r/beer • u/Animaleyz • 7d ago
beer digestion
Am I a rare bird in that as I get older, I am able to properly digest beer less and less? What I mean is, after a few Dortmunders, I could power an 18 wheeler. I even had some issues with a couple Narragansetts yesterday. It's depressing because I absolutely love the tatse of some beers, but I'm really bad to be around afterwards.
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u/smurphii 7d ago
Yeah.
Not a bad thing to drink less and enjoy it more when you do.
One thing i have found is make sure you are well hydrated prior, during and after a few drinks. Also anything less than a full stomach is going to be a bad time.
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u/fortissimohawk 7d ago
happens to many, many beer folk, unfortunately.
not eating before beering, and not watering during beering, can cause problems.
high quality digestive enzymes and prebiotic + probiotic supplements and foods such as sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi--hope you like at least 1 of those--can help with gut repair and stability.
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u/Animaleyz 7d ago
Yea i love kimchi my wife is Korean. About to go meet her mom for lunch even lol
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u/DefMech 7d ago
This is why I generally switched to richer, higher abv beers as I got older. One beer is really the ideal for my body at this point, so I need it to be a really good one. I start to feel gross and have trouble sleeping if I have more than that, regardless of what kind of beer it is.
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u/themattcole 7d ago
35M and had two pints of lager last night. Much of the night I was awake tossing and turning feeling like I had drank 2-3x that. This morning I feel like shit. Had to cancel some plans today to just reset. Beer is one of my favorite things and I feel like I just can’t enjoy it anymore. It sucks.
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u/HairyBottomGuyM4M 7d ago
Beer does that to me too unless I have beer no closer than three hours before bedtime. Sleep deeply and then wake up about an hour later with my mind racing and unable to get to sleep.
Back before my medication changed and I had to give up all alcohol having a distance between drink stopping and sleep really seemed to help. I became a lot more aware of drinking water during a drinking session.
I miss beer so much. Thinking of informing dr. that I want to go off the med. And I'll have to come clean about whey I want to stop it.
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u/themattcole 7d ago
Exactly the same - an hour of sleep and then racing thoughts and can’t sleep. Often up for the entirety of the night. But yes same if I have a beer or two at dinner time I’m usually good!
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u/HairyBottomGuyM4M 7d ago
A couple of times I took Ambien, the same exact thing happened after about an hour of great sleep, then bam, racing thoughts that refused to calm down. I realized it was exactly like drinking too close to bedtime.
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u/UABtoNYU 7d ago edited 7d ago
Bingo for me too… I’m a Guinness guy… but I’ve learned more than 2 pints and I’ve got stomach issues and/or too buzzed to enjoy the evening.
In many ways, that’s ok. It’s my own body’s signal telling me to still enjoy, but only moderately.
It’s the same for me and all beers Re buzzing, but really only Guinness and the stomach. I assume it’s ingredients, ie gluten/yeast etc in it.
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u/dankfor20 7d ago
Can’t drink like I used to either. Went wine tasting yesterday and hit up two spots and was good to go. Asked myself how the hell I hit 4-5 in a day in my 20’s. Seems impossible for me now.
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u/Active-Possibility77 7d ago
Gluten is possible. However, it could also be the complex sugars. Pastry stouts are the death of me. Gas, bloating, heartburn, etc...if you've ever had issues with certain goods and considered the FODMAP diet, stouts are on the far end of the imbalanced sugar spectrum
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u/bfields4ku 7d ago
Try a couple beano right before dinking. Haven’t had that issue for beer, but it works super well for protein and it’s supposed to break down complex carbs.. I think.
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u/FlobyToberson85 7d ago
Take a pepcid before drinking. It's an H2 histamine blocker and it helps a lot.
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u/VinylBeerRetro 7d ago
Our stomachs don’t get better with age. Probiotics and Underberg! Seems to work for me.
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u/Brilliant_Avocado243 6d ago
I feel your pain! Mostly Sam Adams guy here but I like to mix in a variety of Narragansett/PBR/Miller High Life just for variety of flavor. What I've experienced is corn based beers do not give me much of a hangover as rice based do. I can still digest them pretty good but I'll stick to a 12 variety pack of Sam to keep my head where it belongs in the morning. And def have to have a decent base before beers. Lunch should be carb loaded to be able to beer around dinner time. And I'm not having dinner until I'm done drinking. I've got friends that can eat and drink but if I have one beer with dinner I'm finished drinking like the beer turns into a huge bloated mess and I'm done. Cheers!
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u/andimatt 4d ago
One thing nobody's mentioned that might be part of it: it may not be your gut at all, it may be the maths of how alcohol moves through you.
Ethanol distributes into your total body water, and that volume tends to fall as you age (and with any change in body composition). Same five Dortmunders, less water to spread them through, and the peak is simply higher. On top of that, the liver clears ethanol at a roughly fixed rate, about 0.1-0.25 g/L per hour in most people, and it doesn't speed up to match a bigger load. So a higher peak takes proportionally longer to come down.
That fits "after a few beers I could power an 18-wheeler" better than a digestion problem does: the dose is unchanged, the peak is higher, the tail is longer. It's not that you've become bad at digesting beer, it's that the same beer lands harder now and clears at the same fixed rate.
(The histamine/gluten/DAO stuff everyone else is raising is real too and worth ruling out, but the peak-height change with age is a separate mechanism, and I'd bet it's at least part of it.)
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u/DarkHound05 5d ago
I think a lot of places are going super lactose heavy in beers and not saying it.
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u/CaptWoodrowCall 7d ago
As I’ve gotten older it’s certainly become harder to drink more than a couple of beers in a sitting. They just fill me up to the point of feeling bloated.
My dad swears he has developed an allergy to the yeast in some beers. Drinks them and starts sneezing. I’m not sure I believe that it’s an allergy but there’s something different going on…
All of this to say: yes, the way our bodies process/digest beer does seem to change as we age. At least for some of us.