Irish humble German's in beer drinking premiership
The world famous Oktoberfest kicks off this Saturday in Munich. The usual picture painted is of thousands of visitors quaffing vast quantities of beer and tucking into pork knuckles and sausage. And of course, there are the waitresses who can carry up to five one-litre steins of beer in either hand. Far be it for Snifter to sully that picture, but the truth is somewhat different. Last year, the two-week event attracted 5.9m visitors who had a choice of 1,440 toilets and who ate their way through 87 oxen, 51,323 pork knuckles, 351,705 chicken portions, and 145,506 pairs of pork sausage. As for the beer, well the figure was 5.7m litres that is less than one litre per person. This comes on top of news that the Irish have deposed the Germans as the second-largest beer drinkers in the world, on a per-capita basis. The results were from a study conducted by the German Brewers Association that had the Czechs upholding their reputation as the world's top beer consumers at 158 litres per head and the Irish sneaking ahead of the Germans with total of 125 and 121.5 litres respectively. The figure for the UK was 97.1 litres.
