What is that Beer Doing to Your Waistline?

I was reading The Wort Hog’s blog today and, like me, she has been cutting back on her beer intake as part of her plan to maintain a healthy weight (or, in my case, to get back in the general vicinity of healthy weight!). Her post got me thinking about just how much our beer may affect us in this regard.

Now, before I start my little calculations, spare me the “but beer is so healthy…” stuff and links to articles about how good beer is for you. A little alcohol may be OK for us, and there are possibly some beneficial compounds in beer, but let’s be realistic… beer is no health food. Sure, it can be part of relaxation and stress reduction, but please don’t kid yourself by trying to convince yourself that a few beers every night after work is actually good for you, OK?

Now that that’s out of the way…

It’s tough to get a handle on how many calories “average” beer has. A bottle of Amstel Light is about 95 calories, whereas a bottle of Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot has 330! A lot of non-imperial styles have in the neighborhood of 170-200 calories. So, let’s say the average beer a craft beer aficionado drinks is 200 calories, for the sake of this argument.

Let’s say you’re a “One-beer-per-night” guy during the week as part of your unwinding ritual. That’s 1,000 calories per week and let’s say you do that 50 weeks out of the year, that’s 50,000 calories. To put this in perspective, this is close to a month of extra food if you eat an average diet!

Now, let’s say you drink a “few” beers on weekends with friends. It’s not hard to put away 2-3 beers just going out at happy hour, or quite a few more if you’re tailgating, working in the yard, watching sports, etc. So, let’s say you down an additional 6 beers on the weekends, and you do that 50 times per year. That’s 1,200 calories for the weekend, or another 60,000 calories for the year (a second entire month of eating!).

You could fairly easily be drinking an extra two months worth of food for the year.

Let’s look at this in terms of body fat. One pound of fat is 3,500 calories. If you’re not exercising all that beer off, and your drinking schedule is like what was written above, you could be adding 31 pounds of fat for the year.

So, let’s say that mammoth drinking schedule is ridiculous, and maybe you only drink an average of a six pack per week. That’s 1,200 calories per week, let’s 50 weeks of the year, which is 60,000 calories or 17 pounds of fat.

Maybe you’re a binge drinker and almost never touch beer during the week, but you have 5-6 beers on Friday night, another 8-9 on Saturday and maybe 2 on Sunday. Let’s say, 16 beers, for a weekend. I guess it’s possible. That’s 3,200 calories per week, almost a pound of fat every week.

Maybe my estimates are nuts, and you only drink, say, 3 beers per week. Let’s say one of those is a “big” beer, so you are averaging about 700 calories in beer per week. In 52 weeks, that comes to a little over 36,000 calories for the year, which is still 10 pounds of fat if you don’t work it off.

Now, keep in mind, these calculations don’t take into account how alcohol is metabolized, etc. Drinking a lot of beer may lead to additional weight gain, over and above the caloric content, by messing up your metabolism in other ways. Plus, very few people just drink a beer by itself. Chips, fries, onion rings, a 1,500 calorie meal at a restaurant with a few beers… you get the picture.

After years of relatively clean living before moving to Kansas City I found myself going out twice a weekend, having a beer almost every night of the week and a few every night I’d go out. Our friends like to do all-day get togethers, too, so putting away a six pack of craft beers over an entire day isn’t that ridiculous of a concept. No wonder I’m in the position of having to restrict my diet these days, and, unfortunately, beer consumption is a big part of that plan.

Something to think about, for sure, especially if you find yourself with an expanding waistline.

Sprecher Russian Imperial Stout

Now that Sprecher seems to be getting more widely available in Kansas City, I don’t mind reviewing this previously obscure (for around here) beer so much! I actually purchased this bottle in Omaha, NE, a few months ago. A four-pack of Sprecher’s trademark 16oz bottles was something like $7!

Sprecher makes some really good beers. I used to associate the brewery with someone I didn’t particularly like from my past (who turned me onto the brewery), so I’m glad I’ve been trying more of their beers and rediscovering this superb Wisconsin brewery over the part few months!

This beer is from Sprecher’s Premium Reserve lineup. It is a Russian Imperial Stout (you can tell this because the brewery cleverly named it “Russian Imperial Stout”), which is a style of stout originally brewed in the UK with extra alcohol (higher gravity) and hops to be exported to the Baltic courts. The “imperial” designation comes from the rumor that these beers were especially popular with Russian royalty.

This is an extremely popular style of beer in the craft brewing scene and for good reasons… stouts are delicious, all sorts of adjuncts like fruits, coffee and chocolate can be added to play with the flavors, and they are fun to drink. What’s not to like?

I poured this beer into my large (16oz) nonic pint glass (the large pint glasses with the bulge near the mouth). The beer poured absolutely pitch black with just the faintest of red highlights in the very corners of the glass. The head was the brown color of the crema on an espresso, deep and rich and fluffy like shaving cream.

I got a little aroma of roast and maybe coffee initially, but once the head disappeared I couldn’t get anything for aroma, and this time I don’t think it’s my nose!

The beer is an easy drinker, with little carbonation and a smooth, silky mouthfeel. If I didn’t know better, I would think it has oatmeal in it because of the texture, but none is listed on the website. This beer weighs in at 32 IBU’s and 8.5% ABV, so it’s not a mammoth stout, but it’s no lightweight, either.

There is some sweetness and dry roast on the front end of the sip, while the hops sort of come in later in the sip from the sides and meet up for a big finish with a little bitterness from the roasted malts. This is a well-balanced beer, with a nice finish that isn’t too dry or too sweet. There are hints of chocolate in the flavor, too, but I don’t pick up any coffee-like flavors despite getting some on the initial aroma. A nice caramel flavor on the aftertaste.

As far as imperial stouts go, this is fairly one-dimensional when compared to something like Bell’s Expedition Stout, for example. I’d compare it more to something like Old Rasputin or even a standard stout like Anderson Valley’s incredible Barney Flatts Oatmeal Stout. That said, it’s a very enjoyable beer, very easy to drink and, after having only 1-2 beers in the past four weeks, something with a noticeable kick for my now lightweight status! This would be a good bar stout for when you’re socializing, not forcing you to think too hard about what you’re tasting. Another winner from Sprecher!