Canadian Beer versus American Beer: The Battle of the Beers

Beer is easily the most popular drink in Canada, in terms of both volume and monetary value. It was first introduced in Canada by settlers from Europe in the seventeenth century, but it was only in the late twentieth century that several breweries opened up and it became a flourishing business. The three largest beer producing firms in Canada are Labatt’s, Molson and Sleeman. A firm called Moosehead is currently the largest brewery, controlling about 5.5% of the market. Labatt’s Blue and Molson Canadian are the popular flagship brands.

Beer is also the most popular alcoholic beverage in the United States, manufactured by more than 1,500 breweries. American beer comes in many forms. The most common style of beer in America is pale lager. The majority of beer sales in America is dominated by pale lager. The United States beer market today offers many beers, thanks to over 1400 beer producers. The original settlers who first set foot in America were of European origin, so even today, beer is more popular than wine. Major beer producers merged to dominate the beer market in the US - Anheuser-Busch merged with InBev to form Anheuser–Busch InBev and Molson Coors merged with Miller Brewing to form MillerCoors. Back in 2003, three beer companies represented 82% of all the beer sold in America. Anheuser-Busch was leading with a 51.9% share, Miller followed with 18.7% and Coors had captured 11.3% of the market.

The eternal battle of Canadian beer versus American beer began because of the different techniques used to measure alcohol content in these countries. While the United States uses the alcohol by weight method, Canada follows the alcohol by volume method. The difference in these two methods is essential to understanding how the myth arose. The alcohol by weight (ABW) method is used to measure alcohol content as the mass of alcohol in the brew as a percentage of the mass of the brew. The alcohol by volume (ABV) method, on the other hand, is the percentage of the liquid which is alcohol.
The confusion arises during the comparison of alcohol content in beers whose content has been measured using these two different methods because alcohol is only about eighty percent (79.36%) as dense as water. So if a beer is 5% ABV, it is 3.968% ABW.

The countries also differ in terms of advertising laws for alcoholic drinks. In Canada, manufacturers are allowed to advertise the alcohol content of the drink, whereas the United States prohibits it. Another consideration to be factored in is the difference between American macro-brews and micro-brews. The former typically has a lower alcoholic content than the latter. If micro-brews of both countries are compared, American micro-brews turn out to have higher alcoholic content in most cases. Macro-brews of both countries are, however, more or less on par with each other.

So it basically stands to reason that both countries have some excellent beer on offer for connoisseurs of both macro-brews and micro-brews. One cannot claim that either Canada or the US offers beer of higher alcoholic content. It would be incorrect to generalize that any country X’s beer is stronger than another country Y’s beer without taking the kind of beer being compared into consideration. For now, let us suffice it to say that the citizens of both Canada and the United States love their beer and both countries are proud manufacturers of some of the best beer in the world. Cheers to that!