Took a walk down to one of our local stores in Lima, Ohio and came to realize that my two cans of soda cost more than my one can of beer. Although beer and soda are both carbonated, the process for brewing beer is nothing like making soda.
Before we get into all of that, my thing is! Soda is mostly used by young adults and beer by grown adults. So why charge them more? On top of that, lets not get into the Government taking away candy with food stamps.
The law around selling alcoholic beverages plays an important role as well. Especially as production levels scale to massive quantities, the differences in prices become, in absolute terms, significantly smaller.
Soda is made by purifying water, pumping sugar and flavor into it, and then putting the solution through a carbonator which increases the carbon dioxide pressure of the water, putting bubbles in it. Besides ingredients, factory time is what drives the price of most products up.
Beer is made through brewing with fermentation. This starts with a brewer taking barley and extracting sugars from it by boiling. This initial process might be more time consuming and more energy-intense than the whole soda process.
The beer is then carefully bottled without adding air or contamination. It still must complete the fermentation process in the sealed bottle over some time. This is called bottle conditioning.
So in other words, beer takes longer and soda is more machine work, why is soda more expensive? Or am I just shopping at the wrong stores? Leave your comments I would like to know your thoughts on this topic.
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