Who drinks in America

I would have thought the preferred alcoholic beverage, which is beer, would have been higher than 35%. Wine and liquor aren't that far behind (31% and 30% respectively).

 

Alcohol is a simple pleasure that can be a nice little break from a stressful day/week/life. Sucks that it’s becoming too expensive for the most stressed among us.

 

Looks Bud doesn't taste like in the 90s.

 

It looks like the '60's to the '80's were party times!

 

More money, more problems…

 

In LA most people i know have replaced alcohol with Adderall and Xanax

 

At least it’s not fentanyl.

 

Me

 

Did Gallop contact you for this poll?

Cheers!

 

i dig the 3% who say they have no preference on what they drink!

“what’ll ya have?”

“whatever’ll get me tossed!”

 

beer has been losing its place in this regards for a few years now it seems.

 

Its Gallup..mostly crap

 

The problem with basing such things on polls - asking people what they drink - rather than actual statistics, is that historically wine and liquor have been seen as more sophisticated than beer, so even in an anonymous poll, the guy who puts away a 12 pack every weekend playing golf and watching football but has a glass of wine when he goes out to dinner with his wife once a month considers himself a "wine drinker" when Gallup asks.

Of course, actual statistics are tough, too, when one is dealing with $5 sixpacks of 5% beer vs $15 of 750ml bottles of 12% wine or $30 750ml of 90% bourbon. The US Brewers Association (below) used to base it on Gallons per capita - guess what? Beer won.


Break it down to absolute alcohol (above) during the same period* and beer and spirits were pretty darn close back around 1970. Wine would later catch up to them both.

Basing it on dollars and throw in the the off- or on-premise aspect and things only get blurrier.

* Why'd I pick this era? Because the 1970 ed. of the USBA's Brewers Almanac was sitting on my desk.

 

I agree with your assessment. If everyone would drink only one type of alcoholic beverage the poll would be a lot easier and the results more meaningful.

 

I'd always heard that beer consumption had dropped but hard liquor had gone up. This kinda supports that theory.

 

Agree the “absolute alcohol” would be the best metric. Dollars would be interesting to note.

Would be interested in more recent (past decade or two if possible) beer stats by the same regional breakdown.

Nice to see our region top overall and per capita (East North Central), with Wisconsin leading the pack in terms of the per capita consumption.



2021 beer consumption by state (gallons, not alcohol equivalents so might be slightly different if ABV was considered). New Hampshire with the slight lead over Montana, Budweiser the top seller in both states. I’m assuming Budweiser means Budweiser plus Bud Light.

 

Very interesting numbers. Im somewhat surprised that the total abstainers are over 1/3 of the country. I feel like it’s pretty rare for me to come across individuals who NEVER drink. And those that I do come across tend to love to make that fact known. Often in a preachy pretentious way. Granted my social circle is almost entirely college educated and above the 40k income household rate so some personal sampling bias perhaps, but still 35% plus seems like a ton.

I also admittedly find it somewhat odd that people would never drink. Don’t get me wrong the vast major of people I know are minimal drinkers, but to never ever have a single beer or glass of wine or alcohol if any kind is almost foreign to me. Perhaps growing up in a small, western PA industrial/factory town and having italian and german heritage has skewed normalcy for me…..

….that or the 35%+ total abstainers is a sampling bias from the pollers end.

 

It's hard to take this survey seriously. The number of "abstainers" seems way too high. In some categories, 50% of those surveyed claim to be total abstainers. Yeah, right.

It gives one some perspective on the reliability of surveying and polling in general. People say what they say, not what they do.

 

And the most popular beer in Vermont is Bud Light! It breaks your heart...