that's the
| standard.
| vehemenz wrote:
| You're thinking of 355mL, which is roughly 12oz.
| williamdclt wrote:
| > Also, no-one buys 330ml of beer except Americans.
|
| I see them everywhere in the UK and in France (although 330ml
| cans are more frequent)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Here in the UK the most common volume for beer cans is 440ml.
| There are also pint-sized cans (568ml). Bottles tend to be
| 500ml. 330ml cans are mostly for soft drinks.
|
| On the other hand, in France 330ml for beer is more common,
| indeed.
| 6nf wrote:
| Australia and NZ are also dominated by 330ml beer cans and
| bottles.
|
| Popular beers sell for maybe USD 2.50 a bottle I think?
|
| On a side note: I can't remember ever seeing all three South
| African capital cities listed in a data table like this.
| Nice!
| _ph_ wrote:
| There are also 1000ml cans, especially for Oktoberfest beer
| :)
| vram22 wrote:
| And 1 liter steins, I've read. IIRC there is a German name
| for them.
| jason0597 wrote:
| > Also, no-one buys 330ml of beer except Americans.
|
| In Greece, they are staples in the supermarkets!
| bombcar wrote:
| And mixing hotel and supermarket price is strange.
| kencausey wrote:
| First are you sure that the cheapest 'beers' are actually
| 'beer'? In the US the cheapest tend to be 'malt liquor'
| masqerading as beer without actually claiming to be beer and
| only saying what they are as small type.
|
| Secondly, regarding your final comment, are you saying that
| 330ml seems smaller or larger than you would expect?
| ginko wrote:
| >First are you sure that the cheapest 'beers' are actually
| 'beer'?
|
| Yes, you can get some excellent beers for 30 cents in
| Czechia.
| joefourier wrote:
| 330ml would be considered small, the standard size is 500ml.
| Europeans just drink substantially more.
|
| Isn't malt liquor just beer with high alcohol content? I
| haven't seen that much outside of craft beers, you're
| probably likelier to get something that's not a traditional
| beer if you're paying more than if you're paying less.
| maxerickson wrote:
| No hops in malt liquor.
|
| I wouldn't say there is much attempt to pass it off, people
| are buying the cheap stuff because it's cheap, not because
| they think it's beer.
| simlan wrote:
| 1.90 USD for a 0.33 liter in Germany. Not sure where that
| Supermarkt is at. The 0.5 starts at 30 cents. Drinkable starts at
| 50 cents for the half liter. Anyway i liked there inforgrpahic
| style.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| In the Czech Republic it's the same basically.
| greggturkington wrote:
| The US makes this hard. A case of Nati Ice at a state university
| will be cheap. In a craft beer bar in a big city they charge
| prices of $1/oz, and $2/oz is becoming more common. Many will
| stand _in line_ for the privileges of paying these prices for
| bottles that sell quickly.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The craft breweries around here are closer to $1.65 a can. For
| a while the one in town was $1.25.
|
| On tap it's $3 or $4 for 16 fl-oz.
|
| (this is in the US)
| smabie wrote:
| what kind of moron is paying $1-$2 per _oz_? Now that 's just
| crazy
| Avshalom wrote:
| i mean, that's what you pay for wine
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The wine would have 2x to 3x the alcohol per unit though,
| so you would need that much less wine.
| maxerickson wrote:
| 'need' probably isn't the right word.
|
| Really expensive small batch beer is often 10+% alcohol
| by volume.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sure, by I assume we're not talking about outliers.
| maxerickson wrote:
| >$3 a bottle are all outliers (at retail stores, not a
| bar).
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not uncommon to see high alcohol (8%+, so getting
| similar to wine) beers, often served as 8 oz. or so be
| getting to $10+ in big cities. And it's not even just a
| matter of alcohol content, though it often is. Why should the
| best craft beers be a lot less than middling wines?
| ginko wrote:
| Kind of a pity they didn't include Scandinavia in this.
|
| Also those prices don't seem right. At least the last time I was
| in Prague 0.5L bottles of beer cost well under a dollar in super
| markets. Same for Germany where you can easily find beer for
| 0.5EUR a bottle.
| xcavier wrote:
| Any beer consumption index that doesn't include Australia is
| suspect...
| einpoklum wrote:
| The world beer index contains only 58 states. What about the
| other 100 or so?
| alphakappa wrote:
| Using the average price of a beer can be quite misleading.
| Without knowing how popular each beer is, it is unlikely to
| provide a sense of what locals are actually paying for beer.
|
| A better methodology might have been to compute the expected
| value of a beer (essentially weighting the price of a beer by the
| probability of purchase of that beer)
|
| (Also, as others have noted, the standard size of a beer varies,
| so only including data for a particular size can bias the
| results). Knowing the price/ml might be an interesting statistic
| too, but it would have been good to know the price of a beer (for
| whatever 'a beer' means locally)
| actuator wrote:
| > We collated the prices of a 330ml bottle of beer in
| supermarkets around the world using online shops, focusing on
| well-known beer brands such as Corona and Heineken.
|
| There in lies the problem. I was wondering why some low income
| but high grain output countries like China and India have high
| beer prices. In case of China, it seemed odd that beer was even
| costlier than its rich neighbours like South Korea and Japan. If
| you look at the prices of imported beer which are subject to high
| import duties and shipment costs, it is not going to give a fair
| picture.
| wincy wrote:
| Okay so honest question, you people can drink beer every day and
| not feel awful and like your brain is on fire, with weird
| neurological problems the next day? Like if I drink a few beers
| I'll have a hard time picking up a glass of water the next day,
| I'll be trembling and it feels like my ability to move properly
| is severely inhibited. I've tried gluten free beer with the same
| effects. My mood will be severely affected, and I'll be more
| prone to outbursts and anger. Drinking liquor or ciders does not
| do the same thing, it seems exclusive to beer. Anyone know why
| this might be?
| ginko wrote:
| >Drinking liquor or ciders does not do the same thing, it seems
| exclusive to beer.
|
| What kind of beer are you drinking? I find many of the craft
| ales give way worse hangovers than regular lagers.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| This could be a sensitivity or allergy to hop oils which will
| be present in quite high amounts in currently popular craft
| styles like NEIPAs. Old school macro lagers don't have a lot
| of hops and use German hops which are lower in those oils.
| ginko wrote:
| I think it's more due to the funky high-temperature
| fermentation of the top-fermenting ale yeasts used. This
| will create more fusel alcohols than a clean bottom
| fermentation.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Well managed ale fermentation shouldn't produce much
| fusel alcohol which is a byproduct of yeast stress. Some
| of the DDH 8% IPAs place make now and try to turn around
| too fast will have some detectable fusels.
|
| There are also clean (which means low water production)
| ale yeasts.
|
| As a minor nit all yeasts ferment in the whole column of
| liquid. Ale yeasts do often form a thick Krause though.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Could be allergy/sensitivity to any of a wide variety of
| ingredients of beer. Yeasts, barley/sorghum and associated
| malts, and hops are things that could make this common across a
| wife variety of beers.
| grecy wrote:
| Way too many countries are missing, which would change the
| results drastically.
|
| From experience I can tell you beer is 1/3 the price in Ecuador
| as it is in South Africa.
|
| Even nearby Angola, Congo and Cameroon have much cheaper beer
| than South Africa.
|
| As for consumption, it would probably be a good idea to include
| Australia :)
| cameronperot wrote:
| I believe their conclusions are a bit flawed. Namely, the amount
| that people spend on beer per year.
|
| Here in Germany most of the time I see beer prices at
| 3.00-5.00EUR for 500ml in bars. However, I would say a large
| portion of beer consumption here is what people get from
| supermarkets, which is significantly cheaper, with most prices in
| the range of 0.70-1.00EUR for a 500ml bottle.
|
| Furthermore, nobody here really drinks well known brands such as
| Corona or Heineken, rather more regional beers.
|
| Therefore, I don't see their conclusion that Germans spend an
| average of $1.9k on beer per year being valid.
| rospaya wrote:
| Not sure how they got the sales figures but this might be
| skewed by the numbre of tourists and visitors if it was
| calculated pre capita.
| wwtrv wrote:
| Considering that the data on prices is pretty much complete
| garbage I wouldn't be surprised if they just multiplied the
| 'average' price and per capita consumption they obtained from
| WHO (they seem to be implying as much in the methodology
| section).
| dylkil wrote:
| they included the republic of ireland as a part of the uk and put
| northern ireland (which is in the uk) as its own state
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