Year 2012 in Drinks

This post is a continuation of this project to record every drink we have this year, complete now with a full year’s worth of data.

I recognize that we’re only two points of reference and therefore can only draw conclusions about our own habits, but the concept of quantified life seems to be enjoying its heyday at the moment. People are getting creative about what they track and how they visualize it: Nick Felton’s design-oriented Annual Reports were my original inspiration. Tracking one’s bike rides is popular, as you can see with Strava and posts like this from a fellow rider in DC. People are measuring what they eat, where they travel, and how they spend their days. This piece in the New York Times, “The Data-Driven Life”, describes a guy who even explored how much time he spent doing his roommate’s dishes – along with everything else he spent time on throughout the course of each day.

Alcohol consumed seems like as good a metric as any to track over the course of a year. Never having taken this kind of count before, we were frequently surprised at our totals – after a month, three months, or an entire year. Adam and I lead fairly active social lives in Washington, DC, where there are plenty of options for going out. We rarely go clubbing and prefer the bar scene or relaxed parties at friends’ houses. And this seems to be reflected in the data: we’re on average 21 times as likely to choose a beer over a mixed drink or hard liquor.

Year 2012 Totals

From January 1st, 2012 to December 31st, 2012

Crystal Total Number of Drinks: 505 (of which 82% were beers) Average Number of Drinks per Day: 1.38 Favorite Brewery: New Belgium Most-Frequented Watering Hole: Boundary Stone

Adam Total Number of Drinks: 833 (of which 93% were beers) Average Number of Drinks per Day: 2.28 Favorite Brewery: Chocolate City Most-Frequented Watering Hole: Thunder Burger

Both of Us

I usually have the most drinks on a Saturday, while it’s Fridays for him. On Saturdays I have more than twice as many drinks on average than on Mondays (the day with my lowest drink averages). I’m more likely to go out closer to home, and Adam goes out closer to work. That’s probably due to the fact that there aren’t very many good places to grab a drink near my office, which isn’t in the city.

Number of drinks for both of us also trend down overall throughout the entire year. However, the numbers trend upward going from the beginning of the year into the summer, then drop in late summer and trend upward again towards the end of the year (and the holiday season).

Click to zoom.

More to come. Let me know what you think or would have been interesting to note!