I still think the Daily Questions (and answers) series is good. I just haven’t been keeping up. It seems every time I have a good idea for the blog, real life gets in the way. Anyway, on with the show.
How much to Americans spend on beer? Beertown.org offers up some numbers from 2006 about craft beers in the US. In ‘06, the craft beer brewers made more than 6.7 million barrels of beer and sold them for 4.7 billion dollars. It seems craft beers account for 3.2% of US beer sales by volume and 4.99% by sales. After a little math, that indicates totals for the US of about 210 million barrels of beer produced per year with sales of about 95 billion dollars.
What does that look like on a per-person basis? After dividing by the US population of approximately 300 million people in America of all ages, annual beer spending per capita is over $300 and buys 230 12-ounce servings.
I believe that if you created a bell chart on beer purchasing activity it would probably peak during October. Football and Fall just scream BEER!!
Well, the Census has “Estimates of Monthly Retail and Food Services Sales by Kind of Business.” One of the categories of business is beer, wine, and liquor stores.
By the data, these stores have the biggest sales in December, followed by July, November, and then October.
However, when the numbers are seasonally adjusted (whatever that means), October edges out November.
Chart
Data