St. Patrick’s Day Beer Sales : $245 Million

The total beer tab: More than $245 million

By all accounts, a bar or liquor store that’s well-stocked can make 1% of its total annual sales on St. Patrick’s Day alone. Our friends at The Motley Fool estimated that last year, brewers took in $245 million in St. Patrick’s Day sales, using figures compiled by IbisWorld. That’s bound to go up this year, though there’s no reliable estimate we could find in terms of how much of that beer will be dyed green.

On the other hand, advice abounds on everything from how to cure a green beer hangover to whether you might see that dye reappear on a trip to the bathroom. Speaking to the former point (and definitely not the latter), here are some green beer hangover tips from no less a venerable source than the International Business Times. The article also features a photo of President Barack Obama hoisting a pint, and as we all know, O’Bama is a lovely Irish name.

Guinness for the record books: About 13.7 million pints

On any given day, about 5.5 million pints of Guinness are raised across the globe in toasts of all kinds. But come St. Patrick’s Day, that number more than doubles, according to BBC News. In 2011, that number was pegged at about 13 million pints, and we can only expect it to grow in 2013 — a modest 5% rise from 2011 would put the number at about 13.7 million pints.
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