Beer log United States

The beer log database contains details of my beer consumption since April 19th 2002. Indeed this date coincides with the start of an 8 month period of travelling. During this time I had the chance to drink beer in 20 countries, in some a lot, in others less (although I did my utmost).

I have tried to analyse the collected data country by country with respect to quality and price. Many pointless discussions take place around this subject: "The beer is so expensive over there". "In that country it tastes like piss." Obviously such claims are hardly ever based on facts or even an attempt at serious investigation.

This is not to claim that my own statistics represent the truth and nothing but the truth. By the very nature of things they only reveal part of it. First, it's beyond my capacity to try EVERY beer wherever I've been. Moreover I drink beer NOT in order to collect statistics but because I enjoy it. This means a bias towards my preferred brands, particularly in countries where I'm familiar with the beer market. In some countries the amount of beer drunk is too small for any statistically meaningful conclusions (Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland). I've kept them in the list although it makes Sweden appear a ridiculous 3rd in the quality ranking.

The quality rating is more likely to be "wrong" than the price data. They quality scores are mine and reflect my personal taste only. However, to my surprise the outcome corresponds well with "informed opinion". Germany and their Central European neighbours are up there, the Balkan nations with less brewing traditions are found towards the bottom. Countries with a reputation for consistent lagers (Denmark, Norway, Poland, Finland etc) are in the middle group. So are the UK and the USA, notable for their huge "class divides" in the beer market. Sorely missed in this comparison in Belgium. I've spent a lot of time in the country but that was unfortunately before I added this latest touch of thoroughness to my drinking habits. My gut feeling is that Belgium would have won the quality contest had it been in there. Other major omissions are France, Canada, Italy, Australia and Russia.

There can be less discussion about the prices. Apart from the countries where I've only had an airport pint, I feel they reflect the general price level fairly accurately. A factor that will influence the average price is the choice of area to visit; in Greece and Bulgaria I mainly stayed in touristy areas, which might make these countries appear more expensive than they really are. This could also be the case with Hungary. The venues one prefers for drinking beer also influences the outlay. The vast majority of the beers on these lists have been drunk in pubs or cheap eateries and this has been a consistent habit everywhere I've travelled. Only in Romania and Mexico was there any conscious bias towards more upmarket establishments.

I have made no distinction so far between domestic and imported beer. In Greece, Finland and the USA a large proportion of my consumption was imported, whilst in Germany, the Czech Republic and Mexico I stuck to homeproduced brews. A preference for imported beer will pull the price average up. Some inaccuracies are likely in the US. The tipping makes it difficult and I didn't count the pennies. Early on I converted to EURO before storing price. Later as I got tired of this, I adapted the software so I could input the price in local currency directly. Currency convertion, imperial measures and tipping was too much to cope with. Unfortunatley my notebook with the original data was lost in a robbery so the re-enigineering of earlier entries back to local currency might suffer from a minor inaccuracies.

A number of improvements to the presentation is planned when I get the chance to convert the data into a MySql database and place it all on a Web-server. Distinction between domestic and imported beers, links to pubs and breweries, links to local tourist information, maps, extraction of data from existing databases (i.e pilfering), prices alternatively in local currencies, amounts alternatively in imperial measures, search facilities, brands linked to multinationals, photos and comments. It would also be interesting to make a quality distribution chart. All this is too much for a hastily created semi-colon separated list so it will have to wait for a proper Web-database implementation (my ISP doesn't permit scripting).

Beer drunk in private homes or bought in shops have no price info.

Packaging	(B)ottle; (C)an; (D)raught	Rating	Range 0.0 - 5.0
Price	Price per half litre in EURO	Volume	Consumed volume in litres