Beer – Silly, not stupid, season

At this time of year, every decent beer writer is dishing out their top five tips for what to drink over the silly season. I can see the appeal: telling people to drink hoppy pilsners (like Sawmill’s flagship) and thirst-quenching kettle sours (like 8 Wired’s Hippy Berliner) is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. So here goes: it’s going to be hot, so you should probably drink pale, refreshing things. There – job done.

Unfortunately, my top five list is much less aesthetically appealing – but ultimately, it’s also much more important. It’s based on the fact that we all have a tendency to let our hair down at the end of the year, with the upshot that we consume more food and booze than at any other time. And that’s understandable. Life is hard and the holidays are our chance to celebrate the successes of the year or to shut the door on a crappy one.  But we need to understand that all this hair letting down can have real-world ramifications; not only on us, but on those we love the most. So this month I’d like to share my top tips for how to make it through the Christmas holidays with your health and dignity intact.  

Tip 1: Keep the ABV low. The problem with all those delicious hop-bomb IPAs is that they tend to sit around 6-7 per cent alcohol-by-volume (ABV) and beyond. Because our bodies can only cope with metabolising so much alcohol at a time, anything that is left circulating in our blood will cross into our brains and make us feel squiffy. So try to keep the ABV around 4 per cent, especially when it’s hot.

Tip 2: Slow down. As mentioned above, the way that your body metabolises alcohol is a rate-limiting step when it comes to how quickly you should be drinking. Our bodies can cope with metabolising about one standard drink an hour, which is the equivalent of about one 330ml bottle of the above recommended beers. Try not to go beyond this pace.

Tip 3: Stay hydrated. This tip works perfectly with Tip 2. Drinking heaps of water will help your body process the alcohol and chew up some time if you’re worried that you might be drinking too fast.

Tip 4: Don’t drink and drive a boat. Forget about our appalling rate of car drink-driving for one second, because we also have a pretty cavalier attitude toward drinking and boating.  Taking a chilly bin that is brim full of booze on an all-day fishing trip might have somehow become a normal thing to do in our country, but it’s actually idiotic.

Tip 5: Be Batman. I don’t mean that you should dig a large cave under your house and patrol the streets in a skin-tight uniform. Being Batman means that you’re ready to go at a moment’s notice. It means if anything bad goes down, you can swing into action – plus or minus the grappling hook. Batman is there when others need his help; he’s reliable, dependable. And that dependability is doubly-important over the holiday break, since by its nature, the silly season can stimulate some stupid situations. Whether we’re swimming in the ocean, cooking outside or seeing relatives that we don’t particularly like, we tend to engage in more hazardous activities than usual over the holiday period. By paying attention to the first four tips, you’ll be ready to don your Batman suit and come to the rescue when and if the need arises.

Jason Gurney