How much beer do you drink daily?

i find myself not drinking as much as i use to. use to be about 5 maybe 6 per day every day. now i usually have 2-3 a day mon-thur/fri. on the weekends it's may be about 3-5 per day.

i must say, not only am i suprised to hear such low amounts, but also suprised to hear people saying they might be "naughty" for 15 pints a week.

i am in the camp that people should drink as much as they damn well want as long as things are met:
1:you get your S$%^ done! (as in you're a responsible adult)
2:you don't get obese due to drinking
3:you are safe

i have always felt alcohol has a terrible rep in this country and i blame the puritanical roots.
every non-workday, i drink wine within two hours or so of waking up, so around 9. little glass of cabernet to start my day, delicious. my wife usually joins me, but sometimes she will start her day with an IPA. only wine for me in the morning (or still cider) then i will proceed to drink throughout most of the day and night, although never quickly and i don't typically get drunk.

people have called me an old italian grandpa before because i drink wine in the morning, i'm ok with that, even though i am well under 40 and have no kids.

that said, i drink 2 beers after work usually then have around 2 glasses of wine. sometimes 3. weekends are a whole different ballgame and i don't have a clue, nor do i care, what it all adds up to.

as far as going without....
one time a few years back i had a really bad cold, i actually had to take cold medicine for it, i didnt drink anything for two days.

frydogbrews said:

i am in the camp that people should drink as much as they damn well want as long as things are met:
1:you get your S$%^ done! (as in you're a responsible adult)
2:you don't get obese due to drinking
3:you are safe

Click to expand...

I met all your criteria above for a long time... until a liver enzyme test showed levels that were above normal. You should add another health bullet to your list, obesity/weight gain isn't the only bad thing that alcohol can cause...

alcohol can cause dozens of things, but is it likely to? i'm sorry for your health problems, but everything you eat goes through your liver, not just booze. do you eat processed foods? lots of top tier predator fish? excessive coffee? commercial (and diabetic) cows? all those things hurt your liver much more than beer/wine/cider etc...now hard liquor is a different matter. livers don't like hard liquor.
check out alcohol consumption by nations, we are near the very bottom because of our archaic views of alcohol (have a drink alone and you're a raging alcoholic!!!)
one of the few things i appreciate about europe is the view on alcohol, it's not a huge deal. that and their views on nudity!

frydogbrews said:

...(have a drink alone and you're a raging alcoholic!!!)
one of the few things i appreciate about europe is the view on alcohol, it's not a huge deal. that and their views on nudity!

Click to expand...

I totally agree with you on all this. So-called "alcoholic" behavior includes just one time ever saying "man, I need a beer". That's ridiculous. And of course theres the over-arching "you're in denial" that self-righteous people use to label EVERYONE an alcoholic.

All I meant by my previous post is that there are other reasons why people choose not to drink all day, every day. I wish I could, but those days are behind me now. Other than my beer, I live a near perfect lifestyle health-wise, including frequent and intense training. But you can't control every response your body has to the things you put in it.

Edwort .....I'm coming over for breakfast that looks really good !!!

this is true, and those are very good points. i probably shouldn't have gone off on a rant as i did, and i apologize if it came off as combatant, that was not my goal. the views on alcohol in this country drive me crazy and has long been a thorn in my side.

I average 1-2 12 oz bottles a night but sometimes I have none and other days like saturday I may have 4 or so ..... I like to moderate so I feel good but not so much I feel bloated or sick to my stomach.

I was drinking a pint or two every night when I first got my kegging setup. Started dieting since then and now I only have a pint or 2 1 or 2 days a week, and usually on Fridays and Saturdays.

I'm at 3-4 on weeknights and 6-9 on friday and saturday. I go back and forth as to whether or not it's too much. i get my s**t done and am pretty active except for when i'm sitting at my desk all week so i don't feel too bad about it. beer just tastes so d*mn good.

1 or 2, sometimes more, sometimes none.

frydogbrews said:

now hard liquor is a different matter. livers don't like hard liquor.

Click to expand...

Source? I'm skeptical about that claim. Ethanol is ethanol is ethanol, and it's the EtOH that causes liver problems. Beer and wine just contain it in more diluted amounts, but a standard 1.5 oz shot of 80 proof liquor contains the exact same amount of EtOH as a 12 oz 5% beer.

As to whether 2/day is unhealthy, that's also debatable. It's the European health agencies that consider healthy consumption to be 4-6 per day, right?

it depends on my day at work

one day can be 0
the next can be 7

its a crap shoot

realjd said:

Source? I'm skeptical about that claim. Ethanol is ethanol is ethanol, and it's the EtOH that causes liver problems. Beer and wine just contain it in more diluted amounts, but a standard 1.5 oz shot of 80 proof liquor contains the exact same amount of EtOH as a 12 oz 5% beer.

As to whether 2/day is unhealthy, that's also debatable. It's the European health agencies that consider healthy consumption to be 4-6 per day, right?

Click to expand...

lol well for me i will drink more alcohol if its hard liquor because i dont get a full stomach on shots and then the next day sucks

I often drink 2 to 3 Beers a day as i have to check the taste that i make at my home. If there is any special occasion i never count that how many beers i drank.

jjanderton said:

I often drink 2 to 3 Beers a day as i have to check the taste that i make at my home. If there is any special occasion i never count that how many beers i drank.

Click to expand...

How many have you had so far.

frydogbrews said:

i must say, not only am i suprised to hear such low amounts, but also suprised to hear people saying they might be "naughty" for 15 pints a week.

i am in the camp that people should drink as much as they damn well want as long as things are met:
1:you get your S$%^ done! (as in you're a responsible adult)
2:you don't get obese due to drinking
3:you are safe

i have always felt alcohol has a terrible rep in this country and i blame the puritanical roots.
every non-workday, i drink wine within two hours or so of waking up, so around 9. little glass of cabernet to start my day, delicious. my wife usually joins me, but sometimes she will start her day with an IPA. only wine for me in the morning (or still cider) then i will proceed to drink throughout most of the day and night, although never quickly and i don't typically get drunk.

people have called me an old italian grandpa before because i drink wine in the morning, i'm ok with that, even though i am well under 40 and have no kids.

that said, i drink 2 beers after work usually then have around 2 glasses of wine. sometimes 3. weekends are a whole different ballgame and i don't have a clue, nor do i care, what it all adds up to.

as far as going without....
one time a few years back i had a really bad cold, i actually had to take cold medicine for it, i didnt drink anything for two days.

Click to expand...

I doubt anyone on this board, even those of us who only drink 0-2 a day, suffers much from a puritan anti-alcoholism influence. I try to have at least one a day (after all, beer IS good for you) but with three kids under 10 (and one under 1mo) I can't afford to fall asleep on the couch at 9 pm.

Most of us also have jobs where drinking on the job isn't possible. Alcoholism IS real and employers can't have policies that are half measures - there's just no way to enforce a maximum BAC level or anything like that.

(My non-medical PoV) I think re: livers, it's the total BAC level that matters most. After all, the liver is designed to process stuff... it's when you're giving it too much to do at one time that damages it.

Thus I'll stick with 0-2, except once in a while on days off when I have something during the day.

I think some people here drink far too much. Think about it, if your immune system is using up all your vitamin c etc to process alcohol, what is left to protect yourself from other things like all the chemicals on our food (research has shown washing food before eating only removes up to 50% of pesticides and as little as 7%!)

Also a lot of drink addiction is down to habits, not necessarily gettin smashed but getting hooked on the sugar in it as our bodies are designed to crave simple forms of energy... hence children having a sweet tooth as sweet usually means good source of carbohydrate and not poisonous.

Airborneguy said:

I met all your criteria above for a long time... until a liver enzyme test showed levels that were above normal. You should add another health bullet to your list, obesity/weight gain isn't the only bad thing that alcohol can cause...

Click to expand...

I'm in your club too.... I thought it was from the alcohol as well the doc said he actually felt it had nothing to do with my drinking though as I only consumed at that point maybe 2 per night and never hard liquor. I hate to break it to all of us but in my case it ended up being my diet that raised my liver enzymes (ALT) you believe it Mcdonalds is more toxic to our bodies than beer !!!! point being everytime you hear about liver damage don;t jump straight to the beer look at the whole picture but if you have a good diet are otherwise healthy and still have liver enzyme issues ..... yeah cut back or quit for a while !!!!!

Around 2-3 per day.

beerloaf

alcohol is not all the same, ethanol is not all the same. you have to look at aldehyde chains. so basically, the chains in wine are much longer; beer and hard liquor are much shorter. the length of the chain determines how long it takes your liver to "unravel" it and break it down. now, when i learned all this, it was way before i started drinking ciders, so i am very curious how cider fits in here. are all aldehyde chains from fruit longer? i don't know. this is why red wine can leave you drunk for much longer than beer or hard liquor. it takes the liver longer to work through the puzzle, which oddly enough, is why it is probably the best alcohol for your body. (think: chewing your food longer is better for you)
when i said that livers don't like hard liquor, i meant straight. mix it with juice or something, and it's the same as beer. when you take a shot of bourbon, it begins to get absorbed at your lips, then tongue, throat and stomach lining. when it hits the stomach, hopefully there is some food or other drink in there to dilute it with, otherwise your in for a rough time.
like i said before, food damages your liver far more than beer/wine/cider. eat good food, lots of fiber and fruits/veg, and stop all the processed junk, and drink away. i realize that most here don't have the puritanical views of alcohol, but it did seem to pop up in a few posts.
here are some link to what i was talking about in regards to aldehyde chains. not too much research on beer, but lots on wine. the amounts of the chains in the alcohol depend on how happy your yeast is and can vary, but the biggest thing is that wine has way way more than anything else.

http://books.google.com/books?id=q_...AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=aldehyde chain wine&f=false

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bk-1998-0714.ch013

http://www.megazyme.com/downloads/en/data/K-ACHYD.pdf

lestershy said:

3-4 sitting around at home, and up to 9 when I go out. Damn, I might just be an alcoholic.

Click to expand...

The word "alcoholic" is a funny thing because it means alot of different things to different people.

I've known folks who believe that someone that drinks occasionally to "have a problem" with alcohol. I've known folks who drank, to what I would consider excess, stop with no complications because they ran out or just decided they had something better to do.

Mostly it's something that should be defined by whether it's an addiction, if there's a compulsion that you're unable to control and if it's having a significantly negative impact on your life yet you still are able to justify your consumption.

For years I wondered if I had a problem with drinking. Then one night I was hanging out and some friends swung by and it turned into an all-night challenge to see how many towns we could play frisbee in before the sun came up. In the morning I realized that I hadn't had anything to drink but coffee and water. An alcoholic doesn't just "forget" to drink. It's a compulsion. It never goes away.

For the record, I have about a pint a night. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But on average it comes out to about a pint a night.

2 to 3 a day, weekends 5 to 6. then it's brew time on sundays. hehe.

Roughly 1 per night, more on the weekends. I drink what I brew and I brew roughly every 6 weeks; 5 gallon batches & this rate includes sharing with buddies on weekends.

Pray, fast, practice moderation and discipline in all aspects of life & saying no to beer when it's not appropriate will be simple. And saying YES to beer when it is appropriate will be grand!

blackbear219 said:

When I was a kid it was illegal to sell alcohol here before noon on Sundays and a couple townies used to do that. Cough syrup, also. Nasty.

Click to expand...

I worked as a security guard in college in MN and dealt with a lot of homeless drunks. We always noticed their minty fresh breath on Sunday, when it is illegal to sell liquor in MN.

thom said:

I worked as a security guard in college in MN and dealt with a lot of homeless drunks. We always noticed their minty fresh breath on Sunday, when it is illegal to sell liquor in MN.

Click to expand...

That's bad when you can't plan ahead even one day and save some for Sunday and have to resort to something else, which is probably more expensive to boot...unless you steal it of course.

i went to college in western illinois and you couldn't buy alcohol in that county on sundays (unless it was in a restaurant). we always tried to plan ahead, sometimes it worked, sometimes we had to drive all the way across the county to the neighboring county and buy some beer there.
other times we just got inebriated in other ways, you know, like holding our breathe, yeah....

Usually about 2-3 a night during the week. Some days I have 0 and other days I have a few more. Like last night I mowed the grass after work and ended up downing 2 SN Pale Ales and 4 SA Boston Lagers. Hate to see what happens once my first homebrew batch is ready to drink. Weekends, all bets are off.

A different question.... How much weight have you gained since you started home brewing? About 8 pounds here.

actually lost weight because i drink less, its just much better beer. but i'm only two years in...

No weight gain here. I did all that after graduating and getting chained to a desk 40 hours/week.

I like to joke that I keep my keg in the basement so I get excersize going down stairs & back up just to get a beer. Then I add in a boastful tone that I climb the equivalent of the Empire State building every night!

I'm like most here drinking only one or two pints a day. But when the weekend come and no work then it goes up to 6-10 the higher if the guys are over.

I work a four week swing shift, so my drinking is super random. When I get off thirds I might have three or four in the morning while I'm sitting in my home office (I own a small business as well). Then I might go several days to a week with none. Then its five or six a night for a week.

Usually just a chilled out pint a day, few on weekends. never really drink until i'm wasted, but I did go to a stag do yesterday and knock back 2 cocktail pitchers :s

Twice as much when my ac breaks and I pay weekend service call fees

Jklinden said:

Twice as much when my ac breaks and I pay weekend service call fees

Click to expand...

at least you didn't drink 3 times as much and then try and fix it yourself. that's generally how i would do it. just to be clear, i would fail miserably at my attempt and end up costing me more money in the end. if identifying a problem is the first step to curing it, why am i not cured yet!!!!!

3-6 12 oz beers a day.

IrishBrewer74 said:

A different question.... How much weight have you gained since you started home brewing? About 8 pounds here.

Click to expand...

Thats a tough one.... just associated with drinking beer, I'd say maybe 10Lbs over a year. I guess that's what happens when I stop drinking "Lite" beer and drink better stuff.

At 6'2 I was a consistent 180lbs until I hit 40 or so. No mater what I ate or drank. The last 6-7 years, with increased homebrew and craft beer consumption I was pushing 200. I made a new years resolution this year, which I almost never do. For every beer I drink I have to run 2 miles or bike 5. I can drink as much as I want, but I have to pay for it. I'm over 1500 miles on the bike and 300 running year to date. And down to 185lb. And really enjoying good beer. 1-2 weekdays, 3-4 weekends.

HopBomb said:

At 6'2 I was a consistent 180lbs until I hit 40 or so. No mater what I ate or drank. The last 6-7 years, with increased homebrew and craft beer consumption I was pushing 200. I made a new years resolution this year, which I almost never do. For every beer I drink I have to run 2 miles or bike 5. I can drink as much as I want, but I have to pay for it. I'm over 1500 miles on the bike and 300 running year to date. And down to 185lb. And really enjoying good beer. 1-2 weekdays, 3-4 weekends.

Click to expand...

Tell me about it drinking twice as much makes me work twice as hard for my reward afterwards, damn that reward but it shure is worth that kind of goal.
Sometimes its salad and some beer or snacking and a bunch of beer for supper ,nothing big anymore just more beer. Go crazy on the water though.