Absinthe

[[40oz]]

Originally Posted by [40oz]

I don't know what it is about it.

Just talked to a friend who happens to also brew semi professionally, since I wanted to educate myself.

He says for beer, it is usually the quality of the yeast and the quality control of the brewing process. He searched the web and pointed me at an article he thought was good and fairly accurate. Here is a quote from it:

One answer is...happy yeast. Yeast, the oldest domesticated organism, is the magic beastie that turns sugar into ethanol. There are many strains that are better or worse for producing beer, bread, champagne, cider, sake, wine, and all the precursors to distilled products --except tequila. (We'll come back to that later).

Yeast, like any other organism, is subject to stress. Malnutrition, overcrowding, overwork, and temperature extremes all stress yeast as much as it will people. And like people, yeast under stress tends to behave badly and unpredictably.

A happy yeast cell is one surrounded by easily fermentable sugars, plenty of other nutrients, room to grow and reproduce, and enough other yeast around to conquer all the other microscopic bugs in the neighborhood. A good fermentation consists of happy yeast using specialized enzymes to catalyze the conversion of simple sugars to ethanol and carbon dioxide.

If, however, something isn't quite right, things take a nasty turn. Say someone lets the temperature get too high to speed things up, or tries to skimp by using cheap malt diluted with rice or corn. The individual yeast cells begin hoarding nutrients, rendering them unavailable to the newly budded cells. The new cells, which soon exponentially outnumber the originals, don't sit idly by while starved for amino acids or vitamins; they make these from scratch, starting with glucose.

This is fine until the sugar runs out or ethanol reaches levels toxic to the cells themselves. These compounds are converted into alcohols and aldehydes and put back into your beverage.

By now these compounds aren't the relatively benign ethanol and acetaldehyde. Now we're dealing fusel oil and its breakdown products, which are much more toxic than ethanol and acetaldehyde, so mere trace amounts have a much higher potential for hair-hurt syndrome. The bad news about fusel oil is that it's the worst offender in causing please-kill-me-now hangovers; the good news is that we can pick what we drink to avoid it.

Red wine is fermented warm for the first few days to enhance color extraction, which explains why reds tend to get you worse than whites. In general, we can say that the stronger a beer or wine, the more stress the yeast was subjected to and the more fusel oil produced. We now have enough information to explain why cheap corn beer produces a worse hangover than good microbrews or imports. An important exception is "lite" beer, which is essentially diluted malt liquor and is therefore worse than the full-calorie version of the same beer. Typically, cheaper production produces worse hangovers due to economic concerns such as: it's cheaper to ferment warm than to ferment refrigerated; it's not worth maintaining a laboratory to monitor pre-distillation fermentations, or it's cheaper to dilute the grape pressings with table sugar and water than more grape juice.

Another factor to take into account is how the product has been handled. The natural oxidation or staling product of ethanol is acetaldehyde. This means stale beer or wine is worse than fresh. Yes, the jug-o-red that your family finished half of on Thanksgiving did give you a headache when you finished it at Christmas. Yes, the beer that was in your trunk for a week and that day-old keg of brew really did give you a brain-splitter. Otherwise, as far as draft versus bottled goes, draft is generally safer than bottled or canned because it's generally kept cold and has a better surface area to volume ratio, which means it stays fresh longer as long as it doesn't get air in it.

Full article here:

http://weeklywire.com/ww/01-04-99/tw_chow.html

[wilbunk]

Thank you for that post 40oz, that was enlightning. im a drinker and i thought that was interesting.

[[40oz]]

Glad someone read it =)

I do enjoy the occasional educational mission. Why just last night I went out to sample different beers at different bars in the name of having just read this article. Wish I remember what I had.

[shaddrach]

Booze can effect different people different ways. Myself, I am hypoglycemic, so if I party down hard core, I will regret it the next day, my blood sugar will be all messed up, up and down all day. I will get the shakes and sweats, dizziness, hunger and all kinds of other things. But I have never had a real hangover that consisted of a headache and vomiting. Usually I will be starving, make a sandwich and only eat two bites. And its funny cause I can feel my blood sugar go low and high. This can happen from a 6 pack of beer and the exact same effect from a 6 pack and a 5th of whiskey, its always the same, same duration (usually 24 hours), same feelings, sensations and vertigo.

So, while I think I may have only had one or two hang overs in my entire life, when my hypoglycemia got worse in my mid twenties and I had to take blood sugar tests, thats when my hangovers so to speak got the way they are today. Wish I was young again lol!

[Crysva]

absinthe is illegal in the united states.

[Deflator]

Originally Posted by Crysva

absinthe is illegal in the united states.

You might want to read the thread.