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Beer Is Cheaper In the US Than Anywhere Else In the World
derekmead writes "It's frustrating to drop $7 on a pint of beer in New York City, as it turns out, Americans have the cheapest beer on Earth. International bank UBS gathered data about the median wages and average retail prices of a 500mL (pint) beer in 150 countries. Those data were compiled to figure out how many minutes of work it takes the average worker of a country to earn enough money to buy a beer. It's funny that UBS analysts are spending time looking at beer, but considering that beer is beloved and nigh essential everywhere, it offers an interesting comparison between commodities and wages. For example, India tops the least, with the median worker having to work nearly an hour to afford a pint thanks to extremely low wages. In the U.S. however, where wages are relatively high and the cost of the average beer is quite low (thanks to those super-massive macrobreweries out there), it takes the median worker about five minutes of labor to afford a retail (store-, not bar-bought) pint. That's the shortest amount of time in the world, which means that, relatively speaking, beer is cheaper here than anywhere else." OK, UBS: Now please repeat the research with coffee.
a pint != 500mL
a pint == 568mL
It's fucking close to water.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It considers abominations like Bud Light to be beer.
I am officially gone from
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
False, but you go on being ignorant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll save you the time: "American beer sucks, har har har".
Really? You *all* think you're clever for saying that?
Anyway -- it's not even true. That is, it's a meaningless statement. America has an enormous range of native beers, of every style, strength, and flavor. It's true that our tastes run toward weaker beers, but it's just stupid to say popular = "American".
Tom Geller
But, I strongly suspect that there is a correlation between the availability of inexpensive mood altering substances, like alcohol, and the amount of bullshit that the average working person will be willing to endure.
Look at the prohibition era in the US; crime and criminality were rampant, and so was outright civil disobedience. Activism by juries in courtrooms were at stellar highs.
Now, we have "the cheapest beer in the world" (pun intended), and our citizenry is reluctant to raise a finger against even clearly horrendous civil liberty violations, like the recent "indefinate detainment" legislation.
I would like to see research comparing effective availability of alcohol and other drugs with the rates of political activism.
Mind you, its just a hunch.
i agree with you, but our placement on this list is definitely due at least partly to our low-quality beers.
the funny thing is i can buy 9% craft beer for less than 2.5x the unit price of a big-brand pisswater (3.5%) beer, and it tastes 10x better as well, but that doesn't show up on this chart. i bet we'd also be close to the top for consumer purchasing power of high-quality beer (however that's defined), but not #1.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Not everyone likes distilled liquors such as Vodka. I have no stomach for it and do not enjoy it in the slightest.
Beer on the other hand I enjoy greatly. I stick to mainly micro and craft brews. I don't drink my beer to get drunk, I drink it because I enjoy the many many different flavor profiles possible with different types of beers and ingredients used. You sound like the typical youth of today, the only way to drink is in excess and the only reason to drink is to get drunk. Grow up and mature a bit, the world doesn't need more irresponsible alcoholics.
Vodka is better than beer.
I'm surprised to hear you say that VodkaGuy...I had you pegged as more of a wine-drinking-guy.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
...it's also worse than anywhere else in the world. No joke, people.
It's certainly true of the large breweries. The micro brews (which are extremely common now days) are much better; although they're also much more expensive.
...it's also worse than anywhere else in the world. No joke, people.
Well, there's BEER, as in Bud, Coors and various other mega brews, who use who knows what (Bud uses rice) in adjuncts, most of the money going into marketing is denied in going into product.
Then there are craft brewers who make Ales, Stouts, Porters, Lagers and so on with the finest barley, hops and water they can muster. You'll see them competing in the categories which really matter at the GABF Many of the small brewers can hold more than a candle to their European counterparts, who are under threat these days from cheap lagers from France (some people just want to get under the table and don't care how.) At least in Germany you are still guaranteed fair ales for your money, thanks to the Reinheitsgebot. A real pity the USA didn't take something like that onto the Constitution.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No offense, but I love German beer and they have a high quality generally but.... the American beer scene has a lot more variety and a bigger willingness to be innovative. German beer, not so much.
We are in a better position now than anytime since Prohibition and probably before too.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
See Beer Advocate. American beer isn't all crappy lager in cans... we have an incredibly vibrant craft beer and homebrewing scene. I drink the former and make the latter myself, and these lips shall never meet swill! Mostly because it's cheaper to brew up a quick ten gallon batch of pale ale than to buy a vomit-inducing Budweiser. I guess it speaks to the power of marketing that folks outside of (or even inside!) the US think so lowly of our beer.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Beer isn't a standard thing. Not even close.
And that is why economists prefer the McDonalds Big Mac for currency comparisons. :-)
Seriously, economists do have a Big Mac Index.
That would eliminate all wheat beers and a great many really good beers.
Many breweries claim to comply, but really don't. I have even seen such claims on wheat beer bottles. Since Reinheitsgebot clearly only allows Water, Barley and Hops, they cannot comply. Yeast was added later as it was unknown at the time.
Weird opinion - the US is near the tops in terms of food quality in the world, based on my experience. And has a far superior amount of diversity in its high quality fine dining options to most countries I've visited in Europe and the Americas. Try eating your way around New York, San Francisco (and throughout the bay area), Napa and Sonoma Counties in California, Charleston in South Carolina, or any of the foodie meccas around the US.
Absolutely wrong. There is an incredible variety of small breweries that make great beer and you can find many of them even at your average grocery store. Go to a specialty liqueur store and you can multiply that variety by 10 or more.
Before 1979 it was illegal to make beer in small batches (no joke) and this is where American beer got the bad reputation because only a handful of big companies were able to make beer (Bud, Coors, Miller....) and thanks to the government obtained control of the market and brought the quality way down. Since that was repealed there was an explosion of home brewing which then expanded into small business and microbreweries so that today there are over 1,400 breweries in the US making every possible type and flavor of beer imaginable.
I would actually go so far as to say that the American beer is now the best in the world as evidenced by the international competitions where the US beers dominate.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Don't even bother trying to drink any beer unless it is brewed to the Bavarian Purity Law standard of 1516. Lots of smaller breweries in the U.S. and Canada have beer that complies.
What a load of bullshit. The more people ignore this outdated law, the more interesting beers are created.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Figure the one time set up cost for a home brew: ~250 bucks.
Hops kit required: ~50bucks
Result: 5 gallons of GOLD. As it's difficult to guess the breakdown on the startup costs per batch, let's ignore it for a moment and focus on simply the cost of the materials to make a batch. At 10bucks/gallon for whatever quality you want, that's pretty damn spiffy ( of course, I'm ignoring labor too. Because it's a labor of LOVE ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You know, the kind that doesn't have to have a shitload of preservatives in it to make sure it's still "fresh" in 6 months.
In the UK, the Budweiser "Fresh Beer Tastes Better" adverts were banned by the Advertising Standards Agency, because "fresh" beer quite demonstrably does *not* taste better. Anyone who has made homebrew will tell you this...
Better yet, just keep your vodka in the freezer and drink it straight.
Scotch (or even a decent bourbon) does the same thing and actually has some complexity. Vodka is too sterile and lifeless for me... it's good in drinks but I can't imagine drinking it straight.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Mass produced beer has become increasingly bad all around the world. But also the beer culture has gone downhill. That is why people still buy bad beer. I haven't seen the chart of the top 10 most sold beers of the world but I wil hazard a guess I wouldn't drink it.
Let me explain how a beer garden in Germany(Munich area) works:
You go there on a sunny afternoon. Next to the place were they actually sell the beer you will find shelves of mugs. The 1 liter variety. You take a mug and go to a big basin filled with clear water were you rinse the mug. There will also be little brushes. Use them.
With your mug you go to the end of the queue. When it is your turn, tell them what you want. Don't be fancy, they only have two barrels. Say "Ein Helles, bitte". Pay in cash. No plastic. Don't rely on them having change. Find a nice bench under a chestnut tree and enjoy your beer.
And have a nice lunch.
You have brought lunch, have you?
If you go to a beer garden they only expect you to buy the beer there. You can bring your own food. Otherwise you might find everything to be a bit expensive.
Everything is trees and wood and wasps and rabbits frolicking on the green. There might even be fucking butterflies and flowers and shit.
Me and a couple of mates once went to the Hirschgarten on a Sunday morning and went home when they closed it. I drank 9 liters of beer, ate 2 chickens, a couple of those giant pretzels with a cartload of Obatzta(a Bavarian cheese specialty) and a Steckerlfisch(a mackerel). All in all I spent 200 Euros on food over the course of 12 hours and felt like I got my money's worth. Best Sunday ever. YMMV.
20 minutes into the future
Made beer in a bucket in a pit under our tent in Desert Storm. Only way to get temps down to reasonable levels. Wasn't bad (dark ale) but no easy way to filter it. And yeah, was a medical unit (Air Med-Evac).
I drank what? -- Socrates
Here on Slashdot, we should all be drinking rum since rum is what pirates drink and everyone knows nerds love pirates.
And ninjas. But sake is nasty, i'll stick to the rum myself.
Correction, there are over 2,000 micro and craft breweries in the US today and we're adding them at a bit over 200 net new breweries per year. That's 50% more than Germany and even on a per-capita basis we're projected to pass them by the end of the decade. It really is a good time to be a beer lover in America =)
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i rather drink water than american beer lol
That's like saying you'd rather eat bacon instead of something that came from a pig.
Just because our big native breweries have been bought by foreign investors doesn't mean they've changed the traditional recipes. Bud and Coors are still as American as ... polysorbate 60.
Sam Adams is meh. Better that the bland, tasteless crap produced by the big guys, but only "quite good" if your standards are quite low. For American breweries that predate the microbrew explosion and actually have flavor, I'll take Anchor Steam, thanks. And even they're not as good as the good American beers that are available these days.
The thing is that "American beer" can have two meanings. If you mean "beer made in America", then yes, there's plenty that's quite passable (including even Sam Adams), but I think it can also be used in the sense of "American cheese", as a description of a style of beer that is utterly flavorless, except perhaps for a few hints of nastyness, as exemplified by Bud and Coors.
No, because of the name clash between Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) and Budweiser (Budvar), Anheuser-Busch is not allowed to sell a beer called "Budweiser" in Germany (and in some other european countries).
It's probably what people grew up with. Some people for inexplicable reasons will prefer Coors. But it technically wouldn't be considered a real beer in some parts of the world. On the other hand you can go to a lot of ball parks and get decent beer, like Sam Adams or a locally brewed batch (mini-brew if not micro-brew).
Well, maybe the mistake is picking micro brews that are too dark. Their is a lot of space between the water that is pabst, and the overtoasted crap on the other side of the spectrum.
I find that if I can't see my hand through the pint, the beer is hiding something. There is a reason a lot of home brewers do stout, and it has to do with their inability to make a good IPA or amber ale. Those lighter beers are very susceptible to off tastes if everything isn't super clean, and the trub isn't removed fairly quickly.
BTW: Finally, any beer that is lighter than a light amber color is probably heavily cut with rice or corn... In the case of bud light/etc there is so little barley or hops its hard to call it "beer" with a straight face.
As a european brewer, who has worked for the two largest breweries in my country, two of the smallest and who currently works with planning and installing two new microbreweries, I don't agree. If someone would ask me what's the most difficult beer to brew, I would say Budweiser (if I'm allowed to exclude lambics). Because making a beer that tastes virtually nothing isn't an easy thing to do. And to have every single bottle taste the same is even harder. American breweries have contributed ALOT to the quality aspect of the brewing industry. I don't drink beer with so little taste myself, but I appreciate the quality aspect of it.
Yeah, I've noticed this too. Tho here in GF-W, Newfoundland, the 'beer' of choice is usually Coors Light or Bud Light. Why, I really don't know, but my hypothesis is that there are truly very few BEER drinkers out there anymore. What most people have become are 'soft, fizzy, alcoholic beverage' drinkers; kinda like how many girlies claim to be 'on the wine' when, in reality, they are drinking an overly sweet, fizzy, fruit flavoured spritzer by the name of "Boone's". That shit ain't wine -- it's not bad per se, and I've been know to have a bottle or two over the years, but it's NOT WINE.
In line with this theory, those who moderate (well, usually :) their consumption tend to enjoy more full bodied beers. Anything with higher malt, hop, etc. content will start to turn on you if you over-indulge (higher calorie content, worse hangovers, dry towel-tongue). Coors can be drank to excess without any of that (hell, I once couldn't even get a buzz on with that shit no matter how I tried.)
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I see you've never tasted American beer, only Budweiser (Belgium), Coors (Canadian), or Miller (British). Those brands used to be American but all were bought by foreigners. Try a Sam Adams some time, or one of the fine microbrews. Every bit as good as a Bass or Guiness.
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The inexpensive American "beer" that is used in this calculation uses maize and rice instead of barley as the main ingredient, grasses that happen to be heavily subsidised here and hardly used to make beer anywhere else. If you want to drink beer that is made of the same base ingredients as the real stuff then it will cost about 2x as much in the supermarket here as it does at a bar in Amsterdam. There are a lot of breweries in the US that make some really good beer, especially ones founded in the last two decades, but that stuff ain't cheap, at least not yet.
I think that you're just bad at picking restaurants.
I've been to Australia (Victoria and the NT), and I've been to Argentina (Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata), Canada (Ontario, New Brunswick and PEI), and I'm from the US, where I've visited (NY, ME, NH, MA, RI, CT, NJ, PA, DE, MD, WV, VA, NC, SC, TN, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ, CA, NV, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY, NE, IA, IL, IN, and OH).
I've had a good meal in practically every city I've been to. Smaller towns are a bit more hit-or-miss. If it's a hamlet or smaller with just one restaurant, then maybe you'll get lucky.
However, as a rule of thumb, it is best to stay away from a place that has an expensive menu (such as a $25 burger), but is empty. Instead, look for the seedy-looking place that has a line coming round the back and where the waiters make you point at the menu because they can't understand you.
Not really. We were set up about 10 miles south of Kuwait border, maybe 25 miles inland. This area wasn't movie desert; was just a field of dirt. There was a pile of dead goats nearby where the local Bedouin had slaughtered their herd before heading south when the shooting started. A unit of the 2nd Marine Division was in front of us and there was a Navy hospital set up south of us. Air Med-Evac worked with the Marine medics to treat and stabilize the wounded and fly them out on a C130 to hospital stations further back.
I'd seen Catch 22 and MASH and knew how war was supposed to work. I brought along beer making supplies and a Hawaiian shirt. My helmet cover had "Ours is not to reason why..." on it.
Our location in Saudi was really weird looking; smoke from the oil fires created a low ceiling of black smelly clouds that the sun couldn't get through and with the flat ground of the desert, it felt like being a bug trapped between two flat surfaces. If you've ever seen a winter in central North Dakota, you'll know what I mean. From our location we could see the big air-fuel bombs they were dropping on the Iraqi positions; you'd look north and see the dull red-orange glow of fires and then you'd see a small dot of light drop down from the clouds before going back up. Then there'd be a large flash of bright light and maybe 30 seconds later, the ground would rumble and shake. The scale of it all was almost overwhelming. For myself, it appeared to be a battle between the old gods and giants or maybe the attack on Minus Tirith in LotR. It also reminded me of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and the firebombing of Dresden; something so overwhelming in szie it was... there's a word that I can't think of, where something isnt beautiful but still grabs your eyes and you can't look away. That's what I was seeing; something so far beyond human capability or scale yet here we were, shaking the earth and setting the sky on fire.
Wasn't until years later that I found out Tolkien had been in WWI and experienced artillery bombardments and Vonnegut had been in Dresdan.
After the bombing stopped, we moved north and started taking prisoners and trying to patch them up. Our 30 man unit had almost 5,000 Iraqis to care for. They were mostly farmers and such, sent to the front lines with barbed wire and landlines in front and behind them, with the Republican Guard shooting any that tried to leave. Until the bombing started. They got theirs on the road north.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Wow, the US can field 2651 individual beers? That is impressive. Thank you for the information, but I'm not sure it is saying what you want it to.
And you think Europe including places like germany can only field a couple hundred?
The point is, yes, of course the USA can produce some truly great beer. But there "world ranking" based on a contest held in San Diego where anyone foreign had to jump through some FDA hoops just to be allowed in, where 2/3rds of entrants were all american... where most countries didn't even field enough varieties to cover the categories, where the US fielded 10x more beers than other top beer nations, and up to 1000x more varieties than smal countries... the USA was almost BOUND to dominate the rankings unless it showed up with nothing but rank swill.
If america fields 2500 of its best, and germany fields 250 of its best... well... odds are pretty good that if both America and Germany are at the top of their games, America is going to dominate; purely on statistics... hell even if half the american entrants are garbage they'll still be holding a huge edge.
When Budvar registered the Budweiser brand in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1895, they were the first to do so. And Budvar is incorporated in Budweis (as it was called then), and thus they had a natural right to describe their beer as being "from Budweis" or "being Budweiser". Anheuser-Busch didn't intervene, though they had the Budweiser brand registered in the U.S. since 1860. No one even thought in 1895, that this could lead to any problems, Anheuser-Busch selling their beer in North America, and Budvar serving the European market. It wasn't until the 1920ies before Anheuser-Busch Budweiser even reached Europe.
Even today, it's still possible to have the same trademark for the same product class registered to different entities in different countries.