I have run into 2 people that cannot drink malt liquor, and one says she also cannot drink rotgut cheap wine, it makes her violent, yet she can drink good wine with no problems even with a higher total consumption of alcohol.
Both can drink non-malt beer all day consuming more alcohol and only get tired eventually.
Has anyone else seen, heard of or experienced the same or similar effects from malt liquor or cheap wine?
And the placebo effect has been show to be quite real in many cases, though we don’t understand why it works as it does.
Wine is a drug, not just the alcohol, but there are other compounds, anti-oxidants and the like that work a certain way on a person, different wines though basically similar will be different ratios which may cause such a effect, just as slight difference in medications seem to make a large difference in some people, such as the effect that some claim between brand name vs. generic meds for ADHD.
You can also look into the wholistic approach where it is not the chemical compounds, but what goes into them, a desire to put out a cheap product vs a desire to bring the goodness of the vineyard to you. Given a cheap product may tend to have one feel undeserving of better, or being head back from what they would really like, which could cause a violent reaction.
The only difference between malt liquor and beer (both are made from malt, BTW) is alcohol content. So if they can’t drink malt liquor, that’s the reason. Regular beer gives them the alcohol at a lower concentration.
That actually makes sense. How you approach the alcohol may have something to do with the effects. Or perhaps the people that have to drink the cheap stuff feel resentful about life already, and this manifests as anger and violence. But when they get the good stuff, they feel better about their position in life.
Also, having an upset stomach (as julius blaze mentions) is enough to sour my mood even while sober, and with the alcohol fueled lack of inhibitions, I could picture it making me more likely to be violent.
The main difference is that malt liquor sacrifices quality and taste to maximize alcohol content by adding sugars and other additives to boost fermentation. This would explain the “rotgut” and probably more severe hangovers.
As others have said, the placebo effect seems to be a reality. IMHO, I don’t believe malt liquor ,or any drug or alcohol, “makes” people violent, rather than break down their inhibitions to act violently. It may be their expectations or their self-image when they drink malt liquor due to the perceived stereotype.
Environment and socio-economic status seem to contribute to this image, due to it’s price and comparatively high alcohol content.
It may be merely an excuse to act like an idiot, they do call it “40 Oz. of Freedom” for a reason.
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The honest truth is, in blind tastings, most malt liquors are not bad at all. I’ve run a couple of those tastings at club meetings, substituting malt liquor for what the tasters thought was homebrew. The comments were all positive and favorable. The tasters were not amused when we revealed what they had been sampling.
An ounce of C2H5OH is an ounce of C2H5OH is an ounce of C2H5OH.
But I have heard other stories from people that different types of alcoholic beverage produce different results for the user. A possibility beyond the psychological aspects and the amount of concentration could be the congeners (additional, nonalcoholic substances) in the beverage. And a quick Google indicates that studies are presently being conducted to see if this is a factor.
And a question. Isn’t all beer malted? I thought the use of the phrase malt liquor was just an indication that the alcohol was more concentrated in the beverage.
“Malt” is just sprouted barley. Barley is sprouted because that converts the starch to sugar. So all beer is made with malt, unless it’s a wheat beer, but then it just contains sprouted wheat instead of sprouted barley. Even in cheap macrobrews that contain corn or rice or sugar, barley is still the main ingredient.
“Malt Liquor” is a legal/marketing term. It’s just strong beer.
Like Silenus, I think beer is by definition made with malted grain. It could be made without malt if you define malt as strictly sprouted barley. But you can make beer from malted wheat, corn, rice, millet, and so on. It would be possible to convert the starches in grain to sugars via enzyme treatments, but sprouting does it naturally.
You can ferment anything that has sugar, and you can convert anything with starch into sugars. But if you ferment an alcoholic beverage from something other than malted grain then you’ve got wine or mead or cider or koumiss or what have you, not beer.
I believe this is correct. I have in my fridge several bottles of pleasing fermented beverage made from malted sorghum. All of them are labelled “beer.”
I cannot drink red wine of any kind; it makes me nauseous within half a glass, and if I drink more than one glass I throw up. This is a recent development within the last couple of years; at first I thought it was coincidence so I tried several more times and each time I got nauseous…(hey I like red wine in winter, and I’m a bit sad I can’t drink it anymore, so I wanted to make sure it wasn’t in my head.)
People tell me it’s the tannins; I don’t know squat about wine but as observed earlier I would imagine different people have different reactions that have more to do with the other things contained in alcoholic beverages besides the actual alcohol.
I have no problems whatsoever with white wine. I read that white wine doesn’t contain nearly the tannins of red…? I haven’t researched it because it doesn’t really matter; red wine is off limits for me.
I’ve never tried Olde English or anything like that, but if it’s anything like Smirnoff Ice and the like, it’s far too sweet and would probably give me a horrendous hangover…
To put it basic. Beer is made from malted aka sprouted grain, be it barley, wheat, oats or whatever. The reason why you turn the grain into malt is that the sprouting process releases enzymes that, among other things, turn the starch in the grain into fermentable sugar. You can add non malted grain, but it is not, as Silenius wrote, to add flavour, it is for the starch content. Whatever flavour you get from the grain is primarily a result of the malting. I am not an expert on beer matters, but I have read somewhere that in order to be able to turn all the starch into sugar you must have at least 16% malt (preferably 100%) in your mash.
If you distill your beer, be it with or without hopping (in most cases without), you get liquor. Whoever wrote this entry in Merriam-Webster online knows not what he’s writing about, you can’t get alcohol without fermenting, the distillation is just to separate the alcohol from the water (or the other way round). This distilled liquid can be called brandywine, vodka or whatever. If you put it in an oak cask and let it age for a period of at least three years you get whisky (according to Scottish law).
Does red (i.e. purple) grape juice have a similar effect? Have you tried drinking some other alcohol source and chasing it with red grape juice? I believe the tannin content is similar.
Tell that to the Guinness people. Roasted, unmalted barley is what gives stouts that beautiful flavor profile. Raw wheat may be added for head retention and the like, but to say that unmalted grains aren’t used for flavor is just plain wrong.
No, it’s nothing like Smirnoff Ice. Although they are made of malted stuff, too, that’s just so they can market it under a certain set of (looser) state and federal laws than if they obtained their alcohol content by another fermentation process. The beverage they are aiming for is supposed to be excessively sweet, because (although I find it hard to fathom) some people like things like that. Olde English (my personal favorite of the malt liquors) is just a stronger beer. No added sweetness, and indistinguishable from regular beer, except in the sense that all beers can be distinguished from each other by various flavor differences.
Several people in this thread are saying something at odds with the column. Several posters have stated there is no difference between malt liquor and beer other than alcohol content. But the column states the difference is in the yeast used - beer is top fermented and malt liquor is bottom fermented. How that affects the flavor, I have no idea - beer is yucky.
Floater said:
That entry has been simplified to the point of inaccuracy. There is a technical distinction between distilled and non-distilled alcoholic beverages, and the non-distilled ones are referred to by the last process they saw, fermenting. But you are correct, the distilled ones are also fermented first.