Beer Is Cheaper In the US Than Anywhere Else In the World 633
Posted
by
timothy
from the beat-the-high-cost-of-living-and-die dept.
from the beat-the-high-cost-of-living-and-die dept.
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.
Incidentally... (Score:3, Insightful)
...it's also worse than anywhere else in the world. No joke, people.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Informative)
...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.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, I did my best to accommodate the beer snobs, but I have found, again and again, that on a hot day barbeque at the summer house, the cooler with the watery Pabst macro brew seems to empty out first.
And when you see someone at Comiskey nursing a room-temperature micro-boutique "pils" that has some too-clever name, you can be pretty sure that their tickets are being written off as a business expenditure and they're not really a Sox fan. They probably use a moisturizer around the eyes before bed, too (if you catch my drift).
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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 [greatameri...stival.com] 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.
Re: (Score:3)
Last time they took alcohol into consideration in the Constitution, it was to ban it. They undid the ban fairly soon afterwards, but I don't think you want a government founded largely on puritan principles to have anything to do with leisure.
Re: (Score:3)
some people just want to get under the table and don't care how
This is one thing I've never understood. Yes, it's true that some people just want to get absolutely plastered. Hell, one could argue common. In college, it's damn near a requirement in some social circles there.
So why in the darkest pits of hell would you want to do so with beer?!? You can't POSSIBLY find a more inefficient liquid than something that's 4.5% alcohol. Great, you just funnelled 3 liters of beer into your stomach. Have fun burping the fizz out for the next several hours, farting what you don't burp, and going for a piss every 30 seconds.
You can get absolutely, ridiculously cheap vodka or rum or what have you, almost (and sometimes over) a full order of magnitude MORE alcoholic than beer. No gas, significantly less pissing, faster drunk... I just don't understand it.
Now don't get me wrong... I like the taste of a good beer (emphasis on 'good'... anything mass produced like coors or what have you can be dumped right down the drain in my opinion), but if I was for some bizarre reason in the mood to get plastered, literally ANYTHING else alcoholic would do a better job than cheap beer.
If there's anyone on slashdot who enjoys getting wasted on cheap beer (unlikely), I'd love to hear the reasoning behind this.
Why beer? Well, probably has something to do with it being available in containers of 15.5 US gallons. I could be wrong.
BTW, the drink of choise among the local street people is malt liquor.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, if you go with the stuff from Budwiser, Coors...etc.
But most areas here these days, seem to have good local breweries...in my area we have great beers from:
Abita
NOLA (New Orleans Lager and Ale Brewing Company )
Bayou Teche Brewing
Heiner Brau
Parish Brewing Company
Tin Roof Brewing Company
And hell..that's just around New Orleans.....come visit Cooter Brown's [cooterbrowns.com] or one of the Bulldog's [draftfreak.com] here in town, and get a taste of a number of great beers (by the pint or bottle).
And...nicely en
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Informative)
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. [worldbeercup.org]
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Informative)
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 =)
Re:Incidentally... (Score:4, Insightful)
I follow you up to the last statement. There are very good microbrews now in the US, and certainly, when the subject is IPA, US brewers are top notch. Still, Belgian and Germans are better. Proper process inherited from traditions can be tasted, and often "belgian style" US production is adventurous (good), to the point of denaturing the product by using improper processes to "enhance" or "flavor" the batch the easy way (additives), instead of the proper way. That being said, the general quality is certainly satisfactory, and sometimes, the creativity pays and this is to be appreciated.
On the price side, this report is misleading. Crap beers are dirt cheap. But they are crap. Good beers are not that cheap compared to typical European prices.
Re: (Score:3)
Until you can go into a bar and have a proper beer pulled from its own barrel, which changes by what is being made at the time of year...
So, until things "become" the way they have been for at least the last couple of decades? Because that's an accurate description of a lot of bars and pubs around here. (Of course, I live fairly close to one of the main epicenters of the microbrew explosions.)
Heck, there's more than a few bars here in the Bay Area where I can go in, order a beer, and chat with the guy who made it!
Re: (Score:3)
Given the way that disposable incomes work between the US and Europe, I suspect that I can still "pay more" for a good German/Belgian/Czech/Estonian beer here in the States and still be paying less for it than anyone in any of the places were my beer actually came for.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Lets be realistic shall we. Yes, the US small breweries have improved *significantly* in the last three decades. The US has some *awesome* breweries and beers. But they aren't the only country that does and to say they're the best in the world (despite some competition results) is debatable. Also its not fair to compare a country of 350m + people against one of 100m and saying "nah nah we have more breweries".
Personally I prefer ales to lagers which means I would pick say a Flying Dog, IPA over a German bee
Re: (Score:3)
Here is the breakdown of countries, and how many different beer each submitted to the competition:
Argentina (9)
Australia (49)
Austria (24)
Belarus (1)
Belgium (101)
Bolivia (4)
Brazil (45)
Cambodia (1)
Canada (191)
Cayman Islands (3)
Chile (16)
China (6)
Colombia (18)
Costa Rica (2)
Croatia (3)
Cyprus (1)
Czech Republic (29)
Denmark (29)
El Salvador (4)
France (4)
Germany (292)
Guatemala (5)
Haiti (1)
Iceland (5)
India (1)
Indonesia (1)
Ireland (5)
Isle Of Man (4)
Israel (1)
Italy (54)
Japan (96)
Korea, Republic of (14)
Latvia (5)
Lithuan
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:4, Informative)
Too many micro brews are made by people with hops fetishes. Don't know why they prefer making undrinkable bitterness. Everytime someone says "here try this, it's great" it ends up having more hops than a rabbit farm.
Re: (Score:3)
Could be because people respond drastically different to the same amounts of bitter substances. I know I don't react to them that much, whereas an ex-girlfriend could taste 1/100th of the concentration I could taste.
Conversion error (Score:4, Insightful)
a pint != 500mL
a pint == 568mL
Re:Conversion error (Score:5, Informative)
There are three different kinds of pints. A 568mL one, a 473mL one, and a 551mL one. The first is used in the UK, the second two (mostly the 473mL) in the US, and (ironically) is the older usage. The UK changed their definition after the US declared independence, so the US uses the older system. But 500mL is a decent approximation, and works just fine when comparing costs.
Re:Conversion error (Score:4, Funny)
And that's why you Brits lost your empire: too much beer. In the U.S. we drink a more moderate 473mL pint.
Yes but... (Score:2)
How much time do I have to spend messing around on the Internet at work to be able to buy a decent microbrew at lunch?
How is American Beer like sex in a canoe? (Score:5, Funny)
It's fucking close to water.
Re:How is American Beer like sex in a canoe? (Score:5, Funny)
The CEOs of Budweiser, Coors, and Guinness get together for lunch.
When the waitress comes to take their drink orders, the CEO of Budweiser orders a Bud.
The CEO of Coors follows suit and orders a Coors.
The CEO of Guinness looks at the waitress and orders one Coors and one Budweiser. The other two are astonished!
They ask why he ordered two drinks, and says "Oh, I never have beer this early in the day."
Re: (Score:3)
Several years back, a guy I know threw a huge party. He bought cheap beer, but as a joke, he had his own labels printed and replaced the brewery's labels. His labels quite clearly stated, "smooth as making love in a canoe". :)
Re:How is American Beer like sex in a canoe? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Is your name not Bruce? That's going to cause a bit of confusion. Mind if we call you Bruce to keep it simple?
This study makes a serious mistake (Score:5, Funny)
It considers abominations like Bud Light to be beer.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Not since 2008. [telegraph.co.uk]. See, just because you type in capitals, it does not make your assertion true.
Beer (Score:4, Funny)
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Define "Beer". (Score:4, Informative)
There is a big difference between a "40" of St Ides for 2 bucks, and a 5$ to 7$ pint of "micro-brew".
St. Louis produces millions of gallons of piss water alternatively known as "beer", but this doesn't mean that the rest of the world drinks this stuff and would classify it as "beer".
Re: (Score:2)
OU might want to look at the top sold beers in the world before making stupid statements.
1) SNow Beer - China
2) Bud Light - 47.38 million barrels world wide.
3)Budweiser 36.98 million barrels also sold globally.
interesting note, Ireland most popular beer is Coors light.
SO, what I ma saying is: Shut. Up.
Original link? (Score:2)
Can anyone find a link to the study, rather than just the chart being tossed around? In particular, I wonder about countries not shown...
Re: (Score:3)
No, this was the best:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/09/daily-chart-13 [economist.com]
Love to see their workings out too. Points to massively overpriced cartel running the Indian market (and probably the top 5).
Nicely misleading headline... (Score:2)
If I were to sell a house for 500k in San Francisco, it might be called cheap, where if were to try to sell the same house in BFN, California, it would be laughably overpriced... but they're still both 500k. You can't say one is "cheaper" than the other. This might be an interesting fact about the US that was determined, but the fact is definitely -not-, "beer is cheaper in the US than anywhere else in the world".
Also that first sentence was interesting, as it turns out, it is as a great example of somethin
...and half the comments make the same dumb joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect that the percentage of beer sold in the US that belongs to the sucky variety vindicates the joke.
Re: (Score:3)
"The Economist" Big Mac Index (Score:2)
They have been doing something similar using the price to Big Macs in various countries to analyze exchange rates: http://www.economist.com/search/apachesolr_search/big%20mac%20index [economist.com]
I guess economists do have a sense of humor . . .
ok now.. dont go apeshit at me here.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Why is this funny? (Score:2)
Beer sales in the U.S. are $100 billion per year. It's the sort of thing financial people take notice of.
price per % of alcohol (Score:4, Interesting)
What were the results when you multiply by the average percentage of alcohol found in native beers?
How do you make it cheaper? Home brew (Score:5, Interesting)
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 ).
Bad statistic... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where is it then? (Score:3)
I have never been to a place in the US where beer is as cheap as it is in Germany. I am not saying that the cheap stuff is the best quality, but their cheap beer is better than the average US beer, by far.
...totally meaningless... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Vodka is pointless.
Re:Vodka is better (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
There's only one kind of person who thinks there is but a single use for alcohol.
An alcoholic.
Have fun with your "less" vomiting and hangovers. I'll stick with no puking and more pleasure, or perhaps choose alternatives that don't cause a blatant poisoning effect on my body.
Field expedient disinfectants ... (Score:4, Funny)
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
There are at least three practical purposes. Add disinfectant to the list, also add fuel / fire starter when the proof gets above (80?). Obviously these are not the intended purposes but Vodka has been used in these ways when the circumstances warranted.
The following explanation has been attempted in many armies over many years:
"Sir, that is not a still. That is an apparatus creating field expedient disinfectant for the doctors/medics/corpsmen, sir."
Re:Field expedient disinfectants ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:Field expedient disinfectants ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
Beer tastes good (well, not Budweiser - but real beers), you have to mix vodka with other things to make it tolerable.
You simply haven't had good Vodka.
Vodka is like whiskey, good whiskey does not need to be mixed, crap whiskey should never be drunk straight. I think this is true for most spirits.
That cheap arse bottle of Smirnoff is not good vodka. Neither is Absolut.
Re:Vodka is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
...and that's fine.
I'm sure that you probably don't like the taste of coffee or chocolate, either. If you partake in either of those, you probably load it up with milk, sugar and/or other flavourings to disguise the taste of the bean.
Personally, I don't mind, and can appreciate the subtleties in, good quality bitter foods. This doesn't make me superior to you in any way. "I don't like it" or "I can't stand it" is not the same thing as "anyone who likes it is the victim of groupthink".
Yeah, megaswill lager i
Re:Vodka is better (Score:4, Funny)
Vodka is better than beer. It gives a nice warm kick and you don't need to go piss all the time. Many of the Russian vodkas all so have a nice little taste to them.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Vodka is a proof that Satan wants you not to remember being happy under the table. Sincerely Yours, Ben Franklin
Re:Vodka is better (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Vodka is better (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Vodka is better (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Vodka is better (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Prosit!
Re: (Score:3)
And were will you get Bud Light in Munich? Is it even sold there? If so, why?
Re:Vodka is better (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:Vodka is better (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
So, in the US you'd probably need to purchase ~1 2/5 cans of regular swill to get 500ml, considering that the cheapest and most common beer comes in 355ml cans.
Actually, most major brands are also available in 16 oz. (473ml) "tall boy" cans, and they're often marginally cheaper in that package than in 12 oz. containers. (Probably because it's positioned as being a slightly "lower class" product.)
Re: (Score:3)
No, American beers short you.
A proper beer is 500ml or 1L. A 330/335 is for children.
Re:Vodka is better (Score:4, Informative)
569ml is the proper unit of measurement for beer =)
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Insightful)
False, but you go on being ignorant.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
In WWII all the German beer brewers were run out of business in the US, after which locals had to pick up the slack and essentially start from scratch, so all the skill and knowledge was lost.
Funny, I never heard this excuse as to why the beer sucked so bad in the US. So after which war did you run the french restaurants out of business to explain why the food is so bad in the US ? Yeah, flamebait, but having live 6 years in the US I still stand by it. But you now have great microbrews nowadays.
And back to the topic at hand, how many hours of stoning does it take to have a pint in Saudi Arabia ?
BTW, the cheapest brew is in my home: I brew my own. It's cheap and fun and good (small print: apa
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What happened is after prohibition they started adding corn and rice to beer and people were just glad to have any beer to drink even if it tasted like corn (which is cheap).
Most people aren't picky and it started a trend.
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Weird opinion - the US is near the tops in terms of food quality in the world, based on my experience.
He, have you really stepped out of the US ?!?
Try eating your way around New York
Every time I mention food being bad in the US, americans always go "but you have to try it in NY!". Why ? NY is only a tiny subset of the US and also variety != quality. And for your information I've been in NY and the crappy 25$ burgers were just as bad as ANY other burger. If you go to a random unassuming restaurant in Italy [for instance], chances are you'll find the antipasti and the pizza and the pasta delicious. And for less than 20$/Euro. If you do the sam
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Knee jerk anti-Americanism is pretty popular on the Internet these days. Much easier to look at the US as one big country rather than a union of fifty states, thousands of counties, and tens of thousands of towns and cities. Only in Europe can two towns five hundred miles away from each other be different and unique. Contrast that with the US where Hoboken is identical to Raleigh is identical to Chicago in the mind of a non-American..
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Insightful)
See Beer Advocate [beeradvocate.com]. 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.
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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It is true. While there are some excellent beers in this country, the fact is, the average quality is utterly abysmal due to the likes of Bud, Coors, Miller, etc.
Even though some of these are starting to put out higher-quality beers, the majority of their sales are low-cost low-quality crap.
As a result, the average quality of beers in this country matches the average price at best... more likely the average quality is below the average price.
Just because you CAN get high-quality beer at reasonable prices
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4-5% for the mass market lagers just like basically everywhere. You can find everything from 2-12% ABV in most well stocked specialty stores though the typical range is 4-9%. Some states have a limit on the maximum ABV allowed under the tax bracket for beer and so you won't typically be able to find anything above that statute limit.
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This is a universal truth. Even applies in Germany.
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Dogfish head had a TV show a while back on the discovery channel essentially a 20 minute commerical they have very good beers.
Commercialization does not make something bad it typically means they have had success, I know the hipster in you hates when everybody starts liking something you liked first and that there is no way the masses could ever have as sophisticated tastes as you.
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Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Economists prefer the Big Mac Index (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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People were brewing with it for thousands of years before that. It was however not known as anything separate, they just mixed old beer with new to start fermentation. Yeast was discovered by Van Leeuwenhoek in 1719.
The brewery you chose is not even particularly old, Weihenstephaner has been brewing since 1040.
Re:There's a reason for that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't even bother trying to drink any beer unless it is brewed to the Bavarian Purity Law [wikipedia.org] 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.
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Hefe, means the yeast is still in suspension as the beer is not filtered. Yeast is selected for this behavior. Proper serving of a Hefe includes swirling the last few 10s of mls to get any settled yeast into the glass.
Again you show your ignorance. Beer cannot said to be infected by yeast, as it is integral to the process. The sour you claim is brett and that is not found in Hefes.
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And that's only because American wages are high
Which screws it up even worse, since the labor force participation rate is low and dropping fast. Soon, we'll be a minority of population working country.
Better to take median annual income than median wage, since only about sixty percent of the population currently has a job.
There are countries with higher, and lower, labor force participation rates. Beer consumption is not limited to wage earners, in fact it tends toward non-wage earners, which has some secondary price forcing effect, in that if your co
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I'm living in beer heaven, Belgium, and I miss the CO brews. Greater variety there, but really... I'm not complaining. Especially since I just finished my first Westvleteren. :D