Optimal quality of beer

Last evening I went for drinks with a few colleagues. We didn’t think or do much in terms of where to go – we just minimised transaction costs by going to the microbrewery on the top floor of our office building. This meant that after the session those of us who were able (and willing) to drive back could just go down to the basement and drive back. No “intermediate driving”.

Of course, if you want to drive back after you’ve gone for drinks, it means that you need to keep your alcohol consumption in check. And when you know you are going for a longish session, that is tricky. And that’s where the quality of beer maters.

In a place like Arbor, which makes absolutely excellent beer, “one beer” is a hard thing to pull off (though I exercised great willpower in doing just that the last time I’d gone for drinks with colleagues – back in feb). And after a few recent experiences, I’ve concluded that beer is the best “networking drink” – it offers the optimal amount of “alcohol per unit time” (wine and whisky I tend to consume well-at-a-faster-rate, and end up getting too drunk too quickly). So if you go to a place that serves bad beer, that isn’t great either.

This is where the quality of beer at a middling (for a Bangalore microbrewery) place like Bangalore Brewworks works perfectly – it’s decent enough that you are able to drink it (and not something that delivers more ethanol per unit time), but also not so good that you gulp it down (like I do with the Beach Shack at Arbor).

And this means that you can get through a large part of the session (where the counterparties down several drinks) on your one beer – you stay within reasonable alcohol limits and are not buzzed at all and easily able to drive. Then you down a few glasses of iced water and you’re good to go!

Then again, when I think about it, nowadays I go out for drinks so seldom that maybe this strategy is not so optimal at all – next time I might as well go to Arbor and take a taxi home.

Beer numbers

I’ve always wondered why the craft beer at Arbor, a popular microbrewery in Bangalore, is so potent. While I was losing it on one such last night, I made a small calculation (rather simple) which gave me the answer.

The standard serving size at Arbor is 500 ml. The strength of the beers varies from 5.5% alcohol content to 8% alcohol content. While making this calculation last night, I was sipping the one with 8%. 8% of 500 ml is 40 ml, which means that I had 40ml of unadulterated ethanol (combined with 460 ml of other stuff).

Most standard whiskies and hard liquor have 40% alcohol content. So if I were drinking whisky rather than beer (i usually drink whisky and not beer), that one glass of beer was “worth” 100 ml of whisky!

And what about the “regular” beer that I have, which is a 330ml bottle of Kingfisher Premium? That has 6% alcohol content, or 20 ml of alcohol in a beer, which equates to 50 ml of whisky, which is less than one large peg of whisky! To put it another way, one standard unit of beer at Arbor contains about twice the amount of ethanol as one standard unit of bottled beer!

And then it is manufactured right there – because it is a “microbrewery” it is unlikely for each batch to have the precise amount of alcohol. There will be a margin of error. And I’ve been told (verbally, through the grapevine, so this is not official information) that they err on the side of more alcohol – so when the stated alcohol content in something is 8%, they prepare their setup so that the chances of alcohol content being lower than 8% is extremely low. Put that together with the above calculation and you’ll understand why you get so drunk at Arbor!

Tailpiece

Indian Pale Ale is the “beer of beers”. Beer itself is famously an “acquired taste” – I remember being so disgusted when I had my first beer back in 2004 that I didn’t have another beer for another year. Now I’m quite used to the taste of Kingfisher.

But then the taste of IPA is even more “acquired” than that of bottled beer. I had some trouble finishing the IPA I ordered yesterday – what helped me finish it was perhaps the alcohol content which was already working! On a previous occasion I’ve ordered an IPA and only half-finished it. But then fans of IPA swear by it and go all the way to Arbor specifically for its IPA! So it is the “beer of beer”, or perhaps “beerendra beer” (Bikram Shah Dev).

Tailpiece 2

I was there as a part of a really large gathering (some 25 people), with people entering and exiting at random times, so they instituted a good measure to ensure we paid fairly. Every time someone ordered something, the drink would come along with the bill, which the orderer would clear right there.

This way there was no scope for messy calculations on who owed whom how much and all that, and no need for any bill-splitting algorithms!