Another hastily constructed page by Phil Carmody Home / Beer / brobdingnag.html
The plan was to reach 12 countries from which I've had 12 different beers from each of 12 different brewers.
Some people want to have at least one beer from every country in the world. Others want to have all the beers from their country/state/region. Those ticker/trainspotter targets didn't interest me so much.
Instead I wanted to take a more balanced approach - a large number of beers from a large number of breweries from a wide range of countries. I wanted to be able to say not just that I knew certain breweries well (by having many beers from from them) but also that I knew a country's beer scene very well (by having a large number of breweries that I knew well). I also wanted to extend this concept to the world - I wanted to be able to say that I knew the beer scene in a lot of different countries.
The "X countries with X breweries with X beers" idea is based on the "h index" in academia. If you've written a hundred papers that have only been cited once each, you're not having much influence. If you've written one paper that has been extremely widely cited, then you're not very productive. The h-index balances these two extremes - what's the highest X such that you've published X papers that have been cited at least X times. If you've written 10 papers that have been cited 10 times each, then you're reasonably productive, and reasonably influential, better than either of the extremes.
It's an easy calculation, list your pubs in citation count order, and then just count down the list, as soon as your list position exceeds the citation count, you've gone too far. E.g., with 100 × 1 cite, you can only count to 1, and with 1 × 100 cites, you're similarly limited. With 10 × 10 cites, you can only count to 10. So the h-indices are 1, 1, and 10.
My idea is just a 3-dimensional equivalent.
Some time around 2015, I guess. Some people on the RateBeer fora were comparing their beer-per-country h-index. I think at the time, my h-index by this metric was 29. At the time I achieved my 12×12×12 Brobdingnagian goal, it's was 32, now 33, and progress is slow.
It struck me that not all countries are equal. Some countries don't have much going on apart from a few brewers that just churn out a new beer every couple of days, all much of a muchness, and you can have had literally hundreds of beers from that country and still only have experienced a narrow range of beers.
Addressing this issue, someone, perhaps me, proposed the idea of counting not the number of beers from each country but the number of different breweries instead. I have no idea what my score was back then, but when I achieved my 12×12×12 Brobdingnagian goal, I had an h-index of 23, now 24.
This can be hacked by someone just trying one thing from each brewery, which again doesn't imply any real knowledge of that brewery's oeuvre.
So it needed fixing. It had to be made 3-dimensional: Countries × Breweries × Beers. I did a quick scan down my beer ratings, and noticed that I had already rated 11 beers from each of 11 different breweries in 11 different countries. The next target was clear: 12 × 12 × 12!
The concept's from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The giants on Brobdingnag were twelve times larger in each dimension, so 12×12×12=1728 times larger in total.
Because it's damn hard. You don't just need another new beer from another new brewery from another country. 11×11×11 has a "volume" of 1331, so 1728 is ~30% more work. Add to that the fact that just finding countries with lively beer scenes gets harder and harder - even some of the most well-known beer countries, such as Germany and Czechia, are full of breweries that only make 3-5 different beers - finding 12 beers from most of those is practically impossible. So you can probably double that work factor.
I'd already been rating beers for well over 10 years, so it's not weird that it would take another 5+ years. That, and in 2019 I stopped rating on RateBeer, and started to build up a backlog on paper, and on my phone. This meant that there might be stealth breweries that would contribute to my total, but I didn't yet realise it. As the target got closer, I specifically hunted out ratings in my backlog that were most likely to assist me in making progress towards my goal. There are still 2-3 thousand in the backlog, who knows what's within... (That was written in 2021, by 2023 it was up to 4-5 thousand!)
The nice thing is that I managed to hit this target before my 50th birthday. 3 days before it, to be precise. I entered the final ratings on Wednesday 10th Feb 2021, I grabbed a backup of my ratings on Thursday 11th, and ran my checker scripts then, and finally I put this webpage together on Friday 12th.
And the cock's just crowed - just in time!
These are the numbers of breweries that I've had at least 12 beers from in each of my top countries - and all these are now entered on RateBeer:
$ ./brob.pl 51287 12 1 83 England 2 59 Finland 3 29 Estonia 4 28 Latvia 5 28 Belgium 6 26 United States 7 19 Denmark 8 19 Sweden 9 17 Lithuania 10 16 Netherlands 11 16 Poland 12 13 Germany 13 13 Russia148 Italy157 Scotland167 Norway
So I've actually done 13 countries at 13 breweries with 12 beers. But I did just do a specific push to get Polish, Russian, Dutch, and German beers from my backlog, so it's not surprising more went over the line together than strictly needed.
Obviously 13×13×13. When I restrict the above search to breweries that I've had 13 beers from, rather than 12, the result is as follows:
$ ./brob.pl 51287 13 1 77 England 2 57 Finland 3 27 Estonia 4 27 Belgium 5 25 Latvia 6 23 United States 7 17 Denmark 8 17 Lithuania 9 17 Sweden 10 16 Poland 11 14 Netherlands 12 13 Russia 13 13 Germany147 Italy157 Norway165 Scotland
So I have 13 countries at 13 breweries with 13 beers! A baker's Brobdingnag! Thanks to Chris Pilkington for providing the Schneider Weisse that pushed me over. Alas, the next target down the line looks mindblowingly hard.
Let's see how close I am to 14×14×14, ignoring the fact that I have >4500 in backlog:
$ ./brob.pl 51287 1 30 Finland 2 25 England 3 20 Latvia 4 20 Estonia 5 16 Sweden 6 16 United States 7 16 Poland 8 16 Belgium 9 15 Lithuania 10 14 Denmark 11 13 Russia 12 13 Germany 13 13 Netherlands1411 Scotland1511 Italy1610 Czech Republic
Almost certainly not, I'm sure the really big raters (with 30, 40, 50+ thousand ratings, compared to my ~24000 (of which ~2500 in the backlog (OK, in 2023 it's more like 29000 and 4500))) got there ages ago, and have done it to the 13th, 14th, perhaps even 15th level.
I have run the stats for a few friends, some of whom are still rating, while others aren't, and they are as follows:
$ ./brob.pl 136546 12 1 44 Estonia 2 33 Finland 3 31 Latvia 4 30 Poland 5 30 England 6 23 Belgium 7 22 United States 8 16 Sweden 9 15 Russia 10 14 Germany 11 13 Lithuania 12 13 Netherlands 13 12 Denmark1410 Czech Republic159 Italy167 Spain
Congrats, Marduk, on achieving 12×12×12! I'm happy to say that I was able to provide the final German beer, a Schlenkerla, that finally pushed him over the threshold on 2022-02-05.
$ ./brob.pl 136546 13 1 41 Estonia 2 30 Poland 3 30 England 4 29 Finland 5 28 Latvia 6 24 Belgium 7 19 United States 8 16 Sweden 9 15 Lithuania 10 14 Russia1112 Netherlands1212 Germany1311 Czech Republic
$ ./brob.pl 136546 1 24 Estonia 2 19 Latvia 3 18 Poland 4 18 Finland 5 17 England 6 16 Belgium 7 15 Lithuania 8 14 United States 9 14 Sweden 10 13 Russia 11 12 Germany 12 12 Netherlands1312 Denmark1411 Czech Republic1511 Hungary
$ ./hbeer.pl 136546 1 2949 Estonia 2 1709 Latvia 3 1700 Poland 4 1495 England 5 1228 United States 6 1225 Germany 7 1179 Finland 8 1075 Belgium 9 1047 Denmark 10 778 Sweden 11 766 Netherlands 12 731 Czech Republic 13 579 Lithuania 14 564 Russia 15 513 Italy 16 507 Spain 17 487 Scotland 18 434 Hungary 19 394 France 20 370 Norway 21 316 Canada 22 292 Austria 23 240 Ireland 24 190 Japan 25 184 Croatia 26 173 Romania 27 165 Portugal 28 124 Ukraine 29 113 Slovakia 30 101 Bulgaria 31 88 Iceland 32 88 Serbia 33 81 Greece 34 71 Belarus 35 69 Slovenia 36 51 Switzerland 37 49 Luxembourg 38 47 Wales3934 New Zealand4027 Australia4125 China
$ ./hbrew.pl 136546 1 362 Germany 2 332 England 3 314 United States 4 197 Czech Republic 5 189 Poland 6 160 Belgium 7 156 Canada 8 131 Estonia 9 127 Netherlands 10 125 Finland 11 111 Italy 12 108 Latvia 13 95 Spain 14 89 Sweden 15 75 France 16 74 Russia 17 66 Hungary 18 65 Austria 19 61 Lithuania 20 60 Ireland 21 58 Scotland 22 58 Japan 23 55 Norway 24 53 Portugal 25 50 Denmark 26 40 Slovakia 27 39 Greece 28 37 Romania 29 36 Croatia 30 31 Bulgaria3125 Serbia3224 Slovenia3321 Switzerland
$ ./brob.pl 286327 9 1 34 Estonia 2 32 Belgium 3 32 United States 4 22 England 5 14 Netherlands 6 12 Germany 7 11 Sweden 8 10 Poland 9 9 Italy 10 9 Russia117 Japan127 Latvia136 Spain
So 9×9×9 already reached, however, only 7 countries are at 10×10 level, so not that close.
$ ./brob.pl 10233 10 1 98 Finland 2 79 United States 3 56 England 4 54 Belgium 5 48 Sweden 6 39 Denmark 7 32 Norway 8 30 Germany 9 26 Netherlands 10 22 Estonia119 Poland128 Spain138 Scotland
Surprisingly (Tbone has more ratings than me, and way more than Marduk), only the 10×10×10 level has been reached so far. 11×11×11 still looks like it'll take some effort:
./brob.pl 10233 11 1 94 Finland 2 69 United States 3 47 England 4 47 Belgium 5 44 Sweden 6 36 Denmark 7 29 Norway 8 23 Netherlands 9 22 Germany 10 22 Estonia118 Scotland127 Italy136 Spain
./hbeer.pl 51287 1 4636 England 2 3045 Finland 3 2253 Estonia 4 1476 Latvia 5 1379 Germany 6 1361 Belgium 7 1328 United States 8 1245 Poland 9 1136 Denmark 10 838 Lithuania 11 775 Netherlands 12 719 Sweden 13 599 Czech Republic 14 541 Scotland 15 488 Russia 16 437 Italy 17 322 Spain 18 321 France 19 300 Norway 20 283 Hungary 21 183 Wales 22 166 Japan 23 151 Croatia 24 141 Austria 25 117 Slovakia 26 93 Canada 27 91 Ireland 28 87 Belarus 29 73 Iceland 30 61 Ukraine 31 56 Slovenia 32 53 Switzerland 33 47 Australia 34 46 New Zealand 35 35 Greece3631 Portugal3727 South Korea3825 China
26, I can't quite sneak a 27th:
./hbrew.pl 51287 1 909 England 2 421 Germany 3 329 United States 4 223 Belgium 5 177 Czech Republic 6 163 Finland 7 160 Poland 8 113 Estonia 9 113 Netherlands 10 107 Latvia 11 97 France 12 94 Italy 13 86 Spain 14 84 Denmark 15 83 Sweden 16 76 Lithuania 17 68 Russia 18 56 Scotland 19 53 Hungary 20 51 Wales 21 48 Japan 22 48 Slovakia 23 44 Austria 24 39 Croatia 25 30 Canada 26 27 Ireland2726 Norway2824 Switzerland2921 Slovenia
Another hastily constructed page by Phil Carmody
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