h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, now that depends on the period we're talking about. There was a time when you could get a decent cuppa, and in a china cup, at railway stations, but knowing BG as I do he'll be talking about the plastic cup era.

Any road up. I tried the yeast/beer experiment for the first time last night, and the results are... inconclusive.

I lined up a 22oz bottle of Great Divide Oak Aged Yeti Russian imperial stout (9.5% ABV) and then added water to a teaspoon of active dry yeast in a glass. It's... not easy to drink that stuff It takes a lot of stirring and swirling and refilling the glass before it's all gone, and it tastes pretty unpleasant, but I didn't get anywhere as near as of a drunk from the beer as I was expecting (I had a little yeasty top-up half way through the bottle), and it didn't make me fall asleep for a couple of hours on the sofa as a bottle of beer of that nature inevitably would.

But.

I don't know for sure if the yeast metabolised the alcohol in my stomach, or if it was because of the copious amounts of water I had to drink in order to get the yeast down Plus, on the not-falling-asleep front, I was watching something particularly riveting so that might have kept me awake.

More research is called for, but I have a feeling this is going to be very difficult to do in a pub, even a pub like the one I'm going to on Tuesday which has a water station, and especially without drawing a lot of curious stares.

can't you just drink the bucket of the yeast stuff, before you go out to the pub, or does it need to be being consumed, during the drinking session? You are on a noble and worthy quest, and we wish you well with your research and endevours in the furtherment of human kinds well-being

The article says to drink a teaspoon of yeast in water before each beer. I don't know how long liquid remains in the stomach after you drink it. I suppose if you're drinking slowly, or perhaps if you're drinking shorts, that might not be a factor

Jim Koch mixes his yeast with a bit of yogurt.

http://www.businessinsider.com/yeast-key-to-drinking-without-getting-drunk-2014-4

And it says yoghurt in the Esquire piece too. Now why did I think it was water? To be honest though, I'm not sure I want to eat yoghurt before drinking a pint, and that's going to be even more difficult to do in a pub or a bar.

Hmmm.... maybe there is a market for yeast coated pork scratchings... or chrisps?

One to watch out for...

http://www.businessinsider.com/brewers-yeast-gut-infection-gets-you-drunk-2013-9

>>Koch told me that for years he has swallowed your standard Fleischmann’s dry yeast before he drinks, stirring the white powdery substance in with some yogurt to make it more palatable.

“One teaspoon per beer, right before you start drinking.”<<

There's the relevant part. I understood it that you take the yeast before you start drinking. If you reckon you're going to get through 4 pints, you take 4 tsp of the yeast just before you go out, and you should be fine for the first 4 pints. Not one teaspoon before each pint.

I wonder what Snopes will find out for us.

So it's not water, it's yoghurt, and you don't have one before each drink, you figure out how many drinks you might have and then have that many teaspoons-worth.

It's a bloody good job I don't work at NASA.

I'm still not sure about that second part. Firstly, if I'm going to drink five pints, that means a quantity of yoghurt with five teaspoons of active dry yeast mixed in (which isn't actually a powder - it's tiny little pellets, rather like the ones in the Contac 400 capsules), to be consumed before the session starts . Secondly, by the time you're on your third or fourth pint I'd imagine that most of the yeast will have exited the stomach (together with the first two or three pints) and be in the small intestine. I reckon a top-up will be required before then.

I used to love that Contac 400 ad

Also, 'one pint of beer'.... what beer?; a 3.4% pint of soemthing light.... or a 9.5% pint of something heavy? there's a bit of a differnce I'm glad your doing the research... not me and this evil hangover I have from last night, is, probably more down to the six cans of Guinness I had after* the pub, and not the err, four or five pints of whatever that beer with the New Zealand hops was called.... 'soemthing' Kiwi I think...

Now, to go shopping and buy food whilst starving hungry and hungover... always a good plan if I wanna get more than I need

Yeah, you need to make note of your hangover as well, as that's one of the possible side effects of this regimen, that it can increase some of the compounds that cause some of a hangover's nasty effects. So it could leave you gassy and miserable the next day.

Myth busted (if a little unscientifically) http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/07/10/327854051/alcohol-test-does-eating-yeast-keep-you-from-getting-drunk

"As for our results with water, we were able to show that drinking enough of it might lower your BAC below what it would normally be. Why? We think the explanation is simple: The water dilutes the alcohol in your stomach."
Er, is it just me or is that blindingly obvious?

Well, sort of, but not necessarily.

You're still drinking the same amount of alcohol. If the alcohol were some other type of toxin, I could see where the amount of water consumed with it wouldn't matter. Say instead of alcohol, you were drinking ethylene glycol. While it may not be toxic in low concentrations, I think after a certain amount is consumed, the amount of dilution becomes rather irrelevant once enough has been ingested to cause renal failure.

(I could be quite wrong about the science and physiology of the ethylene glycol, but my point is that with some substances, the amount of dilution isn't as important as the overall amount of the toxin.)

Now, that's not the case with alcohol so yeah, it is rather obvious, but I just wanted to make the point that it could have been counter intuitive.


That all said, I've recently started keeping a full glass of water while drinking beer. Especially when I'm at a craft beer bar.

Speaking of which, I really enjoyed this article that the above article links to about session beers.

http://allaboutbeer.com/article/session-beer-revolution/

I do hope to see more session beers available. But I agree with some of the statements in the article. I don't consider anything above 5% ABV to be a "session" beer.

To me, having grown up on British beer, even 4% is pushing it, but I'll go to 4½. I'm very pleased to see a growing session beer movement here though, and it just so happens that some of the tastiest and most refreshing summer beers are low in ABV, such as Austin Beerworks Einhorn and Jester King Petit Prince

For a decent length session 3.5 - 4% is fine.

Yep, that's perfect. I can't drink (good) beer here for the length of session I used to. We'd usually go to the pub around 7.00 - 7.30 and stay until closing time (11.00), and get through five or six pints (20oz). That would get me nicely tipsy, and leave me with almost no after effects next morning. It's often not possible to do that here without getting well and truly trousered, and suffering next morning, because the bar might not have anything decent that's less than 6%, certainly nothing below 5%. And that's even though US pints are only 16oz. I drink beer because I like it, not to get bladdered.

I used to drink a lot of Sex in a Canoe, otherwise known as Coors Light. I called it my maintenance beer. I could drink it all day and just maintain a nice buzz.

It is hard to find good session beers over here as well these days all the brewers seem to want to produce brews at 5%+
I therefore make a point of seeking out good tasting session beers especially mild and consuming a decent amount when found.

Even so old age is creeping up, it takes me a lot longer to shake off the effects of a heavy night than it used too

Baron
Our equivalent in keg form was "Watney's Starlight" aka "love in a punt" bitter which as far as we could make out was pulled directly from the Thames at Mortlake and barrelled as is.

But years ago all brewers seemed to do at least one beer with an og of around 1035 roughly 3.3% abv which was well suited for popping in for a pint on your way home from work only to end up catching the last bus home after closing time

Its supprising what a few extra .1's of percentage make, even over a relatively short session... Had four pints in the pub last night, only thing they had I could fancy drinking (and which wasn't over 5%), was a 4.1% beer... which was OK (about the right sort of thing, for warm summers evenign in fact), but... four pints over, well, about two hours, if I'd been on something about 3.5 or 3.6, I'd not have had any ill afects the next day Mind, the tins of Guinness after the pub, were probably not helping much