Say what you will about Guinness, the brewery is masterful at linking its brand to one of the year’s biggest drinking events. Try to imagine St. Patrick’s Day without the thick, frothy motor oil that lubricates revelry the world over. It’s unthinkable. Even beer snobs who turn their noses at the mere mention of Guinness have to appreciate the power and genius of the brewery’s marketing.

Out of curiosity, we took a look around the interwebs this morning to get a handle on just how many pints of Guinness might be consumed today worldwide. According to Guinness, it sells about 10 million glasses of beer every day, or 1,883,200,00 per year. That’s 1.8 billion, folks. Not too shabby. What about today, though? This little factoid is more difficult to obtain. One anonymous Internet denizen claims that, as of 2007, consumption spikes an average of 350% on St. Patrick’s Day, with total worldwide sales reaching 350 million pints. Hmm. That seems like awfully fuzzy math. Our calculations (read: Tammy’s calculations; Bruce’s left brain doesn’t function correctly) put the number more in the area of 45 million pints, but the point is the same: tonight Guinness is going to make bank.

Not that everything is roses for the Dublin brewery. Sales in the UK have slumped in recent years. But whatever pain that might cause is surely mitigated by the brewery’s astonishing growth in other markets. Africans now drink 40 percent of all Guinness brewed each year.