Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Beer

It’s summer. Time for a beer. ’Nuff said.

Well, not exactly. There are always more words to be spilled about this exquisite elixir. Here are some of them.

• Beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in this country, in terms of both volume and dollar value. But, says StatsCan, suds gave up some of its market share to wine in the last year.

• In 2010, Canadians drank some $9 million worth of beer. That’s 58 litres a head, or more than 44 of those big-ass milk jugs for every citizen. Per-capita beer sales have dropped dramatically from their 1976 peak of 115.2 litres. 

• Moosehead is the Canada’s largest fully Canadian-owned brewer.

• By volume, imported beer has more than doubled its market share in the last decade. In 2009, imported beer accounted for 13% of the beer market in Canada, up from 6% in 1999.

• The world’s most expensive commercially available beer may well be Samuel Adams Utopia. Aged in bourbon, cherry brandy, Cognac and Portuguese muscatel for up to 15 years and sold in fancy porcelain bottles, this stuff retails for almost $300 a bottle. The 27% alcohol content almost makes it worth it.

• Montreal and Gatineau are the Canadian cities with the cheapest beer. Steer clear of anywhere in BC or Manitoba though. A six pack in Montreal will run you $5.96; buy it in Vancouver and you’ll pay $11.49. 

• European settlers introduced the blessed beverage to this country in the seventeenth century, and lots of those first-in breweries continued to do business until Prohibition shut them down.

• Before 1961, Canadian beer was sold in just two sizes: by the quart or by the point. The beloved stubby took over after that.