Here’s an analysis of the most popular beer styles in the world per commercial example and some interesting country-based data like how many different beer styles has each country contributed in total.
Something tells me we all know what the most popular beer style in the world is (per commercial example), but can you guess the least popular? I’ve had exactly one commercial example of that least popular style and it was actually fantastic.
Thanks for crunching the numbers. That’s interesting.
I’ve heard of Faro but I’ve never had it. It’s interesting to me to see some of what seem like pretty big styles down in the bottom 1/3 (1000 or less). Cal Common, Belgian Dark (Not dark strong, that’s higher up), Quad, Fruit Lambic. Only 110 Gueze? Wow. I guess if you think about it it does make sense… a lot of the Belgian styles, especially Trappist, are produced in Belgium only, whereas American Style IPAs are now made all over the world.
I think the other thing behind the limited examples of Gueuze out there is that they take 2-3 years to make and it’s probably a while until the desired microorganism balance is achieved, which of course makes it cost prohibitive for a lot of other breweries to produce.
Whatever the cause, I feel like knowing the limited number of Gueuze out there makes it that much more special when we have them.
You might be able to find the Faro from Lindemans in the U.S. now. It looks like it’s been imported since 2010.
I’d be careful about placing too much emphasis on beer advocate data. Definitely a slanted data set in favor of American users and drinkers that follow trends.
"Disclaimer: While the data obtained from BeerAdvocate is taken at face value for the purposes of this analysis, one is well within reason to further analyze that source data in terms of the completeness of the listed beer styles, definitions of those styles, appropriate beer style grouping for the given commercial examples, verification of actual breweries in production, etc. In addition, considering that much of the data collected by BeerAdvocate is added by its users, one may further wish to question how that user group may affect the overall data (% of English-speakers, % of American users, etc.).
Also, the methods and parameters of data analysis herein are but one way of looking at the given information. Furthermore, all of the data collected from BeerAdvocate occurred in Feb. 2018, and therefore represents a single time-slice of the beer landscape, which of course is subject to change in the future.
Lastly, interpretation of the data above is up to the individual, for as the old adage goes, there’s more than one way to brew a beer."
