Happy Friday beer fans!
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I try not to waste time on listicles, but I couldn’t resist this one, of the hardest-drinking countries in the world. Spoiler: the 25 Countries with the Highest Alcohol Consumption per Capita divide into two groups:
- most of Europe (21 of 25)
- a handful of completely unexpected outliers
Before reading that article, try to guess the one country in Asia and two in Africa that make the list.
There are some entertaining details among the numbers: everyone knows France is a wine country, but so are Georgia and Moldova.
The wine culture is very strong in the Republic of Moldova and the wine industry employs almost 10% of the national workforce, with the income generated from viticulture forming 15% of the annual national budget. Up to 70% of alcohol consumed in the country is homemade wine.
Who are the “winners”?
1. Romania
Alcohol Consumption per Capita: 16.99 liters
Men in Romania are the heaviest drinkers in the world, with a per capita consumption of 27.3 liters of pure alcohol in 2019, or an average of 8.2 drinks per day.
And they’re ahead by a mile; second place Georgia manages only 14.3 liters/person/year. Checking the math above, that’s 75ml of pure alcohol per day, or 187ml of 80-proof spirits, so they are defining “one drink” as 23ml (0.8 fl.oz.) of 80-proof spirits.
I’m not sure how much to trust these stats. The data is from the World Heath Organization but I didn’t dig in to see what they said about the methodology. They’re reporting separately for men and women, how do they know? Commercially produced and taxed products are easy to quantify, but they’re trying to count homemade alcohol also, how do they know?
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I’ve finished the Maui Waui and will probably have a Hazy Little Thing before going out for dinner and more beer. What are you drinking? Anyone brewing?
Go Niners!