Miscellaneous Forum

In your humble opinion, which nationality leads the way when it comes to drinking beer ... and who are struggling to keep up?!!

On a per capita basis, Czech Republic.

Czech Republic has the highest of any nation state, but I bet the Free State of Bavaria is equal or ahead of them...

Australia and Germany are big beer drinkers.

There are some interesting statistics on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption

These figures come from a report carried out by the World Health Organisation.

You can sort the columns in the table in order of consumption of beer, wine, spirits, "other" and total.

There are certainly a few surprises in there! For example, the top 5 countries in terms of beer consumption per capita are apparently:

Palau
Czech Republic
Seychelles
Ireland
Azerbaijan

Germany ranks 8th and my country, the United Kingdom, ranks 16th - behind countries such as Uganda, Gabon and Venezuela.

The figures for wine consumption are less surprising to me, with the top 5 being:

Luxembourg
France
Portugal
Italy
Croatia

The top 5 consumers of spirits are:

South Korea
Estonia
St Lucia
Grenada
Bosnia & Herzegovina

There are a few countries, particularly in Africa (9 of the top 10), with high consumptions of "other" alcohol. In the case of the one non-African country in the top 10, Armenia, this appears to be Cognac brandy.

Despite not featuring in the top 5 for any individual category, and with a high level of "unrecorded" alcohol consumption, the country leading the way in total alcohol consumption is apparently Moldova (18.22 litres per capita annually), followed by Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine and Estonia.

No real surprises in terms of the countries that consume the least amounts of alcohol (with most of it classed as "unrecorded"); Yemen consumes the least (0.02 litres per capita annually), followed by Pakistan, Somalia, Mauritania, Libya, Kuwait, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia.

Of course, as with any report of this nature, the results should be taken with a pinch of salt. Some of the results for smaller nations are likely to be skewed due to small populations and data samples. There is also the issue of "unrecorded" alcohol consumption that features highly in some countries' figures - by its very nature this can only be an estimate.

I must confess that my own research into this matter is likely to be somewhat less than that carried out by the World Health Organisation, and comprises largely of visiting pubs and bars and enjoying a beer wherever I visit, but for what its worth my guess at the top 5 beer consuming countries would have been:

Czech Republic (WHO report rank = 2)
Germany (WHO report rank = 8)
Ireland (WHO report rank = 4)
Australia (WHO report rank = 22)
Denmark (WHO report rank = 15) or Belgium (WHO report rank = 11)

Another report, carried out by the Japanese brewing company Kirin, arrived at a different result from the WHO's findngs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_beer_consumption_per_capita

1 Czech Republic
2 Ireland
3 Germany
4 Austria
5 Australia

However, this report clearly excludes a lot of countries and doesn't appear to be anywhere near as extensively researched as the WHO's report.

Can honestly say that Israel is struggling, that's why I drink with Germans.

Canada!

At Belgium not big beer drinkers, but the beer that we drink is beer and not water that looks like a beer.