Why does home brew make me squiffy?

[Clint]

No,please...I do like to read posts from people who know their stuff ...everyone can learn! I personally pick out the bits I think I can use and understand but do have some reservations about messing with stuff others make look easy...me + plumbing for instance!!
And as you have deduced...some of us aren't too serious!

 

[DrGMc]

And as you have deduced...some of us aren't too serious!

Life is way too short to be serious (unless you're paid to be) so drink beer and enjoy

 

[ACBEV]

Can't remember the name, but a few people have a condition that brews any sugar in the stomach into alcohol after drinking beer with live yeast. This doesn't happen with spirits, wine or dead beer.

 

[kelper]

actually just out of interest - and I know its a strange question but - are you the genotype that can metabolise sugar easily?
The simple test is to put a plain cracker (or a bit of it) in your mouth and chew it (without swallowing) until you can taste sweetness. Does it happen within 20 seconds or less?
or are you the genotype that does not metabolise sugars well and actually it takes ages (minutes) or you never actually taste the sweetness as you chew a cracker (jacob's although other brands are available)

My money is on the fact that you do not metbolise sugars well but lets see.

I taste sweetness in about twenty seconds.

 

[xozzx]

I have different tolerance to different drinks. I can easily finish a bottle of white wine and still feel fairly fresh, a bottle of red and Im pretty hammered. A few G&Ts and I am getting there. I drink mostly beer and seem to have a decent tolerance to it, can have 4 or 5 on a work night and still be ok.

 

[Zephyr259]

I'm similar, beer gets me drunk faster than whisky and wine but it's probably an environmental effect and not realising the different speeds they get consumed at. I used to find that red wine got me mellow/merry but then I stayed that way even if I continued to drink all afternoon/evening. Beer just keeps climbing and I'm unpleasantly drunk after 3 pints (lightweight). I worked out that at one of the whisky tastings I got to we were served 8.5 units over 2.5 hrs (plus a small meal) and that leaves me merry but not "oh dear, the room's spinning."

 

[simon12]

When I was a teenager getting drunk in parks we started on supermarket 2-3l bottles of cider as we built up some tolerence we moved onto super strength cider so you don't have to drink or carry as much volume. After we could drink in excess of 4 cans of 8% cider we went off it and moved to super strength lager on although it was about the same strength we got about twice as drunk at 1st. So my theory is you can build tolerance to fruit alcohol that doesn't count with grain alcohol but I can think of no scientific reason why this is the case.

 

[-Bezza-]

I definitely get drunk quicker on beer and also a different type of drunk.

I wonder if it's something to do with the pace of drinking beer vs other drinks? Or perhaps something to do with osmosis meaning alcohol in beer transfers to the blood more easily because it's weaker?

 

[simon12]

Noy scientific but heres an article about drinks affecting you differently though it doesn't say more or less drunk just different drunk with no explanation https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320128.php

 

[kelper]

I wonder if homebrew contains other alcohol apart from ethanol?

 

[-Bezza-]

Or perhaps something to do with osmosis meaning alcohol in beer transfers to the blood more easily because it's weaker?

I'm talking ********. This theory would suggest you would get more drunk by drinking water after alcohol.

 

[phildo79]

As a man that doesn't get hangovers, I was shocked when I started getting them a while back. However, I would only get them after drinking a few of my latest HB. 2 or 3 pints (and nothing else) would be enough to give me a thumping headache the following morning. This is not normal. Not for me, anyway.

I then got chatting to a fella that owns a bar and he said that if he has 3 or 4 pints of Carlsberg, he feels rat-arsed. However, if he drinks, Bud, Coors, Fosters, Hieniken etc. he feels fine. This got me thinking. Why would a beer at 3.8% get someone drunk after 4 pints but a beer of the same ABV, or slightly stronger, not get him drunk after 4 pints?

It's a head scratcher but I put it down to brain chemistry. All of the above mentioned beers are fairly similar apart from one thing - hops. Perhaps whatever hop they use in Carlsberg just doesn't agree with this fella? Perhaps the hops I used in my HB (Azacca and El Dorado) just didn't agree with me? We've all heard stories / know someone that just shouldn't drink vodka / whiskey / gin etc. because it 'doesn't agree with them'. They either throw up, feel rough the next day, get drunk quicker, get confrontational etc.

Makes you wonder what is so different about that particular drink. Perhaps it's the person drinking it that is different?

 

[nottsbl]

I'm a seasoned drinker*. I enjoy a couple of GT's before dinner, maybe a glass of wine with dinner and a single-malt whisky in the evening; but these don't make me light-headed, they just make me feel mellow. But a pint or two of Woodforde's Wherry or Norfolk Nog and I feel quite squiffy.

does anyone else experience this? Is there any explanation? I think it '''is related to how long the drink is held in the mouth, savouring the flavour, but that might be rubbish.

* only in Winter, Spring. Summer and Autumn.

This is an interesting question: I'm also "seasoned" as in 4 decades of dedicated ****-artistry, but now I've retired and started brewing kits (also a few AG and BIAB, but this applies only to kits, don't get the same effect at all from ag/biab), I find all kits get me drunk quicker and more seriously than any other form of beer. I also find they give me a different kind of hangover - not worse, better often, deep dreamless sleep. I do measure strength (OG / FG etc) so its not that. I do approach all kits with caution, none of them are a summer-day-in-the-garden-session-beer!

 

[nottsbl]

Makes you wonder what is so different about that particular drink. Perhaps it's the person drinking it that is different?

Big thumbs up to this. i had a drinking pal who could drink vodka by the gallon on a night out and would keel over if he started on beer - I was just the opposite (spirits vs. beer vs. wine thing? After a few goes in my early years, i never touched spirits or wine in volume - frightening hangovers - but a lot of people seem ok with same amounts by alc vol).

 

[Drunkula]

@nottsbl yes, me too. I can do this fast in/out thing with vodka where I can drink it and get really smashed but then be out the other side in an hour or two.

For the other parts of this thread gas bubbles in booze kinda tickle your belly pipes and let alcohol get to your nethers quicker and you get more drunk faster. This is genuinely true but I'm toning down the technicals because reasons.

 

[An Ankoù]

@nottsbl yes, me too. I can do this fast in/out thing with vodka where I can drink it and get really smashed but then be out the other side in an hour or two.

For the other parts of this thread gas bubbles in booze kinda tickle your belly pipes and let alcohol get to your nethers quicker and you get more drunk faster. This is genuinely true but I'm toning down the technicals because reasons.

Still cider is the one to beware of. I've sat in the garden of the Square and Compass drinking Charlie's cider on more than one occasion, it's about 6% abv, I think. I've been absolutely clear headed, but getting up to get my round in, found it difficult to get the undercarriage to respond. I've drunk enough stuff to know when I'm p1ssed, and have always found this to be an odd phenomenon. Yes, the alcohol does rise to the head in due course, and with a vengeance. Anybody else experienced this?

 

[DrGMc]

I taste sweetness in about twenty seconds.

hum scuppered that thought then - way to quick for an impact from sugar loading - must be one of the other factors then, but as you use a commercial malt its unlikely to be from the malting and correct cooling of the wort - you'd need to be putting boiling water direct in the tin of malt for that to start ...
Next candidate then might be the yeast and what its doing (is it in date, has it been stored well, di it have enough oxygen to start growth, did it go through a "heat-shock" cycle {wow that is a fascinating subject and key to how the human papilloma virus treatment started ... another story} was it growing at a steady temperature or going up and down, did it mutate during the ned of fermenting phase ...
Oh hell the geek in me is coming out ...

 

[DrGMc]

I wonder if homebrew contains other alcohol apart from ethanol?

OMG YES !!!
You can get all sorts of alcohols in home brew - you intend to have just ethanol but you can get traces of methanol (now a days yeast is better understood and that tendancy has been 'selected' out),
propanol
isobutanol
amylalcohol

and when these combine with organic acids in the beer you can create "fusel" alcohols (esters) which give those funny flavours 'fruity' being the common description ...

 

[kelper]

OMG YES !!!
You can get all sorts of alcohols in home brew - you intend to have just ethanol but you can get traces of methanol (now a days yeast is better understood and that tendancy has been 'selected' out),
propanol
isobutanol
amylalcohol

But do these also make you tipsy?

 

[The Baron]

just another thing to add to the other alcohol mix. If the yeast has not been given enough time to clean up properly do we think that the impurities created by fermentation may have some bearing on this also