Brewing - What makes a "good quality" beer? (that is, less of a hangover)

[juliotangos]

Hello,

I live overseas in the country of Ukraine. There are quite a number of beers available for choice here, perhaps just as much if not even more than say the US. I've tried quite a number of them. Besides the difference in taste, I notice that a lot of the beers here that are native give me a worse hangover.

Which leads me to the question. Is it true that a beer that is more distilled or refined gives you less of a hangover? Could I assume that beers that are much cheaper generally are so because they are less distilled than the higher-priced (and I assume, higher quality) beers.

What makes for a so-called "good beer" (I'm not talking about taste or the prestige of the name, rather the process that it goes through and the ingredients that are added before it goes on the shelfe)?

[Fantasian]

In SWIF's personal experience although he isnt much of a drinker the hangover is more dehydration than anything else, but the bit that isnt, the less sugary, stronger beers tend to leave him better off the following day.

[vinylmesh]

There's 2 avoidable factors involved in a hangover.

1. Dehydration
2. Impurities in the drink.

To avoid dehydration all SWIY has to do is drink some water after SWIY's alcohol.

To avoid impurities SWIY needs to drink highly purified drinks like vodka. However, beer is not a highly purified drink.SWIM would reccomend SWIY not drink beer at all!

But, if SWIY has to drink beer then there are so called "hangover defence" capsules available containing activated charcoal that absorb all the impurities in SWIY's stomach preventing them from entering SWIY's bloodstream.Not sure if these are available in the ukraine but they might be.

It seems entirely likely that well-made beers are easier on the body than cheap one's.SWIM would guess that the lighter in colour the beer is, the better it's been filtered and therefore the less hangovery it is!


ps. Beer isn't distilled...it's only fermented.

[Nature Boy]

Light beer companies have been claiming that their beers are healthier in terms of calories and do less damage the next day. I'm not too sure on that one myself and light beers don't taste great generally. vinylmesh has a point about impurities. Ciders packed full of preservatives and colouring agents leave SWIM in a mess of a hangover so I would assume the cleaner the beer, the better. Heineken constantly push the fact that they go through rigorous testing standards to ensure the quality of their product.

SWIM drinks stouts (Guinness being the most famous) and finds that they don't produce bad head hangovers although they do tend to produce tarry, black stools if too much is consumed.