Monday, September 06, 2010

The Great Light Beer Challenge of 2010

Many doctors have given me permission to stop trying to get healthier and start relaxing and enjoying my remaining years, but old habits die hard. According to the doctors and Web MD, they strongly recommend you do / do not mix alcohol and diabetes because the effects will definitely / possibly cause your blood sugars to spike / plummet / remain unaffected, two of which could kill you, and most of the doctors agree that is bad. However, on one topic they do agree, and that is if you are a beer drinker, you should be a light beer drinker.

I've never been a big fan of light beer because I think, if you're going to drink beer, it might as well have a little taste and booze in it. If I carelessly run out of the German beers I like, I'm forced to fall back on the Coors Light I keep for people who don't like my normal stuff, and there's just no beer in that beer. To me, most mainstream American beers taste like fermented sewage anyway. But when I saw that Sam Adams Light was on sale (still more expensive than my regular brands), I thought maybe what I needed was a better class of light beer and so I bought a twelve pack.

Since I never know how my body is going to react to anything new, I save all trials for Saturday night after I've had a day of rest, but don't have to get up early for work the next day. So last Saturday I performed my normal ritual, namely sitting in front of my computer with a beer while playing Dragon Age. I can honestly say the Sam Adams Light did not taste bad. In fact, it barely had any taste at all. It had all the flavor of a rice cake, or maybe liquid cardboard. But I had paid for it and it was drinkable, so I focused on my game.

I have a strict formula for determining the number of beers I need to get tipsy and kill the pain while still staying lucid enough to fight evil monsters effectively, which is x-1, where x represents the point where I make a careless remark, embark on a gay relationship with an elf, and then get myself and my companions killed. With my Warsteiner (330ml, or about 11.2 oz each), that number is precisely "about three". (yes, I know I'm a light-weight drinker) So, I played DA and managed to kill the right people and have sex with the right people, and I went to bed feeling okay and not really sure about the whole light beer thing but still willing to try another brand in the future.

Sunday I awoke after 1 PM with the worst hangover I've had since I was young and healthy enough to handle them, then I spent the rest of day in bed (and still feel sick today). When I felt well enough, I checked the rinsed-out empties to see what X-1 had equaled, and found it was nine. NINE! I couldn't handle nine beers at once when I was in the Army and rampant alcoholism was considered manly.

So, to recap: I paid more for this beer, drank three times as much, probably consumed more calories, felt no drunker during the evening, felt much sicker the day after, and to top it off the stuff tasted like watered-down seltzer.

So ends the great light beer challenge of 2010.

6 comments:

Jay said...

The great thing about light beer is how much of I can drink in one sitting. Wait. That was a bad thing? I'm confused.

tiff said...

Drinking that many light beers probably/might/won't piss off your doctors.

Why not just toss back a couple of shots of whiskey and call it good?

Captain Dumbass said...

I've never tried a light beer and don't plan to. Ever.


Bunny.

Maundering mutterer said...

Light beer is an abomination. I like the strong, Belgian ones which one rarely ever gets in this country.

If you've to look after your health, go with the whiskey as tiff suggests.

Ugh, I WOULD read this today when I'm horribly hung over from trying to get a hot asian chick drunk enough to take her clothes off so I could photograph her for you.

Avitable said...

Switch to vodka.

Grant said...

Jay - it's great for flushing out the kidneys.

tiff - yes, I think I'll switch to bourbon for my health.

Captain Dumbass - it's an abomination, kind of like suggesting a Satanic Mass for a church outing.

Maundering mutterer - good luck with getting a bunny drunk. Try sake.

Avitable - vodka and tequila make me sick. That must be the problem with light beer. I need to stick with darker colored booze, like amber bock and bourbon.