"silenus":2goewftz wrote: He reckoned that we were leading the way in diversity[/quote:2goewftz]
I don't really know about that. I think that as in computer software we're the 51st state. We're certainly closer to Boston than Berlin, but I don't think brewers here are breaking any moulds.[/quote:2goewftz]
I think this is still seeing the world through some very green-tinted glasses...
From the number of breweries supported per person by country OR from the perspective of total diversity of produced beer within the country; Germany and the US are many many times closer to each other than they are to Ireland which would be in the middle of the Pacific according to the stats, I'd say.
Now if you're talking about beer CONSUMERS within each country and the diversity of the beers that they're willing to actually order, then I think there might be something to that. (In either case we're talking about a very small part of each country's market.)
Although not specifically focused on diversity, one metric is to look at it in terms of # of people per brewery within a country which has been covered before and is listed below.
In terms of diversity, I'm not sure what's a fair way to look at it; you could do it stylistically and just list all available styles and what percentage of the craft beer (not total beer) market each style represents. Or you could go crazy and try to ignore styles and go with the major "highly available" beers / craft beers and plot them on spider flavor diagrams and then determine what you consider statistically different enough to be a unique beer style.
I think looking at the diversity of available styles or even the diversity of beer flavors, here its still not looking too great when you start doing comparisons(I'm not saying there hasn't been rapid progress in the last 24 months.). If you look at the AVAILABILITY, or even worse, actual consumption of the available diverse beers, I'd say its still pretty sad; especially if you consider the whole beer market and not just the craft segment.
It's still a LAGER, STOUT, "ale" (Irish red), wheat country with a new emerging option: pale ale as far as I can tell in 19 out of 20 pubs. (Again the last 24 months have seen a CRAZY rate of change, especially if you wander through Temple Bar.)
Germany: 1200 breweries, 82 million people - 68,333 persons per brewery
UK: 900 breweries, 62 million people - 68,888 ppb
Belgium: 180 breweries, 11 million people - 61,111 ppb
Czech: 140 breweries, 10 million people - 71,428 ppb
US: 2000 breweries, 311 million people - 155,550 ppb
Ireland: 17 breweries, 6.3 million people - 371,000 ppb
Germany has a far, far more diverse list of available beers than most people realize if we're talking purely on an available beer styles/flavors perspective. The really sad thing about German beer I think is how the "average consumer" perceives it and values it and the actual quality of most of the products and the direction that they've been going. -And the diversity of what is actually consumed vs. what's available. (Typical consumer definition of quality; not the Macro brewery / ISO 90001 definition of quality that says "ability to accurately and repeatedly hit your defined specification".)
Adam
