[bsmithers]

4.5L of 0.5% ABV beer would not make you drunk. For comparison, this is equivalent to less than a pint of a typical mainstream beer. Indeed a 0.5% ABV drink can be branded alcohol free (at least in the UK).

Would 4.5L of 2% ABV make you drunk? Depends how quickly you can drink it. It's 9 units of alcohol. We commonly assume the body can process 1 unit/hour so if this quantity was consumed over an entire day, I don't think you'd get merry.

I'm not saying it's a good idea to drink like this, just highlighting the impact of ABV on the outcome.

[bloak]

> Indeed a 0.5% ABV drink can be branded alcohol free (at least in the UK).

Er, no! Perhaps in Ireland? In the UK the term "alcohol-free" can only be used if the drink has no more than 0.05% alcohol. However apparently it's allowed to use the term "alkoholfrei": take a look at the bottles of "Erdinger alkoholfrei" in UK supermarkets with tiny smallprint explaining that it's not alcohol-free (it's 0.5% and tastes quite good).

The rules may have changed fairly recently. They always used to sell "shandy" with 0.5% alcohol as a soft drink to children but I'm not sure if they still do that.

There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.

(I think I read somewhere that they had to create a special exception for soy sauce in Australia because soy sauce can have up to 2% alcohol but obviously nobody's going to quaff it and if they did the 2% alcohol would probably not be their biggest problem.)

[OJFord]

No, GP is correct.

Advertising Standards Authority:

> The alcohol section of the Codes applies to ‘alcoholic drinks’, which are those above 0.5% ABV. Drinks at or below 0.5% are, for the purposes of the Codes, considered to be non-alcoholic.

https://www.asa.org.uk/news/advertising-zero-alcohol-product...

You're right about this though:

> There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.

and it's 'worse' - you can't buy 'no-secco' or 'apple fizz' or whatever they're marketed as, even though they're absolutely nil alcohol, not removed, it was never there. But obviously other cordials and carbonated soft drinks like San Pelligrino, Shloer etc. are fine, just because they're not made to look like a sparkling wine bottle.

[bloak]

See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/low-alcohol-descr... (as mentioned by darrenf elsewhere in this thread):

"Alcohol free – this should only be applied to a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% abv"

But: "the decision was made to replace the legislation with guidance setting out the four existing descriptors that industry will be expected to follow"

So (1) it's not clear that Brewdog and Lucky Saint (mentioned by SCdF elsewhere in this thread) are breaking an actual law by failing to follow the guidance which Erdinger apparently does claim to follow, and (2) perhaps that rule really does apply only to "a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted", so perhaps it wouldn't apply to a shandy made by diluting alcoholic beer?

[OJFord]

Actually I think you're right. The bit I quoted is for the purposes of applying: https://www.asa.org.uk/type/non_broadcast/code_section/18.ht...

which is basically just rules about how you can market (it's fun and cool to drink alcohol kids!) 'alcoholic drinks', i.e. anything under 0.5% can be marketed in ways that says you can't for alcoholic drinks.

But a slightly different page than the one I quoted above goes on to say the same as yours:

> In terms of the official guidance, the descriptor ‘alcohol free’ should only be used on drinks from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% ABV. Where a product has had the alcohol extracted but it remains above 0.05% ABV but at or below 0.5% ABV, the descriptor would be ‘de-alcoholised’.

https://www.asa.org.uk/news/low-and-no-alcohol-drinks.html

So yes, either it tells you something about how they're making it, or they're wrong to be using that 'descriptor'. (Surely the former? Brewdog make 'Punk AF', they'd have to rebrand it completely if they're not allowed to call it 'AF', surely they'd have been on top of that?)

Oh wait though - the page I originally quoted goes on:

> CAP is aware that official government guidance exists on how alcohol content at or below 0.5% should be described, but understands that this guidance is not legally binding. Therefore, the Codes do not require compliance with this guidance.

which explains why I couldn't find anything enacted on legislation.gov.uk. So it is just a matter for them as the regulator, but these two pages on their own site seem to be in contradiction about whether they care about use of the 'descriptor' or not?

[SCdF]

I have recently been trying alcohol free / low alcohol beers as the market is picking up for them, and people definitely advertise 0.5% as alcohol free.

From a quick tesco search Punk AF (https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304722896) and Lucky Saint (https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/311448058) both contain the terms "alcohol free" prominently on the front but are 0.5%.

There are also a bunch of 0.0% beers, and their fine print is how you say, no more than 0.05%, but at least Brewdog and Lucky Saint are getting away with using the term for 0.5%, and I am sure I've seen more of that kind of thing.

[safety1st]

You will find this level of alcohol (0.1% - 0.5%) in all kinds of foods and beverages. A study found orange juice that was 0.73% alcohol and hamburger buns that were 1.28%. [1]

The sources and numbers are getting mixed up here but on the topic of the Founders, the small beer George Washington was brewing was probably in the vicinity of 1%. I think it's pretty safe to say that a guy sipping 1% all day might get a bit of a buzz and not much more, especially considering the tolerance he'd build up.

As with anything the dose makes the poison. I've consumed a lot of alcohol over my life, but as I get older my friends and I have mostly lost our interest in experiencing anything beyond a mild buzz. At a bar we frequently order a lemonade/Sprite along with our beers and make DIY shandies [2] which brings the alcohol content down to like 2.5%. It's pretty hard to get drunk at that level even if you go at it for hours. Throw in a water here and there and it's even lower. I only wish society and the industry was more supportive of this manner of drinking, but the bars undoubtedly make less money off of us than the guy who goes full bore and ends up behind the wheel plastered...

[1] https://goodstuffdrinks.com/blogs/the-good-stuff/how-much-al...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandy

[guerilla_prgrmr]

What’s Ireland got to do with the UK’s alcohol laws? If it’s a racist trope you’re trying to make, you might be happy to know that Ireland consumes virtually the same quantity of alcohol per capita as the UK.

[bloak]

I mentioned Ireland because Ireland is in the EU and uses English officially so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the use of "alcohol-free" in Ireland corresponds to the use of "alkoholfrei" in Germany rather than to the use of "alcohol-free" in the UK, those two apparently being different. It honestly hadn't occurred to me that someone might suspect a racist trope!

[guerilla_prgrmr]

It’s an EU wide definition that exists in 27 countries not specific to Ireland. Your comment was unfortunately worded if thats the case as at least two other people picked up on the same remark. Apologies if so.

[darrenf]

> > Indeed a 0.5% ABV drink can be branded alcohol free (at least in the UK).

> Er, no! Perhaps in Ireland? In the UK the term "alcohol-free" can only be used if the drink has no more than 0.05% alcohol.

The government says the threshold is 1.2%.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/low-alcohol-descr...

[michaelt]

If you read your link carefully, it says:

"Low alcohol" -> 1.2% ABV (the threshold at which beer duty has to be paid)

"De-alcoholised" -> 0.5% ABV

"Alcohol free" -> 0.05% ABV

"Non-alcoholic" -> "should not be used in conjunction with a name commonly associated with an alcoholic drink" except communion wine.

[darrenf]

Oh, yes. I have no idea how I was reading "alcohol free" as "low alcohol" in the comments to which I responded. My bad!

[gardenhedge]

> Perhaps in Ireland?

Why make this call out?

[bloak]

Only because it's a different country using English!

Before Austria joined the EU (in 1995) there used to be significant differences in the rules on food labelling between Austria and Germany, to the extent that sometimes a product would have two separate lists of ingredients, one for Austria and one for Germany. The same may now happen with Ireland and the UK, and perhaps the term "alcohol-free" is already being used differently. See https://www.ibec.ie/drinksireland/-/media/documents/drinks-i...

[Fordec]

The Brit needs to engage in his Paddy bashing.

0.5% is an EU regulation than Ireland specific. And apparently the same level in the US from my (just done now) googling.

[LemmyInThePub]

Would you like some fish to go with that chip on your shoulder?

[gardenhedge]

How is that an appropriate reply?

[rightbyte]

There is no way 2% makes you drunk in practice. When I was 14 drinking 3.5% worked like one or two times before I got used to it. And I drank it really fast.

[The_Colonel]

What you didn't get used to was drinking enough of it. 3.5% will get you drunk in big enough quantity.

[rightbyte]

Really? Have you tried it? I don't think it is possible for an adult. When I was in China vising a friend we tried to get abit drunk on local beer that was like 3.6% at most and it was like drinking soda. The locals seemed to drink spirits together with low alcoholic beer for some reason so there was no strong beer in stores, except some place that had Heiniken.

I have this pet theory that alcohol is not linear. Like, 5% beer get you way more drunk than the same amount of alcohol in 4.4% beer.

[kijin]

It's the percentage of alcohol in your system (Blood Alcohol Content) that makes you drunk, not the raw amount.

If you're drinking 30-50 units of water for every unit of alcohol, all that alcohol is going to be very diluted and have little effect on your BAC. There's probably a threshold beyond which you'll just piss it all out before the your BAC ever reaches a meaningful number.

[The_Colonel]

That honestly doesn't sound right. Drinking more water won't dilute your blood / BAC. You're mostly limited how fast you can drink that much liquid.

[kijin]

You are limited by how much liquid your digestive system can absorb in any given hour. I've heard that it's somewhere around 1 liter per hour. Any excess liquid is going to slosh around in your intestines instead of entering your bloodstream.

Meanwhile, your liver can remove about 10g/12ml of alcohol per hour. In order for you to reach a meaningful BAC, you will need to absorb significantly more than that.

For example, drinking 1 liter of 1% alcohol solution per hour will not result in any significant BAC, because you can remove alcohol from your bloodstream faster than alcohol enters your bloodstream. You've got a well-optimized queue there.

5 liters of 1% alcohol is the same as above, just repeated 5 times. Your queue is still working fine.

1 liter of 5% alcohol, on the other hand, will dump 50ml of alcohol into your bloodstream within an hour. Now you have a backlog, and this backlog is what increases your BAC.

So dilution does matter, even if the absolute amount of alcohol is the same. You're basically diluting alcohol consumption over time.

[The_Colonel]

I regularly drink 4% beer, and it's not difficult to get quite a bit tipsy on it, you just need to drink more. I regularly see men in pubs who drink 5 liters of such beer in an evening and that does get them drunk.

[rightbyte]

Sure I agree, but it feels like it is more than 5/4 times more for the same drunkness from 4 and 5% beer.

[peyton]

It’s 8 pints of 13% ABV if you look at the table in the article. Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking.

[SCdF]

For sailors, in one estimate, and sailors are a special case as the article mentions, because strong beer is the only thing that doesn't go off at sea.

Everyone else is the much lower estimate discussed up thread.

> Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking.

Maybe I'm a lightweight, I would be absolutely trollied if I had to drink eight 13% pints over the course of a day. I have never been anywhere where they'd even sell you an entire pint of 13%, you are in 2/3rd or maybe even 1/3rd territory.

[brewdad]

I have a favorite speciality beer that comes in around 13%. They used to sell it only in 22oz bottles and that was it for the night. If I decided to open one, I knew that was my one drink for the evening.

They recently started selling it in 12oz bottles, so it’s no longer a commitment but rather a choice.

[saiya-jin]

Its basically a bottle of wine (lighter one but still). Careful there, the road to alcoholism is smooth and often you realize you're there only way after actually reaching the point.

[luc4sdreyer]

Which table? The referenced table (9) only says "strong" (relative to what?) and gives a calorie count, which for beer is not very useful as an ABV estimate.