Last night I had a beer…
It was, in reality, a non-alcoholic Becks Blue and it went down a treat! I’d been at work yesterday and I really, really, really fancied a beer. Luckily, the restaurant we were at just happened to have non-alcoholic beers. We asked them by chance if they sold them and I was expecting them to say no but 30 seconds later there it was, a bottle of ice cold beer in front of me…I was so happy!
It’s the taste I’ve missed too and I have to say that I was on the brink of giving up and having a beer (hell, I deserved it!) but that took the edge off. As soon as I took a sip my bloke told me I’d lost the bet!!!! NOOOOO, NOT VALID! It doesn’t count as it clearly states NON-alcoholic, even though the percentage says 0.3%. We googled it and anything which is lower than 1% is officially classed as alcohol free. But, as we were looking on t’internet something very strange came out and I’ll try and explain it as I heard it last night from a friend (although I may have misunderstood, lost in translation and all that):
1 litre of non-alcoholic beer contains the equivalent alcoholic volume of a small glass of wine. Now, I’m not an expert but surely that doesn’t sound right?! I was a tad confused and wasn’t the only one, so I decided to investigate.
I couldn’t find anything on the web that backed up this claim but I came across a study that went like this; “after 5 days of abstinence from ethanol (alcohol) 78 test persons were asked to drink 1.5 l of non-alcoholic beer (ethanol content 0.41–0.42%) within 1 h. Blood samples were taken on a regular basis and analyzed for ethanol by headspace gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (HS-GC-FID). A total of 67 data sets could be interpreted and in 20 test persons ethanol was detected in blood with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.0005 g/l. The maximum blood ethanol concentration was 0.0056%. The results of the study suggest that even after consumption of unrealistically high amounts of non-alcoholic beer negative forensic implications are not to be expected.”
So there you have it. Even if I’d consumed 10 bottles of Becks Blue I wouldn’t have got drunk…maybe I would’ve felt some affects but who knows as drinking that many bottles would surely gas you up and the only effect would be a trip to the loo every 5 minutes…and I don’t feel guilty in the slightest about dabbling with non-alcoholic beer. Actually, I may even decide to get some in, even for when I’ve finished the challenge.
