Budget Brew

The Friday File: Dividing the cost of a beer by the minimum wage tells you how much work it takes to buy suds. Amazingly, it takes 12 minutes to afford a beer in Puerto Rico and 18 minutes to buy one in Australia and Luxembourg. Here it takes 24 minutes. Across Europe it averages 45…

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Leapin’ Leprechauns

The Friday File: On St. Patrick’s Day we drink 1% of all beer consumed in America, which equals 1.62 pints per/person, so drink up! 34.5 million Americans claim Irish ancestry which is seven times the population of Ireland. The total value of Irish imports to the US is $39.4 billion and it takes 40 pounds…

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There’s a Tear in my Beer…

The Friday File: Due to costly raw materials and slow growth, a wave of consolidation is pouring over the beer industry. The 4 biggest breweries; Anheuser-Busch-InBev, SABMiller, Heinekin and Carlsberg all foreign (the biggest US owned brewery is Sam Adams), have increased their market share from 20% in the late ’90s to about 50% today.…

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