If I drink a bottle of wine, generally 75cl @ 13.5%, why do I feel more pissed than when I drink 3 x 50cl bottles of beer @, say, 4.5%?
I'm drinking twice the amount of beer alcohol, by volume, than the wine.
I work in the Drinks Industry.
3 x 50cl beer at 4.5% = 6.75cl pure alcohol
1 x 75cl of 13.5% = 10.125 cl of pure alcohol
Which sounds like nearly twice as much, but there's more to it that that.
Inebriation is related to the build up of alcohol in the system.
So if you drink the amounts above over the same period, the difference magnifies.
A study was carried out on Stella V Fosters to understand why Stella (5.3%) made people so much more pissed than Fosters (4%), when it only had 32% more alcohol content.
An average man at average weight can drink one pint of alcohol at 2.5% abv every hour and never get drunk, because the body can process the alcohol at the same rate that it is taken in - so no build up in the system.
Therefore the inebriation potential of Stella (assuming one pint every half hour) is 5.3-2.5 = 2.8
The inebriation potential of Fosters is 4.0-2.5 = 1.5
Therefore the effect of Stella V Fosters is 2.8/1.5 = 1.9 times not the 1.3 times you get from the abv's alone..
Therefore you would feel more pissed on the wine than you might even expect
