Every weekend students flood Brickstreet Bar & Grill, The Wood’s, Skippers Pub, and all bars in between for alcoholic beverages. Most students don’t pay attention to how the beer ends up at the bars, but rather how fast they can get a drink in their hand.

According to the National Trade Associate for the Brewing Industry, the Beer Institute has ranked Ohio no. 7 in beer shipments and no. 21 in beer consumption.

Lester Jones, Chief Economist from The Beer Institute, said the word ‘shipment’ is used loosely. Any time a brewer makes beer and ships it to a wholesaler, it is considered a shipment.

There are over 20 breweries in Ohio, which ship to Ohio bars and those in other states. The rankings are generated from numbers distributors give The Beer Institute on how much beer has been shipped that year to each specific state.

California was ranked first for beer shipment this year and New Hampshire was ranked first in consumption.

Jones said they use the same method to rate beer consumption, but now they look at population as well.

“Beer has a short shelf life of 90 days so it won’t sit around like wine or spirits,” Jones said. “We assume people who ship beer ship it for consumption within a short time frame.”

Researchers look at the population in comparison with the number of barrels of beer shipped. Between the two is what makes the number for beer consumption. If the only factor looked at is the number of barrels shipped, then consumption and shipment would be the same.

The more shipments a state receives, the more consumption is believed to occur. According to Jones, college towns do not play a factor in the numbers researched because every state has college towns and universities.

In figures, Ohioans are estimated to individually consume 236 cans of beer a year. That’s about 19 beers a month.

“College students overall seem to drink more than the national average,” said junior Kasey Godeker. “It’d be interesting to see if college students were the only ones polled,” Goedeker said.

One of Oxford’s popular uptown bars, Skipper’s Pub, deals with multiple beer shipments a week. Owner Andy Amaranpos said top beers like Budweiser and Miller Lite are delivered a few times a week. Beers like Ohio Valley, Heidelberg and other craft beers are delivered once a week. The amount of shipments a week will vary on the popularity of the beer.

“We aren’t as busy on Mondays as we are on Fridays, so distributors pick which days to deliver beer based on whether it’s the weekend or middle of the week,” Amaranpos said.