Back when I was barely old enough to drink, I got several pieces of advice that I took very much to heart. One was “Liquor before beer, never fear; beer before liquor, never been sicker.” Another was, “Don’t mix grains.” Meaning, if your first drink of the night is, say, a rum drink, you should stick to rum all night. The guy who told me that was a bartender, and according to him, that’s one way young people get especially messed up, because they’ll have a vodka-based drink, then a rum-based one, then a shot of tequila, then whiskey, then vodka again, and they end up in much worse shape than if they’d had the same amount of one kind of alcohol.
Recently, though, I read that that’s an urban legend, and there’s no risk in mixing different kinds of alcohol. So which is true?
You get messed up from having too much alcohol, which can be exacerbated by not getting enough hydration. A beer followed by a vodka will have exactly the same effect as the same two drinks in reverse order, and two shots of vodka together with 20 ounces of water will have the same effect as two 12-ounce beers.
That said, it’s possible that typical drinking patterns will result in more alcohol, or less hydration, in some combinations than in others.
I really can’t see why it would make a difference unless one of the orders keeps you from properly keeping track of how much you’ve drunk. I’ve drunk more than my fair share in my lifetime so far, and it’s never made a lick of difference what order, what alcohols, nothing. High-sugar drinks seem more likely to give me a hangover, but beer before liquor or liquor before beer, or mixing grains, none of it makes me sick or hungover unless I just drink a lot.
ETA: Or, yes, what Chronos says about hydration. That may make a bit of sense. But when I drink, I do generally make sure to get liquids (just plain water often) if I’m just drinking straight or nearly straight spirits in addition to beer or wine or whatever else I may be having.
If I remember from my college days, the advice rings true.
That is, I would end up getting much sicker if I drank whiskey after I had been drinking beer than if I did it the other way around. I figured it was because if you are drinking beer, after a few you get to feeling pretty good. When you switch to whiskey, you are already fairly drunk, so the higher alcohol hits you harder and quicker.
If you go the other way, after you have had some whiskey and start drinking beer, you are still getting fairly drunk, buy now you’re hitting your stomach with a lower-alcohol beverage, so it doesn’t hit you as hard.
At least, that is what I figured many years ago. I don’t drink much whiskey anymore, and when I do, I rarely drink beer afterward.
Actually, that might make some bit of sense, but for another reason: you may have already “loosened up” and lost some of your inhibitions, so taking one shot after another becomes a lot easier to end up doing than if you do it at the beginning of the night, when you have your wits more about you. Whereas with ending the night with beer, you’re kind of forced into slowing down. Just an idea. But that boils down to how much alcohol you’ve ended up drinking in the end. Like I said, for me, the order didn’t make a lick of difference. I’ve always just drank and still drink whatever I’m in the mood for and don’t pay attention to folk wisdom.
Have a few beers (12-20 oz servings of ~5% alcohol) and you’re drinking a pretty large volume of liquid, which generally forces you to at least somewhat pace yourself while you get a buzz on - if at some point (while your inhibitions are lowered) you switch to hard liquor (1.5 oz servings of ~40% alcohol) it’s VERY easy to drink too much, too fast.
The “mixing grains” advice is particularly silly, and particularly useless. Except for one thing: keeping away from variety may slow you down by making the drinks more boring or monotonous.
All these pieces of drinking advice are a lot like fad diets: they’re just tricks that keep you convinced or keep you interested while coincidentally limiting your overall intake.
The “Beer -> Liquor = unpleasant effects” thing is pretty simple, as I see it anyway. The more you drink, the more you WANT to drink. (Maybe this is not true for everyone, but it seems true for a lot of people.) It’s easier to put away a significant quantity of liquor, in a shorter time frame, than beer.
If you’ve had 3 beers, over the course of an hour and a half, say, you’re feeling good and so you have a scotch, then you’re really feeling good and you have 2 scotches, maybe more, and then (depending on your tolerance) it starts to hit you.
If you’ve had 3 scotches over the course of an hour and a half, then switch to beer for whatever reason - unless you’re really pounding down the beers, it will take longer to drink them, and the greater amount of water will make up some of the hydration you lost from the scotch. By the time you finish off the beers gradually, you’re more likely to just feel sleepy-drunk and go to sleep peacefully. Unless you’ve also stuffed yourself with food earlier, in which case you might puke, then sleep peacefully.
When I first heard this in college, the explanation I got is that it has to do with the pace of consumption – if you start off with a weaker drink, like beer, you get used to taking big swallows and consuming your drink quickly. If you keep that pace up after switching to a stronger drink, you’re more likely to really mess yourself up.
That said, my parents were stationed in Germany during their youthful heavy-drinking days, and the version they learned is "“Bier auf Wein, lass das sein, Wein auf Bier, rat ich dir,” which gives exactly the opposite advice: don’t start off with beer and then switch to wine, but the other way around is OK. This makes me suspect it’s all arbitrary, and the conventional wisdom in any given language really depends on what makes for a better set of rhymes.
From personal experience I would follow the maxim to never mix grape and grain. As for the beer/liquor ones - pick 'em. They give opposite advice and each has a rationale that may or may not ring true.
If they have all 5 those drinks within a short span it’s not going to be the alternancy in active ingredient that gets them
Plus in the case of cocktails there’s the aspect of how your body reacts to the different mixers as well.
Yeah, was going to say that… it does seem to be the rule of thumb that as the night goes on, move to beverages that are more filling at a lower ABV, so it slows down intake and puts proportionally more water through you.
Oops, sorry, I meant the other way round – it is a warning against starting with wine and switching to beer. I don’t type well before I’ve had coffee, and my German is pretty rudimentary at any hour.
Interesting replies, all. Well, I don’t like beer, and I like tequila a lot, so I’m perfectly happy to continue with sticking to tequila drinks all night (if there is an “all night”).
Yes, that too!
And that. And I’m still not convinced that it might be a good idea to avoid mixing grains for digestion’s sake. Correct me if I’m wrong, but different kinds of alcohol have different basic ingredients. The main ingredient in vodka is potatoes. With whiskey it’s grain; tequila, the mezcal plant; gin, berries(?); and rum, sugar. So even without the intoxication factor, combining two or more might be like combining nachos, ice cream and popcorn. ISTM, anyway.
Gin is flavoured with juniper berries and other botanicals, but it’s a grain spirit at heart. Vodka is sometimes potato, but just as often, if not more often now, a grain alcohol. Actually, Vermont’s Bar Hill Vodka and Gin are both honey based and both delicious.
The main ingredients in vodka are alcohol and water, with everything else mere traces. Likewise for any other distilled liquor.
And what’s wrong with combining nachos, ice cream, and popcorn? Or rather, what’s more wrong with combining them than with eating the same quantity of any of them individually?
I don’t know about you, but there are certain foods/drinks that I like individually but might make me want to vomit if I had them together or too close to each other. For example, I would never have a milkshake and a salad with vinaigrette dressing.
I don't remember exactly how I heard the advice this thread is about , but I know it was very general about not mixing two different drinks , nothing as specific as "Beer before liquor ..." And I know it was very general as I was under the impression that it would include following a pina colada with a mojito , even though both are made with rum.
I believed this advice when I was a student many years ago. Now, I believe it a little less.
Hangovers are probably made worse by dehydration, quickly absorbing the alcohol due to lack of food, and sweetness of the libation — I don’t drink Southern Comfort but it has a reputation.
Students — often looking to save money and drinking to get drunk — are likely to buy whatever (often crappy) shot is on sale, Jagermeister or tequila. Not all drinks are equally harsh, but a glass of tequila on top of several mixed drinks can be hard to swallow.
Although for many years I have limited consumption, drank water between beverages and not mixed drinks much — I suspect mixing does have some negative effect but also those who mix drink more and drink more potent bevies.
