If you don't like beer, says the poet, you're drinking it wrong.

But can we still pay for it?

The price of beer is currently included in the basket of goods used by the Federal Statistical Office to calculate the inflation rate at 5.97 per mille.

This roughly corresponds to the percentage of alcohol in Andechser Hell, but has nothing to do with it.

The Wiesbaden measuring artists want to tell us that out of a thousand things that we consume, almost six consist of hops and malt.

With this weighting, the importance of beer in the average consumption of Germans is estimated to be about as high as that of women's shoes, garden products and large electrical appliances.

Wine weighs a little heavier, cheese and quark too.

The consumer price index is very precise and distinguishes between bottom-fermented beer (4.63 per thousand basket weight),

The beer at the Munich Oktoberfest is by no means mixed and mostly bottom-fermented.

But overpriced.

The Maß, Prussian: the liter, costs between 12.60 euros in the museum tent and 13.70 euros at various distribution points, an average of 13.37 euros across all tents.

Compared to 2019, when the Wiesn last took place, this corresponds to a beer inflation of 15.77 percent.

The Fischer-Vroni has the lowest price increase, the highest is suffered by those who have it poured in the Fisch-Bäda-Wiesenstadl: a good 20 percent more expensive than in 2019. Weissbier does not inflate quite as much, by an average of almost 10.6 percent.

According to information from the landlords, these prices are less due to the fact that a lot of gas is used in the production of beer, but rather they are intended to recoup some of the missing sales of the Corona years,

For all those who now see themselves economically tormented by their thirst for it, we have only the consolation of the European comparison.

In the Brasserie Lipp zu Paris, a liter of beer currently costs 28 euros and even at La Coupole it's still 19 euros.

One might attribute this to the fact that beer is something that is only reserved for Belgian tourists.

In Brussels' main beer glut, the "Delirium Café", a liter of Blondes easily costs 15 euros, in Oslo it's 16 euros, and if you drink three small Duvels in Amsterdam, you'll quickly lose 14 euros.

Even in the pubs of the beer-drinking city of London, the average price for two pints was recently just a little below the price for a Spaten-Maß at the Oide Wiesn, namely the equivalent of 12.50 euros.

And all without brass band music.