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Comment by yomly | Hacker News Reader

>I saw a BBC doc yesterday about drinking in the UK. They have stores selling 3-liter bottles of 7.5% cider for four dollars. That is ridiculous. 3-liter bottles of dirt-cheap alcohol, cheaper than coke, are not bought by happy social drinkers. Any store selling those knows what it is doing.

Speak for yourself! The Strongbow 2-litre (sadly now £3-00 but was definitely closer to £2-00 back in 2000's) was the staple of many the happy teenager.

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You can get 2L Strongbow for 3 pounds in the the UK? Awesome!

Probably about £4 for 3 litre bottle.

There’s a drinking game called Edward ciderhands where you tape a bottle to each hand and try to drink them both before going to the toilet.

The same game is played in the United States, traditionally with high ABV beer, where it has a different name, "Edward Fortyhands".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malt_liquor#Forty-ounce

I’ve always seen 5 to 5.5 used for Edward Fourtyhands, can you give me insight into why you mention “high ABV”?

In Canada at least, the beer you could get in 40oz bottles was generally pretty strong. For example, Colt 45 is 8%.

The hardest part of Edward Fourtyhands is that you’ve got to consume 80oz of strong malt liquor without peeing. Or... figuring out some way to unzip your pants...

Yeah lots of malts are up there, I suppose the game came about before the craft beer movement- many of these new craft beers are 9 to 13 and would never be sold in 40-form I suppose, so those are high ABV for a 32/40 I’m sure.

Happy teen yes, but we set drinking ages for a reason. Teenage alcoholism is an evil that we rightly should fight against. When a kid is trying to decide what they want to buy, Strongbow should not be the cheaper option than diet coke.

FWIW, drinking age in the UK is 18. There will be plenty of teenagers buying those legally.

I think it is worth noting that in most non-theocratic countries 18 is the age of legal consumption of alcoholic beverages...

Worth noting that France has no legal alcohol consumption age, and Germany has it set to 14 if a guardian is present.

Alcohol is deeply embedded in French and German culture (and surely other nations) - I have seen a 3 year old sipping some beer in Munich in a beer house. Amusingly, neither of the countries really has binge drinking culture as the UK or US has so

>but we set drinking ages for a reason

is not really true...

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