Germans who do drink beer are increasingly going for the milder brews from Bavaria, rather than the bitter, herb-heavy beer of north Germany, where Becks is brewed.

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It has put beer into cans rather than bottles to reduce breakages, and decanted spirits into small bottles to tempt the cash-strapped.

ECONOMIST: Schumpeter

Except that all the cans were discarded in the same general area, suggesting they may reflect only one person's taste in beer alternatives, rather than the entire community's.

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Even many American beer lovers would rather abstain than sip from a can of mass-produced swill.

FORBES: Tastemakers: Wine, Beer and Spirits

Diageo found creative ways to trim the price, by using local barley and sorghum, by putting the beer in big kegs rather than costly bottles and by inventing a cheap hand-pump to serve it.

ECONOMIST: Schumpeter

Pecos is famous for its cantaloupe melons though these rely on groundwater pumps rather than the river, which is here no more than a few isolated puddles among the hubcaps and beer cans.

ECONOMIST: The Pecos river

Sunday was a beautiful day but, rather than enjoy it outdoors, I holed up in a bar with buffalo wings and beer.

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His fishing methods were different: he used aluminium beer barrels as floats because wooden ones would break up in a minute, and rather than harpoons, with their stainless-steel darts that folded back and slipped right out of the fish, he preferred hand-held gaffs with a three-inch hook that went in and stayed there.

ECONOMIST: Frank Mundus