Prost! Chin-Chin! Your Round! Beer Drinking Etiquette Around the World

The typical beer drinker has probably not heard of “Greaves’ Rules.” They were created by London-based journalist William Greaves to (lightheartedly) codify the rules for buying rounds of drinks in the pub. Greaves didn’t create Greaves’ Rules, as such, because many people already followed them. Rather, he put in print the small points of etiquette and traditions that groups of friends around the world followed. The rules are intentionally humorous, and they are worth citing if you – like many of us – have that buddy who tends to get shy about paying their way.

Greaves’ Rules dictate when and who should be buying a round of drinks. It’s interesting to note that they are broadly followed in the Anglosphere. There are slight variations in the terminology, “shouting” your friends a beer is the phrase often used in Australia and New Zealand, for example. Of course, we are not making generalizations; groups of friends from Berlin to Beijing will purchase a round of beers for each other. But in the Anglosphere, the traditions of the pub are starker, including the fact that it is more common to go with the sole intention of drinking alcohol, i.e., not pairing it with food. A lot of that beer-drinking etiquette originated in Ireland and the U.K., although other English-speaking nations will have their own spin on things.

Prost becomes a universal sign for good health

Beer etiquette takes on different forms around the world, although many traditions are somewhat ubiquitous. We all know of the salutation “Prost,” of course, as it is tied in with the most famous beer-drinking nation in the world, Germany. You might hear the phrase at an Oktoberfest festival or quench your thirst with a few spins on the Prost Game by Habanero, but the origins of the phrase are quite dark. It’s said that Prost, broadly meaning “be well” and the accompanying clinking of glasses, was a guard against being poisoned by your medieval drinking buddy. The act of clinking the stein meant that a few drops of each drink went into the others’ glasses, thus you’d have to trust your drinking partner.

Prost, and its variations, suggest a toast to health and well-being, and that has broadly traveled around the world in beer-drinking salutations. Sláinte (Irish Gaelic), Santé (French), Prosit (Italian), Sănătate (Romanian), Vashe zdorov’ye (Russian) and Salud (Spanish) all follow the same etiquette, with many being linked etymologically. But it goes further afield than Europe. We could cite beer salutations from Ethiopia (Le’tenachin) to India (achchee sehat) that broadly follow the European model of toasting to health.

Of course, toasting does not always focus on health. The phrase chin-chin has the connotation of “drink up,” and you might hear the term “chinning” in parts of the U.K. to mean something akin to chugging. But the origins of chin-chin are actually Chinese, coming from qing-qing (please, please). The idea is that it would be spoken by the host, inviting the others in the group to drink. Chin-chin has also been adopted by several European countries, including Tchin-chin (France) and cin-cin (Italy).

Don’t toast your beer in Hungary

Some of these drinking traditions are perhaps a dying art, particularly among younger beer drinkers. There are reasons for this, including sociological changes in pub and drinking culture. One that is almost wholly absent from the Anglosphere is the maintaining of eye contact when performing a toast. This still persists in some quarters of Germany, France and Czechia. In Hungary, one should not toast with beer at all. The tradition of avoiding beer toasts is said to come from the 1848 war with Austria, where the victorious Austrians celebrated with beer.

A tidbit about Guinness

A word on one of the most successful beer brands to tie in with a national identity – Guinness. The “black stuff” is perhaps not as revered in Ireland as cliché dictates, although it remains popular with young and old. Nonetheless, there are certain rules around Guinness drinking that are worth noting. A bartender pours a Guinness by filling the pint glass up about 90% of the way, leaving it to settle for a few minutes, then tops it up (by pushing the tap backward). The art of pouring a Guinness is well-known and codified in Irish pubs, and any bartender not following the rules would soon have this fact pointed out to them, particularly by older clientele. Nonetheless, the argument that this makes it taste better makes little sense from a scientific standpoint. The rules of osmosis apply to Guinness just like every other drink. Other less-followed Guinness rules include holding your arm at a 45-degree angle before imbibing. It won’t surprise you to learn that the traditions are propagated by Guinness itself, as it suits the branding to have a kind of mythical quality attached to the drink.

We are, of course, living through a beer revolution with craft beer. This in itself will give rise to new traditions in the coming years, not least the pairing of beer and food. It will take time for them to codify, but that will come. And yet, others will be lost: do the kids (we mean young adults of drinking age, of course) really take toasts seriously these days? In fact, Gen Z seems to be eschewing beer (and wine) in favor of other drinks, and they drink less in general. Nevertheless, certain aspects of beer etiquette will persist as long as beer is wrapped up in culture, and there is no sign of that changing anytime soon.