When you buy a beer, what does it say about you? Whether you order a pint of Guinness at the bar, grab a can of Carling on the go, drop a tenner on a Trappist ale in a swanky bistro or brew your own hopped-up IPA, all these little choices add to the international political economy of the ‘world’s favourite drink’. More so than wine or spirits, beer is about brand – and more importantly, visible branding. Tap handles and bottle/can art scream for recognition, while beer companies spend billions in advertisements and sponsorships to make sure their suds are front-of-mind when you order your next cold one. The global beer market was valued at US $520 billion in 2015 and estimated to exceed $750 billion by 2023.

Beer, which accounts for three-fourths of the global alcohol market, is so universal that some economists have even used its cost ratio to compare real wages across national economies. Taking the UK as a baseline, one needs to work one half-hour at minimum wage to earn enough for a cold one. In the Republic of Georgia, it takes a minimum-wage labourer 30 times that to accumulate enough cash for a pint; Israel, Brazil, and Romania are 1:1 in terms of minimum-wage hours to beer purchases. (Note: For those cerevisaphiles willing to relocate, Puerto Rico is currently the cheapest place in the world for beer-drinkers.) However, such comparisons are distorted by pro- and anti-beer taxation policies. In the Czech Republic, the highest per capita nation in terms of beer-drinking, it has long been an informal rule of politics that any government that raises the price of beer will fall in a year, whereas in the Nordic countries, taxes are so high that one can rent a bicycle for less than the price of a decent draught.