#BeerTweets

We love mapping beer, there's no secret about that. We've been making maps about the digital landscapes of beer across the world practically since we started this blog six years ago, and this work is consistently some of our most popular. This includes some maps on the geographies of beer-related tweeting in the United States, building from a book chapter by Matt and Ate.

Now we want you to join in the fun of exploring this liquid landscape. To celebrate the rollout of a new online graduate program in digital mapping (New Maps Plus at the University of Kentucky) we offer up this interactive visualization of America's beer-related tweeting.

(click the image above to go to the interactive map)

Choose a type or brand of beer and see where people tweet about it or compare the attention to two different kinds of beer. Special thanks to Rich Donohue who built this slick interactive user interface with the Leaflet library. If you're curious about how this map was built and designed (or are interested in doing something like this yourself) check out the New Maps Plus program.

More saturated (darker) colors indicate a higher probability of tweets containing a textual reference to the selected beer type. You can visually explore a variety of beers by selecting a new beer from the drop-down menu at the top right. By default, a given beer is normalized by a random sample of the overall Twitter population, though you can also compare two different beers by selecting another beer from the second drop-down menu.  Hexagons without a significant number of observations/tweets do not show up. That's why some beers have more coverage than others.

Feel free to start playing right away, but in order to whet your appetite, here are some examples what you'll find. Starting with arguably the most locally-specific beer on our list, one can clearly see how Grain Belt beer is thoroughly grounded in the culture of the upper midwest, especially in Minnesota, and to a lesser degree Iowa and Wisconsin. It's interesting to note, however, that despite this very particular concentration, Grain Belt barely cracks the top 10 list for absolute beer references throughout the area. This obviously raises the important issue of recognizing that (nearly) all Grain Belt drinkers are Minnesotans, but not all Minnesotans are Grain Belt drinkers! We must admit we've not had the pleasure of trying Grain Belt ourselves, and we're not quite sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Grain Belt

Although the Boston Brewing Company will be quick to tell you that it is still a craft brewery, Sam Adams is remarkably more diffuse throughout the US. However, one can also see that Sam Adams' home is very clearly in Massachusetts and extending into Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, though the beer remains less talked about in these locations than a number of other non-local varieties.

Sam Adams

Tweeting about Yuengling, however, represents a few interesting deviations from the patterns seen with Grain Belt and Sam Adams. For one, Yuengling has a much more prominent role within the Pennsylvania area, asserting itself as a top-5 beer-of-choice throughout the state, and even coming in as the #1 beer referenced in the area around Bethlehem, PA, not far from the Yuengling brewery in Pottsville. Second, while Yuengling is similar to Sam Adams in its wider distribution throughout the US, the number of references to the beer drop off significantly to the west of the Alleghenies, and are practically non-existent to the west of the Mississippi River. Finally it's interesting to note that Yuengling also represents the unique case of a regionally-specific beer that is actually multi-polar, as the beer is also prominent in Florida due to its secondary brewery being located in Tampa.

Yuengling

A reverse of this spatial distribution can be seen in the case of Shiner Bock, whose references are dominant in much of Texas, especially around the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner. Though concentrations extend beyond the Lone Star state into Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas, don't even try to get midwestern or New England states on board with this Texas brew.

Shiner Bock

There's nothing like the simulated authenticity of drinking a cerveza when trying to cool down on a hot day. But, as a comparison of Corona and Dos Equis shows, which Mexican beer you choose is likely (at least a bit of) a function of where you are. While Corona tends to be more concentrated in California, Florida and parts of the northeast, Dos Equis tends to be concentrated in the middle part of the country, especially centered on Texas.

Corona vs. Dos Equis

Last but not least, we thought it important to take a closer look at the geography of the country's two most popular beers, Bud Light and Coors Light. And while Bud Light sales were well over double those of Coors Light in 2014, tweeting activity around these two popular watery substances (sorry, we're solidly in the craft beer camp) reveals some interesting caveats to this seemingly one-sided competition. Indeed, just to the west of the Mississippi River appears a fairly clear dividing line at which the bevy of Bud Light in the eastern United States gives way to a western preference for Coors Light. 

Bud Light vs. Coors Light

And while the eastern seaboard between New Jersey and Rhode Island seems to be the one eastern outpost of Coors Light, Bud Light actually remains the most popular beer being tweeted about in these areas. But because the statistical comparison looks not at absolute numbers, but the prevalence compared to the expectation at the national-level, the seeming competition here is a bit deceiving. Indeed, references to "Coors Light" itself are incredibly sparse throughout the US, and the term rarely cracks the top 10 for any given locale, although the more generalized "Coors" in these areas makes clear the regional preference.

Whew! That was a lot of work. We're off to kick-back and enjoy a cold one. Have fun with the map and be sure to tell us which beers we didn't include...We suspect there will be many future iterations!

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If you want to learn how to make maps like this, check out the new online graduate certificate and master's degree in digital mapping from New Maps Plus! The first batch of classes start October 4!

New Book Chapter on the Geographies of Beer on Twitter

We're pleased to announce a new publication by members of the Floatingsheep team. Just released is "Offline Brews and Online Views: Exploring the Geography of Beer on Twitter", a new book chapter written by Matt and Ate that analyzes the geographies of beer-related tweeting activity. Published in a new edited collection from Springer appropriately- and straightforwardly-entitled The Geography of Beer, Matt and Ate's paper -- the latest in Floatingsheep's long line of investigations into the geographies of beer -- shows that geotagged tweets about beer, and other alcoholic beverages for that matter, are reflective of people's offline consumption preferences.

Using a database of one million geotagged tweets from June 2012 to May 2013 containing the keywords "wine", "beer" or the names of a range of light or cheaper beers within the continental US, some clear regional variations in alcoholic beverage preference are detected. For instance, when comparing tweets referencing "wine" to those referencing "beer", wine-related tweets tend to be more dominant along both the east and west coasts of the US. But this kind of variation is present even when comparing different brands of light beer. While Bud Light is more popular in the eastern and southeastern US, Coors Light tends to dominate the west coast, with Miller Lite and Busch Light being preferred in the midwest and Great Plains. The dominance of these brands in virtual space is no surprise, as they also dwarf the competition in actual sales.

But these regional variations are even more distinct when one looks at locally- or regionally-specific brands. While some of these cheaper (which is not to say less delicious!) beers have reached a national or even international market, others remain popular in only a very limited region, owing either to local tradition or simply limited distribution outside of their home-markets. Nonetheless, by mapping the concentrations of geotagged tweets referencing each of these brands, we're able to uncover these regional particularities, as is shown in the map below, taken from Matt and Ate's chapter.

Aggregated Geographies of Tweets referencing Regional 'Cheap' Beers

From Sam Adams in New England to Yuengling in Pennsylvania to Grain Belt and Schlitz in the upper Midwest, these beers are quite clearly associated with particular places. Other beers, like Hudepohl and Goose Island are interesting in that they stretch out from their places of origin -- Cincinnati and Chicago, respectively -- to encompass a much broader region where there tend to be fewer regionally-specific competitors, at least historically. On the other hand, beers like Lone Star, Corona and Dos Equis tend to have significant overlap in their regional preferences, with all three having some level of dominance along the US-Mexico border region, but with major competition between these brands in both Arizona and Texas.

Beer, like many other social practices, may be millennia-old, but the socio-spatial practices associated with it – checking into a brewery, posting a review, geotagging a photo – continue to evolve with technological change. As such, this kind of data provides an important way to capture these socio-spatial practices and preferences, while demonstrating how even in an era of supposed globalization and homogenization, regional histories and cultures continue to be reflected online in important ways.

If you don't have access and would like to read more about this, please contact Matt at zook [at] uky [dot] edu for a pre-publication version of the chapter. Bottoms up!

The full citation for Matt and Ate's chapter is below:

Zook, M. and A. Poorthuis. 2014. "Offline Brews and Online Views: Exploring the Geography of Beer Tweets". In The Geography of Beer, eds. M. Patterson and N. Hoalst-Pullen. Springer. pp. 201-209.

The Globalization of Beer in the Eurozone

Beer is no laughing matter. Wars have been started over less...and what about bar fights? Granted we're usually hiding under the table when the glasses start flying but we are certainly not laughing.

And while just saying "beer" to the bartender will likely work in most of the world, you don't want to be stuck asking someone for a beer who only knows آبجو (Persian), or asking for a piwo (Polish) when all they've got is 맥주 (Korean). To aid the faithful followers of the Floating Sheep in their ongoing explorations in landscapes of liquid lubrication, we present the following geolinguistic guide to Europe's landscape of beer.

Because simply mapping references to beer in the world's most spoken languages yielded a relatively homogeneous result due to the significant number of references to "beer" and "ale" in English, we thought a more locally specific analysis would be appropriate. So we instead mapped references to beer in twelve languages spoken primarily in Europe that were not included in our earlier map. And while this map obviously doesn't include all of the many languages spoken on the continent, these languages were chosen because of their relative prominence within a larger sample of languages.

Mapping Beer in Europe's (Relatively) Smaller Languages [1]

As we would expect, many countries are dominated by references in their native languages -- Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary display patterns that closely mirror the political borders of the material world.

However, it is the discrepancies where the digital transcends the material expectations that present the most interesting findings. For example, there is an abundance of references in Romanian, even infringing on the virtual territory of Italy, Spain and England (though Spanish and English aren't included in this comparison). While we can have no certain answer, perhaps this is because the Romanian word for beer is "bere", which could of course be an understandable typo for the English-language word. Similarly, Dutch-language references not only fill the entirety of the Netherlands, but also Germany and a not insignificant portion of France. Even Lithuanian references are prominent throughout the Baltic states, despite Estonia's prominence in the global information economy.

Despite the usefulness of this particular grouping, it remains useful to consider how some of the most spoken languages in the world stack up to these more country-specific languages, so in the map below we reintroduce references in English, as well as references in German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, to some of Europe's more widely spoken tongues.

The Globalization of Beer in Europe

While this graphic complicates the picture provided by our first map -- there continues to be a significant amount of content in the expected, native languages of each country -- English remains prominent throughout Europe, especially in reference to beer. This could potentially have a number of causes:

1. Use of English as a second language by many native Europeans in creating user-generated placemarks, signaling the increasing use of English as a global language.
2. Creation of content in English by native English-speakers traveling throughout other parts of Europe.
3. Concerted efforts by beer-serving establishments throughout the continent to present English-language content online, so as to attract more English-speaking tourists as patrons.

While these are not testable hypotheses with our current dataset, the results strongly support the idea that the cyberscape of beer is impacted by the forces of globalization, especially in the creep of geolinguistic uniformity. We can only hope that this creep is limited to to linguistics, rather than beer making techniques. At the same time, however, it is also evident that there remains a considerable amount of content in the local languages of many countries across Europe, and it is unlikely that such ties to local language will disappear. This should be good news for the Trappist and Lambic beers of Belgium and the Světlé and Černé beers of the Czech Republic!

So while it is always good to learn the local term for beer, the English word seems likely to get you what you were looking for. Or you can try our technique which is to start a bar fight and while everyone is distracted, grab someone's glass and hide under the table.

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[1] Smaller in that they were not one of the world's ten most spoken languages (by # of native speakers).

Wherever You Are, Just Ask for a "Beer"

Now that we've gotten mapping soft drinks out of the way, not to mention other mind-altering substances, it's time we get back to good ole fashioned beer. But rather than mapping different colloquial terms for beer, as we did with pop/soda/coke, we return to our long-standing interest in investigating how different socio-linguistic groups are represented in the geoweb. Only this time, we do it through the proverbial lens of a pint glass (which happens to resemble the geoweb in its distortive capabilities).

The below map shows the relative prevalence of the word for beer in the world's ten most spoken languages (by # of native speakers). However, because of the fact that there were no points at which the number of references in the world's sixth most-spoken language, Bengali, were greater than references to each of the other nine languages, we have excluded Bengali in this particular case. So while we're sad to see Bengali left off the map, the fact that a language with 181 million native speakers has so few references to "beer" is telling of either vast inequalities in the way Bengalis are represented within the geoweb, or perhaps just their general distaste for beer.

B-E-E-R M-A-P!*

While many of our maps are extremely clear in showing that the content within the geoweb reflects traditional state borders, mapping references to beer leaves a much hazier picture. So while most of the content in Russia is in Russian, China in Mandarin, Japan in Japanese, Germany in German and Portugal and Brazil in Portuguese, the cases presented by English and Spanish references are much less clear.

Spanish, the world's second most represented native language, spoken throughout nearly the entirety of the Americas south of the U.S.-Mexico border (not to mention the actual country of Spain), has relatively few references compared to the land mass of countries in which Spanish is spoken. Indeed, outside of Spain, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, there are relatively few points in the world at which there are a significant number of references to "cerveza" compared to references in other languages.

In fact, many places in Latin America have more references in English than in Spanish (or any other language). This appears to be reflected significantly in Europe, as well, where English appears to be the default second language of the geoweb in many of these countries. As a follow-up map will show, when including more nationally-defined languages such as Italian, Polish, Dutch, Danish and Hungarian, these respective countries show a significant preference for their own terms, as one would expect.

When in Europe, Just Ask for "Beer"

Zooming in to Europe only further accentuates the relative dominance of English among these languages, with significant portions of Portugal, Spain, and Germany even showing more references to beer than in their native languages. Interesting, however, that much of France is a mixture of English and German references, even in the much more southern portions of the country.

Whether you want something cheap, something a bit fruity, something hoppy or something to just make the pain go away... our results clearly show that no matter where you may be in the world, it's a safe bet that if you just say "beer", the bartender will probably know what you mean.

Happy drinking, friends!

* Sung to the tune of "Beer Run" by Todd Snider...

Whisk(e)y: to "e" or not to to "e"?

Now that we've mapped both the areas that prefer drinking over eating and which parts of the world prefer which types of alcohol, it seemed apropos to introduce our fascination with language into the cybergeography of alcohol.

It all goes back to an age old question: do you spell whisk(e)y with, or without, the "e"? And while the roots of the disagreement come from linguistic differences between the Scottish and Irish, the reverberations of this debate can be felt at pubs all across the world. So who spells it with the "e"? And who spells it without [1]?

Sadly enough, we are unable to come to come to a definitive answer on which the world prefers. As the amber haze which covers the above map indicates, most of the world seems to have a fuzzy grasp of how to spell the term, with references to each spelling being equal across most of the world [2]. Perhaps they are just too intoxicated to care which way it is spelled?

Interestingly, the few places where references to one or another spelling predominate are not located in the actual places associated with those spellings. Instead, references to "whisky" are most prevalent in South America, while an interesting mixture of the two spellings can be seen in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Even Ireland and Scotland seem to be a bit mearbhall about which is spelling is correct.

[1] For what it's worth, Willie Nelson spells it with the "e", but Whisky a Go Go leaves the "e" out.
[2] Places where references to both spellings equal zero were excluded.

Alcoholic Cyberscapes

Although it has been several months now, the most popular finding of the Floatingsheep Collective has continued to be our discovery of the Beer Belly of America. So now we all know that the upper Midwest of the United States likes to drink, but what else can we learn about the cyberscapes of alcohol production and consumption around the world?

Using the tried-and-true Floatingsheep method of comparing references to various keywords within the Google Maps database, we've mapped references to six different alcoholic keywords. Although the keywords range from the broadest categories of alcohol (e.g., beer and wine) to particular types of of alcohol (e.g., bourbon, vodka and whiskey) and all the way to the brand name (e.g., Guinness), they give a rough approximation of who is drinking what and where.

Seeing that most of the world is divided over their preferences of beer and wine is not necessarily surprising (although this could be owed to the absence of a generic term like "liquor"). Neither are many of the particular concentrations of references surprising: wine dominates on the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as in Spain, France and Italy, while references to beer outnumber all others in the midwestern US and Germany. The lack of references to beer in England and Ireland is, however, a bit worrisome.
Although references to Guinness and vodka are hardly visible, noticeable clusters of whiskey drinking are evident in both Scotland and Poland, as well as parts of Sweden. References to bourbon are most evident in Floatingsheep's North American headquarters of Kentucky, where 95% of the world's bourbon is supposedly produced in one form or fashion.
References to "bourbon" in France and New Orleans, Louisiana are, of course, not related directly to the beverage. Instead, they likely refer to the House of Bourbon which unfortunately was not a bar, and Bourbon Street, which does indeed possess quite a few of the things. Likewise, the clustering of red in Kansas indicates the Bourbon County of that state, which is a poor impostor of Bourbon County, Kentucky, for which the beverage is named. Hilariously enough, Bourbon County, Kansas remained a dry county until 1992. A poor impostor, indeed.

Drunken Maps or Why the Netherlands is the World's Designated Driver

Given the results of our map of Alcohol, Caffeine and Tobacco (particularly Rachel Maddow's pithy "we're a nation of drunks!" comment) we thought it prudent to take a more ahem, sober look at the issue. So today's map is a comparison between the number of user generated placemarks referencing the terms "drunk" and "sober".

Of course the term for drunk varies with language and complicated by the fact that many terms are slangish, "Ich bin blau" (literally I am blue) in German. We don't really understand why blue=drunk either. Then again, why does blue=sad in English? In any case a closer look is clearly warranted.

The global maps seem at first glance to indicate that people are much more interested in documenting drunkenness than sobriety. Must be a lot of college students out there. But there are a number of intriguing patterns. Most interesting is that the European continent contains many more references to sober than drunk when compared to the U.S. which seems awash in a green sea of drunkenness. This is particularly interesting given that alcohol consumption is much more strictly regulated in the U.S. via high drinking ages and various blue laws (again with the blue references) restricting its sale.

World Map of Drunk and Sober

Zooming into the European level, one can see a fair amount of regional variation. The United Kingdom in particular contrasts fairly strongly with the rest of Western Europe. Western Europe itself has a fairly variegated pattern with certain areas such as the Netherlands and Belgium being particularly sober places. On the other hand, the U.K. is blanketed in references to drunk with nary a mention of sober. Given the make-up of the Anglo-American research team of Floatingsheep, this does not come as much of a surprise. But perhaps some further ethnographic participant observation in a range of pubs is warranted. Equally interesting is the steady increase in references to "drunk" (versus sober) as one moves eastward across Europe.

European Map of Drunk and Sober

But it is at the U.S. level that things are particularly compelling. As noted earlier, there are many more references to drunk than sober with a few intriguing exceptions. Most notable is a band of sobriety in Central Iowa (which incidentally seems to correspond to a lower number of bars). While Iowan farmers have always struck us as a particularly sober bunch, some of the other clusters such Southern California, Virginia Beach and Tampa-St Petersburg are a bit more surprising.

North American Map of Drunk and Sober

Given this variation we thought it worthwhile to compare the number of "sober" user generated placemarks to an independent measure of drunk related behavior. A quick search provided us with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data on traffic fatalities related to drunk driving. Aggregating our point data up to the state level and normalizing each variable by population shows a statistically significant and negative relationship. See the graph below.

Sober References vs. Drunk Driving Fatalities, State Level

In short, the number of user generated placemarks referencing the word "sober" is negatively related to the number of traffic fatalities resulting from drunk drivers. Although there isn't a direct causal relationship between the two (after all, how would the creation of a placemark affect individual decisions about driving?), the existence of a correlation at all is a compelling example of how online and offline human activity can mirror each other.

For those who are interested, there is no correlation between our measure of bars per capita and drunk driving related fatalities. Nor does the number of bars seem to correlate to references to drunk or sober.

And because we know a lot of folk from Wisconsin (ground zero for bars in the U.S.) are likely to read this, Wisconsin ranks right in the middle of states in terms of references to sober or drunk within user generated placemarks as well as drunk driven related fatalities.

So, Rachel, we're not able to reject your characterization of the U.S. as a nation of drunks (at least with this data) but an international comparison to the U.K. does suggest we're a bit more sober than some others. It also suggests that the Netherlands might be the best candidate for the world's designated driver...now if we can just get the keys out of the hands of the usual suspects.

The Geography of Minor Vices

“I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores” - Jean-Baptiste Poquelin aka Molière

Everyone has a vice and, seemingly, everyone enjoys hearing about the vices of others. So today's map focuses on a comparison of a trio of minor vices that are in common use around the world, alcohol, caffeine and tobacco. Granted references to these keywords that show up in user generated placemarks may have less to do with vice and more with production, but so be it.

At the global level it is clear that much of the world makes more references to alcohol than either of the other two. But there are some very interesting exceptions. The top ten global producers of tobacco are China, India, Brazil, USA, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Italy, Greece, Malawi, Pakistan and Argentina, and each of these countries show a sizeable number of placemarks referencing tobacco.

This is particularly significant for countries such as China, Zimbabwe, Malawi, India and Argentina, which have a relatively small number of placemarks in general.

Sadly for caffeine lovers, it is largely overshadowed by each of the other vices. Perhaps we should try searching for high fructose corn syrup the next time?

Global Map of Alcohol, Caffeine and Tobacco

Zooming into the North American region one see that alcohol is also extremely popular (it would be interesting to see if there is any correlation to guns and/or churches). At the same time, however, the main centers for burley and flue cured tobacco production (Kentucky and North Carolina) contain more references to tobacco. Only in a few locations such as Seattle (home of Starbucks) does one see caffeine raising its jittery head above the heaps of tobacco and waves of alcohol sloshing across the nation.

North American Map of Alcohol, Caffeine and Tobacco

The European map shows a more complex pattern that is surprising strongly tied to national borders. The U.K. retains is exceptional status vis-à-vis continental Europe with a very mixed pattern and the tobacco producing countries of Italy, Greece and Turkey are well marked with tobacco. The one notable exception to this pattern is the coastal resort regions of Turkey where there are more references to alcohol, perhaps tied to tourism activities.

But the corridor from Spain to Germany reveals a very intriguing replication of national differences within these cyberscapes. France and Germany have almost uniformly more references to tobacco than anything else, while Spain and the Benelux countries have more references to alcohol.

European Map of Alcohol, Caffeine and Tobacco

As much as we'd enjoy calling the inhabitants of the Low Countries a bunch of heavy drinkers (hi to our friends in Ghent!) the difference is most likely due to language differences. Alcohol is alcohol in Dutch but alkohol in German and alcool in French. As a result we got more hits on our search term "alcohol" in the Netherlands and Flanders. Equally intriguing is the cluster within France in the Poitou-Charentes region where there are more references to alcohol as well. Perhaps this is due to a local linguistic practice? We don't know but would be curious to find out. Obviously requiring a bit of fieldwork!

In any case, this map with its clear demarcation of many national borders reinforces yet again that the social and cultural practices of the Internet are still very much tied to places.