[awrence]

“ In his 1979 history, The Alcoholic Republic, the historian W. J. Rorabaugh painstakingly calculated the stunning amount of alcohol early Americans drank on a daily basis. In 1830, when American liquor consumption hit its all-time high, the average adult was going through more than nine gallons of spirits each year.”

I think I remember hearing a similar stat on the ken burns prohibition doc. I didn’t quite understand why it was supposed to be that much though. 9 gallons of liquor is 36 liters is roughly 100 bottles of wine equivalent per year so less than a third of a bottle of wine a day which is what 1 or 2 glasses per meal equivalent? So the question then is are people drinking liquor drinking wine on top plus cider apparently? Or is it just a lot because that’s the average and plenty of people aren’t drinking much at or at all and that makes for the right tail of the distribution to be really drinking a lot?

[Someone]

Wine isn’t a spirit (nor is beer). That number is about distilled alcohol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquor:

“Liquor or spirit (also distilled alcohol) is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, or vegetables that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation.

[…]

Liquor generally has an alcohol concentration higher than 30%”

⇒ For a 10% alcohol wine, multiply that by a factor of (at least) 3. That makes it a bottle of wine a day.

Also, it was the average adult. Women likely consumed less alcohol. If so, the average adult male must have consumed more.

[soperj]

They already did that when they said 36 liters, which is 100 bottles of wine.

[rkk3]

9 Gallon is 34 Liters, 11 drinks per Liter of Vokda/Liquor

9*11 = 374 drinks per year or 1 drink a day

Its probably that Average/mean drinking amount isn't a good statistical representation when almost all the consumption is done by the top 10% of drinkers.

Historical comparisons also are tricky because sizes and %'s aren't consistent to today. Beer/Cider weren't as strong and bottle's of wine were smaller than 750ml etc etc.

[ska]

Okrent had it calculated at equivalent to 7 US gallons of pure ethanol/yr (1830s) to normalize this.

So approx 17.5 gallons at today's standard of 40%. Which is about 2250 standard (1.5oz) drinks a year, or average of 6/day.

There are higher and lower estimates too, but anyway you work the calculations, it's a lot.

[thebean11]

Where are you getting 11 drinks per liter of vodka? I'm getting twice that (1.5oz shots)

[rkk3]

You're right, looks like I grabbed that too quickly. They were citing for standard drinks/pours.

[beckingz]

The joke being that "2 shots of vodka" is more like 4-5.