Beer Money : What we spent in 2020

  I go to work to make money. 

  I use that money to pay for the things I need and the things I want, because a man cannot work just to survive alone, there must be some reward, no matter how small it may seem.

  Enter beer. Well, beer, wine, Irish cream and a little whiskey for good measure. We enjoy our spirits here at The Manor, a glass of Riesling while dinner is made or perhaps a dollop of Bailey's in our morning cuppa on our day off. A few pints after dinner and maybe a few more than that when there is no labour for the next day in our schedule, but all in all, the libations do flow with a little heavier pour in the last year or so and our wrap up of 2020 makes a stop at budget town to see where all that money went. 

  To start things off, we are pretty lucky to have been able to both continue working full time throughout the pandemic and that dual middle class income coupled with no children means we have both a bit more free time while doing the whole social distancing thing and a little more disposable income than we usually would if we did our normal routines. Perhaps we spend more than other folks when it comes to booze, but it is what it is when the truth in numbers hits the eyes. 

  I track all of our expenses and review them at the end of every year to see how close we stuck to our budget, the alcohol one is always the most fun and often the most frightening. But  I love numbers, statistics and diving deep into what they meant. Without sharing the real and whole numbers, I'll breaak down some highlights.

 So, let's dive right in...

  Where we spent our boozy dollars

  1. LCBO (52 visits)

  The product we sought had to come from somewhere and in 2020 we made a concerted effort to get most of our beer direct from the breweries, utilizing the local liquor monopoly only for wine or spirits. We did somehow manage to still visit the LCBO 52 times last year and factoring in a box of wine and a bottle of Irish cream a month, on average, we still managed to drop a decent amount of cash on craft beer despite our best intentions. All told we spent 21.22% of our alcohol budget here, far and away the largest expenditure in our book despite our expanded ability to get almost everything delivered right to our door as the year went on. We certainly saw a real decline in the amount of actual physical visits to the LCBO from previous years, as the pandemic made us think about every trip outside our home with a second glance.

  2. Nickel Brook Brewing (50 visits/orders)

  Not really a surprise per se, almost a weekly stop on the way home from work for whatever was new and a six pack of my 2020 Beer of the Year, Headstock, make Nickel Brook the far and away winner of my hard earned cash when it comes to beer last year. 13.2% of all the booze we bought last year was from this OG Ontario brewery in real dollars and accounted for 25.25% of all beer picked up or delivered for the year. A trend that will probably continue for the foreseeable future with the lockdowns continuing to tighten.

3. Collective Arts Brewing (31visits/orders)

  My Hometown Heroes are a quick jaunt down the Nikola Tesla speedway on my way home from work and given the sheer number of releases they pumped out last year, this seems like a reasonable number of stops down by the bay. Accounting for 10.5% of all our beer spending, the bulk most likely being the huge IPA releases that probably numbered more than a dozen. A few lagers of course and that wicked $40 for a 24 of IPA No 11 back in March was an easy buy. I've not missed a single CA release in 5 years and hope to keep that streak alive as long as possible, doubling up now with their newly opened Toronto microbrew pub. 

4. Clifford Brewing (19 visits/orders)

  This number is much lower than 2019 for one reason only, the pandemic. We didn't stop in for a beer at all, even when we were allowed to do so, preferring to imbibe at home and honestly, we used to Uber over so we could both have a couple of pints, but that was not happening in 2020. Still a monthly or so stop to pick up the classics like Clifford Porter and Pinball with newer releases like Marigold and Artificial Paradise getting a generous percentage of our 12 packs. Clifford still accounted for almost 10% of all our beer orders in 2020 and that will likely rise later this year when, hopefully, we can get back in the taproom for a night of music and beer.

5. Merit Brewing (17 visits/orders )

  My favourite (non west coast) IPA is Merit's Young Rival and with their plethora of lagers and wine/beer hybrids, I make at least one stop a month on James Street to talk to Tej and Spinney and enjoy their company. One of the few patio pints we had in 2020 was at Merit and while we miss their taproom like crazy, being able to get their food delivered is a decided positive amongst a negative year in 2020. Big bottles of intriguing ideas appear like a star in the night and I find my cellar always has something lurking that Merit has created. Accounting for almost 6.5% of all alcohol bought in 2020, I am sure if the taproom was open, we'd spend more money there on food as well and be better off for it. Best fries in Hamilton.

The Curve did not Flatten

  One thing I really caught onto as the year went on was the not so gradual rise in spending when it came to booze. Even as we settled into to the Quarantine Routine, we seemed to acquire more beer to do it with. Early in 2020, we spent an average amount per week, roughly what we did in the previous 2 years based on my numbers. But once March hit, we saw an increase in pure dollars of 25%, most of which came from ordering directly from the breweries. With shipping charges and minimum orders hovering around $50 a pop, we gave in and did our part to support our favourite places. The onset of summer saw yet another jump of around 25% and our beer fridge outside was never left wanting for space. A few orders of well over $90 drove August to be our highest spending month of the year, not coincidentally that was also the month we both took our summer week off and just hung out at home in The Grotto enjoying a solitary life. 

  The rest of the year played out much the same, although it centered mostly on the 6 local Craft breweries in Hamilton and Burlington, they all piled on the releases and we happily bought them up. The final month of the year saw a doubling in what we bought compared to January of 2020 and even December of 2019. Leaning hard into those numbers once again saw a plethora of local orders, indeed more than 46% of all our spending was done at just those 6 local breweries closest to us. We have still quite a bit of beer lingering from the last months of the year as January heads towards its midpoint and have seen a significant slowdown in purchases so far in the new year, mindful of what we spent last year at the very forefront of our minds.

What Does it all Mean?

  The hard part about being honest with yourself is that you can't lie or spin the numbers in any way. The truth is the truth and while I know the pandemic certainly played a role in our purchases this year, the thing is that we just enjoy a few pints or a glass of wine each day and that's on us. Our orders tended to be smaller this year as we tried to support more Ontario breweries (40 in all that we ordered from) and to highlight the growing number of them offering home delivery. Sometimes it would be a particular returning beer that would catch our eye and lead to an order or perhaps a mini road trip if they were close enough. Ordering beer for two people with very different tastes also made for some interesting choices and also kept me from putting other orders in where there was nothing for Kat to enjoy. I'll admit the shipping charges ate up a slight portion of our expenses and there were some breweries we didn't order from simply because we couldn't justify the charge to get it delivered. Most of our orders were for between 8 to 12 beers, often getting a few doubles of certain beers to share out with folks we know who haven't been so fortunate as us when it comes to working and others for friends whom we give beer back and forth with. 

  I know just how privileged we are to have this kind of money to be able to spend on something so unnecessary for our survival. I cannot fathom how hard some people have it right now and am mindful of just how lucky we have been in the last few years as I dragged myself out of the financial and mental disaster of 2012 when I almost lost everything I had. I know the very bottom and working to get back to level has not been something I've taken for granted. So I do look at this dissection of how we spent our money with an eye to why and what we can do to improve going forward. It used to be that we would buy every beer a brewery had in the fridge when we stopped in, even if the styles weren't something we desired. That stopped a few years back when I first did this deep dive into our beer budget and I think with this revisit 2 years later, I can see a change coming again in relation to what we buy and how much we spend per order. Do I need 4 of that new IPA every time? Well, need is not the word I'd use and I hope I can change a little for the better as we move into a still very bizarre year in 2021 to come. 

  I like to buy beer, but I like to drink it too and both should be done with a touch more moderation than 2020 showed. Awareness and sticking to the monthly budget will be a good starting point and in 12 months we shall return to this subject again and see just how well I managed to do.

Stay safe out there!

Polk