{"id":18707,"date":"2017-02-03T12:53:46","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T23:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=18707"},"modified":"2017-02-03T13:01:59","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T00:01:59","slug":"2016-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/02\/03\/2016-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"2016: By the numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Peaks<\/a>
A suitably-erratic depiction of the year<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After an introspective and intentionally unstudied look back on 2016<\/a>, I thought it might be nice to balance things out with some\u00a0data<\/em>. I use Untappd<\/a> to log my beer-drinking, as another aid against my shoddy memory \u2015 though there’s always the problem of needing to remember to use<\/em>\u00a0your memory-aid<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2015 and being a paid-up supporter lets me dump out the year’s check-ins,<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and tinker with a spreadsheet and see what patterns emerge.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I don’t log\u00a0everything<\/em><\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> so\u00a0we’ve got admittedly spotty data, but a) that’s true of\u00a0everything<\/em>, if you’re paying enough attention, and b) I think it’ll mostly come out in the wash: failures wouldn’t usually\u00a0be systemically biased against any particular kind of beer. With numerous and sizable asterisks, then, and\u00a0thanks to the fittingly-crappy Beer Diary Art Department \u2015 my 2016 looked like this:<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
Mmmm, pie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four hundred and fifteen check-ins; a nudge over one a day. Which seems fairly reasonable, I suppose. There’s a hundred and fifty-three unique things\u00a0in there, suggesting\u00a0I’m not overly afflicted by the need for the new. From my notes, about 36% of my beer-drinking year came at no cost to me \u2014 but that’s overwhelmingly staffies; companies\u00a0have mostly stopped offering me samples, since I haven’t taken any in yonks. And speaking of staffies,\u00a0you were fractionally more likely to find me drinking at work than at home,<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> in 2016. Which might be weird for most people, but probably makes sense for a bartender who was a regular long before he was on the payroll. Interestingly \u2014 especially since “drinking local” was recently re-raised as a discussion<\/a><\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014\u00a0over 80% of what I drank last year was made in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\"Garage<\/a>
When it’s time to party we will party… hat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I wasn’t surprised that Garage Project<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0topped my list of breweries, but the magnitude of their win was bigger than I’d have guessed: one out of every five beers I drank was theirs. That’s as much\u00a0as the next four placeholders\u00a0combined<\/em>.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Nine producers account for half my beers and about\u00a0ninety<\/em> others make up the other half, which seems\u00a0a pretty staggering drop-off. Digging a little deeper, 8 Wired and Hallertau were helped a little into their places by contributing disproportionately-many staffies, whereas I bought larger fractions of Garage, Kerer\u016b, and ParrotDog beers with my own money. Modern Times appear as\u00a0the only significantly-placed American brewery, and that similarly surprises me not at all; I’m a big fan of what they do and how they do it. My Australian drinking, on the other hand, is likely a combination of too diffuse and too-often-unlogged (holidays and all that) to show up strongly in the data.<\/p>\n

Style-wise, I’m pretty clearly outside current trends. In beer as in other things, haha<\/em>. Untappd’s categories were a little too granular to be much use, so I went through and did my own taxonomy<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> with chunks like “hoppy” and “dark”\u00a0and “fermenty” (to cover things funky and sour<\/a>). I’m well aware that plenty of beers belong have combinations of the characters I chose, but I tried to capture the one that most draws me to each \u2014 and I had “oddball” as a catch-all category for anything\u00a0properly<\/em> loopy. Broadly “hoppy” beers are still my winning category, but only narrowly; sour \/ tart \/ funky beers are hotter on their heels than I assumed.\u00a0And a massive chunk of my drinking time is spent on those supposedly-unloved plain old pale lagers and brown ales. If you compare those proportions to, say, the Hottest 100 Aussie Craft Beers \u2014 just to pick a recent and data-rich example<\/a><\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 that’s\u00a0way<\/em> out of whack: I’ve got only half as many “hoppy” beers in my year and fives times as many “sour” ones.<\/p>\n

Perhaps\u00a0none of this means much to you,\u00a0directly<\/em>. But fair enough that you know my habits, to better contextualise my ramblings. And I highly recommend undertaking some version of the same exercise, if you’re even vaguely inclined; your favourites may not be\u00a0quite<\/em> what you think they are, and you might acquire a better sense of where you fall in the market \u2014 and thereby just how badly so very many companies are at figuring out how to talk to you.<\/p>\n

\"Kerer\u016b<\/a>
My\u00a0beer of the summer, last summer. (This year, there is no summer.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After an introspective and intentionally unstudied look back on 2016, I thought it might be nice to balance things out with some\u00a0data. I use Untappd to log my beer-drinking, as another aid against my shoddy memory \u2015 though there’s always the problem of needing to remember to use\u00a0your memory-aid \u2015 and being a paid-up supporter … Continue reading 2016: By the numbers<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1261,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/12\/31\/brewdog-rip-tide-imperial-stout\/","url_meta":{"origin":18707,"position":0},"title":"BrewDog ‘Rip Tide’ Imperial Stout","author":"Phil","date":"December 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I normally try not to have too-many 'new' strong beers in a single day, but New Year's is New Year's, so what the hell? I'd been looking forward to this for a while, and was still happily perched at the bar in the window, so the randoms mostly ignored me\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"BrewDog 'Rip Tide' Imperial Stout","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/BrewDog-Rip-Tide-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":753,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/10\/wigram-imperial-stout-with-mojo-coffee-beans\/","url_meta":{"origin":18707,"position":1},"title":"Wigram Imperial Stout (with Mojo coffee beans)","author":"Phil","date":"September 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Firstly, hopinators. Basically a backwards filter, these are last-minute flavour infusers you can stick in the circuit between the keg and the tap -- making you a great big nerd, and giving you a chance to muck about a bit. Homebrewers make them out of water filters (plugged in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wigram Imperial Stout and Mojo coffee beans","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wigram-Imperial-Stout-in-and-on-the-Hopinator-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":927,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/10\/13\/dieu-du-ciel-peche-mortel\/","url_meta":{"origin":18707,"position":2},"title":"Dieu du Ciel! ‘P\u00e9ch\u00e9 Mortel’","author":"Phil","date":"October 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First, it must be said that a brewery which insists on ending their name with an exclamation point deserves a bucket of Awesome Points right out of the gate. Next, I'm delighted to have a second Canadian beer in my book so relatively-soon after my first. I'd enjoyed my Tall\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Dieu du Ciel! 'P\u00e9ch\u00e9 Mortel'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Dieu-du-Ciel-Peche-Mortel-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7417,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2014\/08\/16\/beer-diary-podcast-s04e02\/","url_meta":{"origin":18707,"position":3},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast s04e02: Dry July","author":"Phil","date":"August 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"An episode with no beer. Well, none were\u00a0consumed \u2014 out of a vague nod to Dry July, but more a result of us both being in losing phases of the age-old battle of Monkey v Microbe. We ponder Dry July, as a charitable enterprise (we're unconvinced) and (much better) a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcast episodes"","block_context":{"text":"Podcast episodes","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/podcast-episodes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18514,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/09\/21\/subcultural-cringe\/","url_meta":{"origin":18707,"position":4},"title":"Subcultural cringe","author":"Phil","date":"September 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So, that was me. I'm the wag,\u00a0in the old-timey parlance of the newspaper.\u00a0There's little point pretending otherwise, since the\u00a0sign was twenty steps from the front door of the pub where I work \u2014 and a large part of my m.o.\u00a0here involves uploading literally hundreds of handwriting samples you could compare\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wellington City Council 'Declare Your Love' ad (19 September 2016)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3086,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/05\/19\/townshend-st-bernards-oatmeal-stout\/","url_meta":{"origin":18707,"position":5},"title":"Townshend ‘St. Bernard’s’ Oatmeal Stout","author":"Phil","date":"May 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I bloody loves Oatmeal Stout, I do -- especially in the winter; it's basically the off-season equivalent of my recurring summertime Golden Ale obsession. 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