Let’s say I throw a party for a bunch of friends. Let’s say a typical, college-age/early 20’s, “kegger” “frat”-type party - loud music, lots of beer, etc.
At this party there will only be kegs of beer. Except instead of kegs of “real” beer, I only get kegs of non-alcoholic beer. But the kegs aren’t labeled, so nobody knows, and I tell them it’s whatever-beer-is-popular-among-this-age-group-today. Let’s say nobody brings any outside alcohol, for whatever reason (maybe I make up some excuse or reason that no outside alcohol will be allowed, or maybe all my friends are broke, whatever).
What I’d be interested to see, is if people would still act crazy, lower their inhibitions, jump in the pool in their clothes, make out in public, get in fights, and do all the other typical “binge drinking party” stuff. I imagine some of this stuff would still happen because of getting a lot of people together in the right atmosphere. But how far would it go? Would I have people crashing on my couch and floor? Would people be acting drunk because they think they should be, even though they aren’t? Meanwhile, of course, I just sit back and laugh.
What if I had a few close friends that were “in the know” that purposefully acted obnoxious or jumped in the pool, acting drunk themselves to “set the mood” and thereby stop any suspicions before they started?
I’ve had this idea for a long time, but would never implement it. One, because I could never pull it off, and two because I’m way past the point where I have “kegger” parties at home!
I have always thought this would be an interesting psychological/sociological experiment. Speaking of which, has there ever been any test like this?
I’ve never tried non-alcoholic beer. But assuming it tastes like normal beer, I would figure it out in about ten minutes. No one drinks alcohol for the flavor.
The only people you could possibly trick are the ones who have never had alcohol before.
The alcohol actually does make a difference. Closest thing I can come up with is we would sometimes experiment with things that were supposed to get us high when we were kids. Smoking bannana peels, inhaling steam off boiled nutmeg etc. We sometimes thought we got a little buzz but no mistaking the real thing.
Couldn’t find a cite for it, unfortunately, but I remember reading about a psychology experiment in which subjects were given what they thought was alcohol, when it wasn’t, and still acted “drunk.”
I bought a case of non-alcoholic beer for my husband since he’s on call and can’t drink some nights. I forgot to mention it to him and after he drank it over a 3 week period he told me he liked the taste of the “new” beer. Of course, he wasn’t drinking to get drunk and only had one or two beers with a meal a couple of times a week.
Some of the more flavorful NA beers aren’t bad and could be mistaken for a flavorful full alcohol microbrew. With cheap keg-party type beer, though, there’s no flavor for the lack of alcohol to hide behind.
This scenario was a plot in at least two sitcoms, Cheers and Grounded for Life, both when the respective bar owners forgot to renew their liquor license.
here’s the link.Vodka doesn’t have much of a flavor at all(unlike beer), and tonic water has a very strong flavor, so it wouldn’t be too hard for people to believe that the tonic masked the flavor of the vodka.
Has this trick ever worked with an un-mixed drink?
Speak for yourself. I most definitely drink for the flavor. I often find myself wishing that I could magically make my wine or beer non-alcoholic, so I could drink more of it without the bad effects.
If you have a keg of one of the reasonably good NAs, it may be quite a while (if ever) before a party of inexperienced drinkers figures it out. If there’s no real beer to provide a comparison and people just start filling and emptying glasses, the slightly off taste might pass.
It would be hilarious to watch some number of them “get drunk” on NA. I’ve seen it happen.
When my ex wife was a bartender, there were a certain handful of regular customers, that when they got too drunk, she would just make them non alcoholic versions of whatever drink they were drinking.
This, she explained ,was easier than cutting them off. They never were the wiser. And it was quite comical watching them stir their drink with that little cocktail straw as if they had something in there.
I would guess inexperienced drinkers and certain others might still act drunk. Inexperienced drinkers may not fully recognize what being actually drunk is like and will just want to fit in. Then there is a class of people who always seem to act way more drunk than they are, even when they’re drinking normal alcoholic beverages. Those people would probably do that with NA beer as well.
But for me personally, two beers in you should feel some minor effect of alcohol. If I was 6-7 beers in there’d be genuine confusion on my part as to why I was feeling nothing. That’s assuming the beer would pass the taste test, which it would absolutely not, for me at least.
I should also mention that I believe all NA beer is actually alcoholic at around 0.5% ABV. So it does contain some alcohol, but you’d need to drink 7 of those to equal one normal American light beer and 10+ to equal a normal beer.
