How to drink all night without getting drunk

[BobbyOK]

Surely if this is actually true, we'd all be doing it already, right? Or are homebrewers already able to drink more because most everything they drink is unfiltered and they're already getting their yeast?

How to drink all night without getting drunk

“That guy from the TV commercials!” That’s what they call him, either because they don’t know his name, or are by now too drunk to remember it. As the co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, he has appeared in countless Sam Adams commercials over thirty years. And, while this always-smiling man is a regular guy like you and me while walking the street, the second he enters a bar Jim Koch becomes a celebrity.

We met at a midtown Manhattan monstrosity called The Keg Room, where at least four people stopped Koch to say hello as we made our way to a table. One apologized for currently drinking something yellow and fizzy as opposed to a Boston Lager as we sat down.

“So many beer lists are poorly arranged, but this is pretty nice,” Koch noted. “A good mix of styles, not just a bunch of IPAs like most bars have nowadays.”

Seconds later, he learned that one of the two Sam Adams offerings on tap was their new IPA, Rebel. We ordered two, though there was another surprise: they arrived in shaker pint glasses, which "aren't right," he said. "You won’t get all the aromatics.”

He reached in his bag and withdrew a Perfect Pint glass, the shapely, angle-rimmed piece of glassware his brewery helped design back in 2007 and sent the waiter back to the tap. “I always carry one with me,” he said. “You’ll see…”

He was right – I did see. And then I saw a whole slew of beers almost magically appear on our table. Nitro stouts, sours, two big bottles from their Belgian-inspired Barrel Room Collection. That’s when Koch snapped into full salesman mode, enthusiastically talking about Brewing the American Dream, his brewery's micro-lending program which has helped over 300 food and beverage startups over the past half-decade. But as much as Koch likes to pitch his company, what the man really loves to do is drink beer.

He popped the top on Tetravis, the brewery’s version of a Belgian quadruple. I had never had it before and was blown away by its freshness and bursting dark fruit flavors, atypical of most quads, which are usually muted due to aging and oxidation. Noticing my pleased reaction, Koch quickly moved to uncork the second bottle, a Belgian stout named The Thirteenth Hour.

“I’m gonna be wasted before this interview is up!” I laughed.

That's when things got dead serious for the first time all afternoon. Koch leaned in toward me, stared straight into my eyes, and whispered.

"You wanna know my secret? How I can drink beer all night long and never get drunk?"

In fact, I had always wondered that. Though this was the first time I’d ever formally met Koch, I’d “met” him in the past at a few beer festivals. Those sorts of events are always kind of Bacchanalian shit shows, with people imbibing dozens of beer samples in a short period and soon stumbling around large convention halls drunk of their asses. Brewers included. But not Koch, who I’d long noticed was always lucid, always able to hold court, and hold his own with those much younger than him. This billionaire brewing raconteur was doing likewise with me at 4 PM on a Thursday afternoon despite the fact we were both now several beers deep. So what was the secret?

“Yeast!”

“Yeast?”

“Active yeast. Like you get at the grocery store.”

Koch told me that for years he has swallowed your standard Fleischmann’s dry yeast before he drinks, stirring the white powdery substance in with some yogurt to make it more palatable.

“One teaspoon per beer, right before you start drinking.”

He’d learned the trick from his good friend “Dr. Joe,” a craft beer legend in his own right. Educated at Harvard with a troika of degrees (a BA, a JD, and an MBA), Koch is no slouch, but the late-Joseph Owades was a flat-out genius. With a PhD in biochemistry from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and an early job in the fermentation sciences department at Fleischmann’s, Owades probably knew more about fermentation and alcohol metabolism than perhaps any man who has ever lived. Koch calls him, in fact, “The best brewer who’s ever lived.” He used that immense knowledge to eventually become a consultant for most of the progenitors of America’s early craft brewing movement such as Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, New Amsterdam Brewing in New York, and, yes, the Boston Beer Company. There he became good friends with Koch, helped perfect Boston Lager, and passed on to Koch his little yeast secret.

You see, what Owades knew was that active dry yeast has an enzyme in it called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH is able to break alcohol molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Which is the same thing that happens when your body metabolizes alcohol in its liver. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your bloodstream and, thus, your brain.

“And it will mitigate – not eliminate – but mitigate the effects of alcohol!” Koch told me.

In his final years Owades even patented a product called Prequel, an all-natural pill similarly designed to limit drunkenness. No companies wanted to deal with the potential liabilities of the product, and Owades died in 2005 at the age of 86.

Of course, I had to honor my longtime hero Koch, and a new beer hero I’d just learned about in Owades, and try this trick myself. So the next day I grabbed a six-pack of beer and a packet of Fleischmann’s and went to work. The older I get, the more of a lightweight I surely become, but after shoveling down six teaspoons and tilting back six bottles I felt nothing more than a little buzzed. Koch told me he keeps a breathalyzer around at all times just to assure he’s never too drunk. He never is. And, though I had no tangible “proof,” besides the fact I was still awake, I was pretty sure I wasn’t all that drunk either. Forever more I’d be yet another guy discreetly carrying a white powder around at bars. I’d advise you do likewise.

[mumblecrunch]

Surely if this is actually true, we'd all be doing it already, right? Or are homebrewers already able to drink more because most everything they drink is unfiltered and they're already getting their yeast?

The answer is "sorta" apparently:

Yeast and bacteria
Unlike humans, yeast and bacteria (except lactic acid bacteria, and E. coli in certain conditions) do not ferment glucose to lactate. Instead, they ferment it to ethanol and CO2. The overall reaction can be seen below:

Glucose + 2 ADP + 2 Pi → 2 ethanol + 2 CO2 + 2 ATP + 2 H2O[20]

In yeast and many bacteria, alcohol dehydrogenase plays an important part in fermentation: Pyruvate resulting from glycolysis is converted to acetaldehyde and carbon dioxide, and the acetaldehyde is then reduced to ethanol by an alcohol dehydrogenase called ADH1. The purpose of this latter step is the regeneration of NAD+, so that the energy-generating glycolysis can continue. Humans exploit this process to produce alcoholic beverages, by letting yeast ferment various fruits or grains. It is interesting to note that yeast can produce and consume their own alcohol.

The main alcohol dehydrogenase in yeast is larger than the human one, consisting of four rather than just two subunits. It also contains zinc at its catalytic site. Together with the zinc-containing alcohol dehydrogenases of animals and humans, these enzymes from yeasts and many bacteria form the family of "long-chain"-alcohol dehydrogenases.

Brewer's yeast also has another alcohol dehydrogenase, ADH2, which evolved out of a duplicate version of the chromosome containing the ADH1 gene. ADH2 is used by the yeast to convert ethanol back into acetaldehyde, and it is expressed only when sugar concentration is low. Having these two enzymes allows yeast to produce alcohol when sugar is plentiful (and this alcohol then kills off competing microbes), and then continue with the oxidation of the alcohol once the sugar, and competition, is gone.

Note that the article specifies Active Dry Yeast for the trick, so you're getting the ADH1 rather than the ADH2 present in Brewer's Yeast and which works somewhat differently ("expressed only when sugar concentration is low"). Pretty nifty trick there though, to be able to both produce and consume its own alcohol.

[mr x]

Daily News tests Samuel Adams brewer Jim Koch’s anti-tipsy method by eating yeast before boozing
Turns out, it works! One teaspoon of active dry yeast can keep you sober.

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We had our doughs.

Like most alcohol consumers, we were initially dismissive last week when Samuel Adams brewer Jim Koch revealed his secret for never getting drunk on copious amounts of his fine product: he swallows a teaspoon of yeast before every beer.

He claimed that the active ingredient in active dry yeast — an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase — breaks down the liquor in the stomach before the alcohol can get into your bloodstream and do the voodoo it does.

That sounded ridiculous for two reasons: 1. could yeast really break down alcohol before it gets to the brain? And 2. Why would we want to break down alcohol before it gets to our brain?

Koch needs to stay sober for professional reasons. We needed to get drunk for professional reasons — i.e. to test his theory.

So the Daily News Taste Kitchen filled Dr. Koch’s prescription — and got busy with some investigative journalism in the form of a full glass of Widow Jane bourbon.

With seven capsules of Red Star yeast rumbling in our stomachs, we downed extremely generous pours of the bourbon — far more than our normal adult dose — and did not get drunk.

So we repeated the experiment: another 4,800 milligrams of yeast and another six-ounce tumbler of Red Hook’s finest.

This time, we could feel the alcohol — but only as much as we normally feel after a half-glass of wine.

One question: Why would we want to break down alcohol before it gets to our brain?

We wouldn’t operate heavy machinery — but we weren’t drunk dialing our exes or running around the neighborhood naked and playing the bongos ... any more than we normally do. The video shows it all.

There was no control group — in the Daily News Taste Kitchen, everyone gets to partake — but experts say our experiment and Koch’s experience have some validity.

“The extra enzyme helps to more rapidly break down the alcohol,” says Steven Isaacman, a director of Research at Nanometics, a pharmaceutical-industry lab.

Isaacman did point out one downside to our experiment — which we confirmed hours after our conversation.

“That much yeast is going to make your stomach grumble,” he adds. Grumble is an understatement; you’ll want to be near a bathroom for most of the morning after.

In the real world, bartenders weren’t that pleased with Koch’s buzz-kill pills.

“Part of the fun of drinking is getting tipsy!” says bartender Damien Suazo of Vintry Wine & Whiskey in the Financial District.

“I don’t believe in slowing down.”

We agree. So bartender, we’ll have another! Make it a double. Just give us a second to swallow some fungal enzymes.

with Megan Monk