Now for any Germans out there, a beer hangover just should not exist. Getting a hangover headache from a few jars is just not what happens in middle Europe. It just ain’t no thaaang. Why is that?
Let me tell you what I did last night.
I went out and had a few jars with a friend I hadn’t seen for a while because he’s moved to Barcelona and was back in town for a few days. We just knocked back the normal 4 or 5 pints of beer as you do when it’s been a few months since the last meet.
I live in Paris and a lot of the beer here is Kronenbourg (originally French), or Belgian beers such as Stella Artois, Grimbergen and Leffe.
My friend was drinking Carlsberg, which is Danish. I drank Grimbergen and Kronenbourg which are both produced in France and Belgium, next to France.
All good so far? Except that waking up this morning, my eyes felt like someone had been poking hot rods in them!
And that was even after gulping down a multi vitamin and Milk Thistle before sleeping.
Does milk thistle help cure a hangover?
Poisonous Beer
If you’ve ever had the pleasant experience of being in Germany drinking beer, you’d be tutting and looking down your nose at the substandard the quality of pub beer in Paris. Honestly, in Germany, you can get totally trashed off 10 pints and wake up with no headache at all.
But here in Paris, the worst hangovers I’ve ever had are all from drinking beer. Both times it’s involved barfing up until I was totally dry and even taking some anti-puke medication. A beer hangover really can be that bad!
No joke, I’ve had nights where vodka and champagne flowed as freely as the mountain breeze and woken up with no headache whatsoever, just dehydrated. But no headache.
Yet my worst ever hangover was after only 5 pints at a pub here. 5 pints! Can you Adam and Eve it? That’s nothing.
Germanic Precision and Purity in Beer
You’ve gotta admire the Germans and how they treat their beer. To cut a long story short, German beers that are produced locally have historically had stringent quality control to keep their beers pure. Notably, they refuse to allow beer to stay for too long without being consumed.
Even since these strict standards were relaxed, German beer brewers proudly continue in this tradition and it helps their millions of beer drinkers wake up with a more or less clear head the next day. A beer hangover doesn’t exist there.
Chemicals and additives in beer
Other beer brewers however, use rice, corn, sugar (called adjuncts) to brew together with chemicals to give the beer artifical head! Can you imagine the piss we’ve been drinking! Another reason for the big brewers putting these evil additives in your beer is to improve its shelflife.
Maybe the rancid poisonous piss that nearly killed me that time was past its shelflife and had chemicals in it? I’m pretty sure they keep beer for too long here to save on costs. Probably because they have pressure to save money to pay all their taxes!
So there you go, I got a beer hangover because of Sarkozy and his cronies taxing businesses too much. Or was it Mitterand that put those high taxation policies in place?
Who cares. All I know is, I’m gonna try to stick more to spirits and good wine when in Paris and save the beer drinking for Germany.
After all, there is more than one reason to do so..
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