Where are people actually drinking mezcal in the US?

[vpenney]

I pulled data from the Mezcal Consejo Regulador website to find out how mezcal sales and production compare to other distilled spirits in Mexico and the US.

I want my final project to be a map of mezcal consumption by US region that looks something like this:

Issues: I can't figure out how to measure the mezcal consumed in each state/ county, either by sales taxes on mezcal, data from the gov, or data from distributors or importers. I also need to reformat my graphs to show consumption trends by liquor category over time.

Work so far: I have created dataframes for Mexico's domestic liquor sales and exports.

Update: I ultimately wasn't able to track down enough data on mezcal in the U.S., so my project now focuses on the craft beer scene by state. I look at barrel production by state, state excise taxes, and breweries per capita.

My data came from: (https://www.brewersassociation.org/)

Code repository: (https://github.com/vpenney/data-studio/tree/master/code/01-craft-beer)

[malbasi]

Something I like - The chart style grouped by liquor type with a bar for each year looks great Something that can be improved - Reframe the question to work with the dataset? Also, change the figsize for the charts mentioned above so it's more easily readable. Maybe drop a few categories too

[castorsia]

Very interesting and funny research question that can branch out to many types of content, and indeed difficult to find data. Loved the aesthetics of the different liquor types. Improvement: find concrete data.

[nickospi]

• nice data set and well thought charts
• geo plotting that on qgis like the inspirational map you've put would make it amazing I think

[vpenney]

After an extended failure at finding more information about mezcal consumption in the US, I switched my focus to look at the national craft brewery scene instead (which also turned into a horror show of scraping madness).

Here's a look at the states with the most breweries per capita (measured as breweries per 100,000 adults 21+) by the Brewers Association:

And here's a map of beer excise tax per state, overlayed with population centers:

It's taking my poor computer hours to geocode the 6,300+ microbreweries in the US, but I'll compare those to the population centers in each state to see which states have good craft brewery distribution, as well as look at brewery density compared to the area (in square miles) of each state.

I also have this scatterplot, where PA and CA are completely messing up the scale:

[hakantan]

• I would find it interesting to zoom in on specific states to see how the distribution looks like close up, i.e. if all breweries in one state tend to be in one specific area, or not.
• I like the colors and the layout.
• I'd increase the fontsize, too.

[kevinlitman-navarro]

• Would like to see chart comparing excise tax with number of breweries
• Need scale/bar value numbers on 'breweries per capita,' also would be helpful if you could pick out maybe one or two states that are compelling to draw attention to and build story out

[vpenney]

Quick Updates:

I've cleaned up the graphs and added a graph for excise tax, but the font size and some of the spacing and styling still needs to be finalized.

I'll also add some more granular graphs that focus on specific states, as well as average brewery density per square mile for the states.

Problems/Questions: My pdfs/ pngs are exporting as the soft, soothing, blank background color that I've chosen for my graphs, with literally nothing else. Just squares of color.

I really want to do a cool map, but I guess that's a personal problem.

Checklist:

• [X] I have included my visuals
• [X] I have filled out the sections above
• [X] I have been updating my DIARY.md with details about my process
• [X] I have uploaded/updated any Jupyter Notebooks or other datasets into my code repository

[playfairbot]

Hello! I'm a little robot, checking in on your project.

You need some feedback, let me summon @Katerinavts, @SiruiZhu, @troboukis for you

It looks like we need to fix up your your update a little bit! Edit it by clicking the pencil in the top right-hand corner. It requires:

• New, updated content for your project
• The checklist (be sure you're using the template!)

Maybe you just didn't use the template? If not, edit your comment, cut and paste the template in, and then fill it out.

[troboukis]

At the scatterplot, the dots are too small. you need an y and y grid, not just the y lines. Maybe scatter isn't suitable for these data. Also, I'd use a one-tone lighter background colour.

[Katerinavts]

Plots look good. I agree that the dots are too small and since you decided to use different tones of blue, I would recommend you direct the attention to the reader by using another color. For example, you could use a different color for the dots.

[vpenney]

Another Update

Here are more charts:

There may be a slight correlation between low beer excise taxes and beer production:

I also spent days (because the Google API kept timing out) getting the coordinates of all 6,500+ craft breweries in the U.S. and made a neat map of how they relate to population centers (so you know if where you're going will have a good beer), but I guess it will be my own, personal, secret map since maps are NOT ALLOWED.

Problems:

• Text on my scatter plots is comically small, but I'll clean it up in Illustrator.
• I couldn't figure out how to set custom ranges/ colors in my first scatterplot using something other than my x or y-axis values (I used average production per brewery instead of total breweries or total production for the state)

Checklist

• [X] I have included my visuals
• [X] I have filled out the sections above
• [X] I have been updating my DIARY.md with details about my process
• [X] I have uploaded/updated any Jupyter Notebooks or other datasets into my code repository

[vpenney]

Final edits

Here is a lot of information on craft beer:

Published web version

Code repository

Final data sets

What did you find to be the most difficult part of this project?

Web scraping and building my dataset came with some challenges, but mostly I just struggled to find a way to make my chart of breweries per capita in each U.S. state look halfway decent (spoiler alert: it doesn't).

Are you satisfied with what you produced? Is there anything you would like to change or improve?

I'm mostly satisfied with what I produced, except for the aforementioned bar chart.

Checklist

• [X] I have included my visuals
• [X] I have posted my project to my project website
• [X] I have been updating my DIARY.md with details about my process
• [X] I have uploaded/updated any Jupyter Notebooks or other datasets into my code repository

[SiruiZhu]

The grey background is nice-looking! and I really like your first bar chart! Here is my thoughts:

• The title of your scatter charts are little small to me, I was attracted by the pretty legend, but actually the hierarchy should be Title, your chart itself, and then the legend? Probably just i feel like that?

• As for you display the most productive and less productive states, it might be better if you go with radial bar chart, or something like that... to show the information better? Or just unify the color, not just five different colors for all the states, use one for most productive, and one or less productive, just highlight the top1 and last 1？

[sarahslo]

i've learned something, which is good. didn't know that vermont had so many breweries...

i don't think adding the color coding to the scatterplot works. the barrels of beer produced is when, 2017? add the label for that. making the colors for an average is hard to think through.

if you want to add this variable, i'd make the average value the Y axis and then size the circles by the total number of barrels produces.

i also like seeing the excise tax against production. it's a really good question to ask of the data.

maybe you can find some ranking of craft beers and add that as a layer - perhaps volume does not equal favorites. i want to know here on top of this data, what beers they produce.