I've wet my bed after drinking alot of water after boozing up. Nothing worse than than waking up at 4am wondering what that warm wet feeling is, but I've found it's usually pure water (ie no wee smell) that comes out of you assuming you didn't eat anything before sleep.
(1) what temp do you ferment your beer at? if it's too high, you are going to create fusel alcohols (longer chains), and these will lead to hangovers.
lowest is usually 20c upto 26c, within that range.
(2) I'm betting that your homebrew is much higher in alcohol than commercial beer.
Not much more, I will get just as drunk off a commerical sixpack as a HB sixpack. I think commercial beer has more unfermentable sugars so that keeps up the bodies strength to process the alcohol, my hb is very thin and never keeps a head on it and has little unfermented sugars left as I use more water per extract can than recommended but with more sugar. I get 1 extra gallon of beer for the little cost of extra sugar which I thnk is very good. I also do not eat when I drink. I read that drinking strong cordial before bed will help starve off a hangover, as the body uses the sugar to help the body to breakdown the alcohol while your asleep.
(3) the runs are caused by the yeast in the homebrew. yeast is a natural laxative.
Yeah I don't know about that, I try not to drink yeast, but I get the runs if I drink alot of commercial beer too, just more so than HB
(4) if you are drinking 3L of homebrew, that's about 9 (12oz) bottles of beer. Add in the fact that HB is probably higher in alcohol than commercial, and you're getting up toward consuming the same amount of alcohol that would be found in a half case of commercial beer. Why you have a hangover? Because that's a lot of alcohol!
Maybe, I add 2kg of sugar to 6gallons of water + extract but I still get just as drunk if I drink equal volume of commercial vs homebrew, just that I wakeup feeling much worse off my homebrew.
(5) if your HB is higher in alcohol than commercial, then you are literally consuming a higher water-to-alcohol ratio when you drink commercial. This would lessening the effects of the hangover.
No the opposite is true, i believe it's not so much the alcohol giving me the hangovers, but other stuff that is naturally formed in the beer. I could drink a bottle of vodka and wakeup without a hangover. I think why many here don't wakeup with hangovers is because they generally drink only 1-2 bottles at a time.
(6) the comment about light-colored beers vs dark-colored beers causing different hangover intensities is weird. The color shouldn't make any difference at all, unless you are allergic to roasted barley or something. It is possible that your light-colored beers are also lower in alcohol content than the dark beers? That's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Oh no, stout I find gives me terrible hangovers, and I've tried HB and nearly all the commercial stout. I love stout, but there is something in it that gives me worse hangovers than regular beer.
Thanks Imperial Walker.