Why you still get drunk drinking “session” beers | Hacker News Reader

Why you still get drunk drinking “session” beers

draftmag.com

44 pointssp33247 comments

I feel like that article was unnecessarily complex to simply say that your body can metabolize a set amount of alcohol per hour and given a reasonable drinking rate, the 5% beers are over that and the 4% beers are not.

I mean, how many different units of measurement did the article go through? ounces, pints, units-of-alcohol, percent, "standard drinks", yadda yadda yadda.

I got the feeling the article was about how the information we're given about the strength of beer is misleading. Partially because the units of measure are flawed, partially because of how our bodies metabolize alcohol, and partially because the label given to a beer is often misused.

> Let’s say you’re drinking only one beer per hour—you’re probably not, but for simplicity, let’s say you are.

The problem with that is you don't really get to make an assumption "for simplicity" if the assumption makes your result stronger. And that's exactly what happens here. If your argument is in favor of "much more than 25%", your simplifying assumption needs to work against that argument.

As intake interval approaches 0, the BAC difference between the two beers approaches 25%. As the interval approaches 1.4 hours, the difference factor approaches infinity (0 units from the 4%, 0.4 units from the 5%).

So if you're going to make an honest simplifying assumption for this argument, you have to pick a shorter interval than you expect is realistic.

I think they point is most people will drink more than one beer an hour. Lets double it and say 2 an hour to see a trend.

2 beers * 1.4 units = 2.8 2 beers * 1.8 units = 3.6

Subtract 1 from each and you get 1.8 and 2.6 which is roughly 44% more residual alcohol in your system.

Lets try 3 beers:

31.4 = 4.2 31.8 = 5.4

residuals: 3.2, 4.4 Which are 37.5% away. Still much more than 25%.

So I guess if you are drinking 4 beer per hour his argument breaks down. But I'd also think that a multi hour 4+ beers per hour bender isn't going to last long on 5% beer.

You're correct. I'm not a beer drinker, or a social drinker at all, so I'm not well calibrated on what would be typical. So I was certainly not arguing that the conclusion was wrong. Just that the argument the author presented didn't make a very strong case.

> The problem with that is you don't really get to make an assumption "for simplicity" if the assumption makes your result stronger.

One beer per hour is overly conservative. You'll probably find 2-3 more common in reality, maybe even 4.

> One beer per hour is overly conservative

But in the context of this argument, "conservative" would actually mean more beers per hour.

The English ales of old were often between 3% and 4% - classic session beers. Greene King still make an IPA available all over which is 3.4% (traditionally IPA was supposed to be weak!)

There's also a style of English beer called a "mild" - called so for its low alcohol. However, the beer itself is dark and thick like a stout - often confusing people who expected "mild" taste.

Another useless fact: in England you sometimes hear of "continental strength" lager - which means it's 5%.

Who is this written for? Where are these people that are unaware alcohol gets you drunk?

That's not the point of the article. It's saying that because of the rate your body processes alcohol, seemingly small differences in ABV can leave much more unprocessed alcohol in your body than you'd expect.

Are you saying that the answer to the question in the article was obvious to you?

How is this not obvious?

Your body processes alcohol at a certain rate. Anything over that adds to the backlog. If you consume alcohol faster than your body can process it, you're not going to be sober any time soon.

Whether it's high alcohol beers or low alcohol "hard" drinks doesn't matter to your body. The only thing that matters is the amount of alcohol you are consuming.

I think the point is that the difference between a 4% and 5% beer is much more than perceived. That "1%" extra might not seem like its a big deal to people ready to sit down and have a few beers but it adds up by quite a lot. This article is meant for people that don't fully understand how the body deals with alcohol that it can't process.

Its actually 25% more, right? Its not the beer (water) quantity that's significant, its total alcohol consumed.

If you read the article, you will find the author's answer to this question!

It's not obvious because it's unlike any other commonly used recreational drug. Alcohol at typical dose has zero-order pharmacokinetics, unlike most other drugs which have a half-life. This can result in surprising differences in intoxication with only small differences in intake per unit time, as the article explains.

I think its not telling you that alcohol gets you drunk but showing how quickly a 5% beer can get you drunker than a 4% beer over the course of a few beers. People may think that its just 1% extra, it can't be that much more but when you factor in the alcohol metabolization speed, that extra 1% adds up. The extra alcohol in the bloodstream will make the buzz last longer.

In short, you might be ok to drive an hour after a couple 4% beers but not ok an hour after a couple 5% beers despite just the perceived slight increase in alcohol percentage.

That "1% extra" is actually already 25% extra pure alcohol, even if you don't take metabolization speed into account. Comparing to the whole volume is a red herring. Although who drinks heavy beer the same speed as light beer? I don't.

The thrust of the article for those that read beyond the headline is that the difference in intoxicating effect beyond slightly below average strength beer and slightly above average strength beer is much greater than you'd anticipate from simply looking at the %ABV figure.

I doubt even many regular drinkers suspect that drinking 5% beer leaves them with around twice as much alcohol in their bloodstream as drinking 4% beer (although regular drinkers tend to drink fast enough to narrow that gap) Certainly would have been useful to know that back when I chose beers based on optimising for units of alcohol per £!

Ive been thinking about exactly this recently. I will go out sometimes after work with some coworkers for a few hours, maybe talk shop, talk about movies, books, whatever. But afterwards I want to be able to go home, make some dinner, and read for a bit (or whatever else). If I had 3-4 6+ABV IPAs, then Ill be too drunk to enjoy the rest of my evening. So Ive started drinking light beers after work.

I enjoy good beer quite a bit, but it seems that every micro brew is at least 5% ABV. That simply doesn't fit with my typical pattern of drinking now that I'm several years away from college. I wish there were more truly "session" beers available in my local bars.

Drink smaller beers, with a glass of water (or two) on the side. Just like wine (Few people drink wine from pint glasses). Allows you to taste more different (craft or otherwise) beers in one sitting, and you won't get as drunk/hung over.

Say you drink 0.25l of a 9% beer along with 0.25l of water (probably a bit more water, actually). The water fills you up, breaks your drinking "speed" -- and now you've technically had 0.5 of 4.5% beer.

In my experience, what really matters is how much pure alcohol is consumed per unit of time (assuming you're not actually drinking something stronger than 60% at an unnaturally high rate). Shotting hard liquor is a strong outlier - but sipping doesn't have to be. I find that drinks and strong beers generally end up being about the same -- if you drink at a natural pace, and no water on the side, you'll get drunk -- slow down and drink at least as much water (in volume) as alcohol and you'll be fine. Personal tolerance/degree of alcoholism will vary from person to person, of course. Adjust to what pace suits you.

We can say 0.5l/500ml of 5% beer ~ 25ml of alcohol. If we calculate 5 glasses to a bottle of wine, a glass of 13% wine is 750ml/5 = 150ml ~ 19.5ml of alcohol. This happens to be about the same as a pint of 4.5% (455*0.045) -- but it's more concentrated.

Might want to add two glasses of water to each glass of wine. Uptake will be a bit slower without gas in the mix.

What about those of us regularly consuming 22oz "bombers" of wonderful 10% beers like Ballast Point Victory at Sea?

I feel like the lower alcohol content session beers are working against you. More time drinking, more raw volume, and more time spent going to the bathroom.

I suppose a session beer would make a nice choice for drinking in the workplace. You could have 1 or 2 and still function at your job. Beyond that, I don't get the allure.

I like them sometimes because they don't rely on alcohol to cover up off-flavors created in the brewing process by some less-than-perfect breweries. It's surprisingly common, especially from particularly popular microbreweries who start cutting corners to fill their demand out of their limited production capacity.

> I feel like the lower alcohol content session beers are working against you. More time drinking, more raw volume, and more time spent going to the bathroom.

I won't speak to the other two points, but "more time drinking" in conjunction with less time actually being drunk (which honestly sucks) is what many people are optimizing for, because going out drinking is about the socializing far more than the drinking, but it isn't "cool" to participate without an alcoholic beverage in hand.

There are so many reasons why someone wouldn't drink, even beyond just recovering alcoholics. There are various types of medication that react poorly with alcohol. A person might be trying to lose weight. Or maybe they're a pregnant women. Plus, if you're out as a group, someone needs to be the DD. If one's group isn't understanding and accepting of people not drinking, then maybe one needs to find a new group of friends.

Or you can avoid the question with a tonic water or similar. Looks like a drink, but isn't.

Okay, but I seriously wouldn't want to be in such a group to which I had to hide the fact I wasn't drinking. That's pretty messed up.

Seriously. I love me some beer, but would not tolerate a group that expressed disapproval of a refusal to drink.

Bah, I was afraid that throwaway part of my comment would end up getting the focus. My point is just that most people are somewhere in between "want to get drunk" and "don't want to drink at all" when they're socializing, so drinks optimized for that make a lot of sense.

"want to get drunk" and "don't want to drink at all" is literally the entire spectrum, so I think it's safe to say that "most people are somewhere in between" :P

Well, no, the alternative perspective is that most people are at one of the two extremes, which seems to be common, hence the idea in the comment I originally replied to that "more time drinking" is "working against you". My point is very simple: I think lots of people want to spend time drinking (while socializing) without getting drunk.

"More time drinking, more raw volume" is part of the point of a session beer. The idea is that some people want to drink at a pace where the can continue for a several hours, drinking several beers, and not end up wasted.

Beers have changed through the decades.

Faro beers and similar old style session beers would usually be in the 2 to 3 percent range. People drank them while that worked. It was not intended to get you drunk but energized.

Today's sessions are 4 percent and as high as 5 percent, which is significantly more and quite frankly silly to be called a session beer, since most pilsners and light beers are in the same range naturally.

I had no clue the etymology of session was a drinking session, kinda interesting

What did you think it meant?

My first thought was of a musical session, like at a studio.

I remember getting drunk on crappy kegs of god-knows-what in college that were close to the same alcohol content of a session beer.

Well yes but you were probably drinking a wee bit more then 12oz or even 20oz an hour back then too.

I don't like low alcohol beers. I want to experience all aspects of the beer right away, including the alcohol. Imagine if someone asked how a beer tasted, and you answered "I don't know yet, I'll tell you after a few more".

Really into the Belgian trippels these days.

Edit: Wow. People really like low alcohol beers.

Maybe people don't find your personal taste relevant.

Or maybe SV types can't handle real beer.

Yeah, it's obviously that and not anything to do with the attitude you project.

I projected no attitude in my original comment.

Are low alcohol content beers not "real beer"?

They are. I don't really think this.

No, your original response was equivalent to "I like lamp".

And then you came back with a generalization about "SV types".

Generally the alcohol level is not part of the taste.

It impacts the taste, as you're changing the content of a flavorful substance in the beverage. But there's nothing about that observation that would imply "more is better".

Intoxication is not part of the taste.

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