‘Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.” So said Mr. Mark Twain of New Year's Eve.

Perhaps this week, the very first week of 2010, we are all a pious and exemplary community, then again perhaps that is because we might be suffering from a bit of the self-inflicted flu.

New Year's Eve is known throughout the industry as “amateur night,” and what that means is that a lot of people who normally don't go out are out — and out in force. This, then, has the unfortunate result of a lot of people not feeling very well the next day.

Veisalgia is the actual medical name for a hangover. It comes from the combination of the Norwegian word “kveis” which means “uneasiness following debauchery” and the Greek word “algia,” which simply means “pain.” Apropos, don't you think?

The most common hangover symptoms are usually headaches, fatigue and dehydration with the severity varying from person to person. Symptoms are also contingent on how much, and what type, of alcohol was consumed.

A recent study by the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University has confirmed what many of us in the liquor business already suspected, that people

Advertisement
who drink darker-colored liquors experience more vicious hangovers.

The culprit (besides the alcohol itself) seems to be congeners, a chemical byproduct of alcoholic fermentation that are made of acetone, acetaldehyde and tannins (which are present in wood, grape skins and seeds). Different types of alcohol have different levels of congeners. The Brown study suggests the higher the level of congeners, the more intense the hangover. The study looked at bourbon and vodka and discovered that vodka drinkers (although just as lethargic the next day) experienced less severe symptoms on average.

Studies of congeners are not new; other studies have determined that red wines and aged liquors (caramel colored) have the highest concentration of congeners whereas clear liquors and white wines have fewer. However there are some notable exceptions; one analysis of congener content in different alcohols found that rose had 20 percent more congeners than pinot noir, a darker red wine, and in the case of two American beer heavyweights, Budweiser and Miller, Bud has twice as many congeners even though both appear the same color. Perhaps it's the beechwood aging?

All of this jibes with an older study by the British Medical Journal, which also determined that the hard liquor with the least amount of congeners is vodka. After vodka comes gin, white wine, Scotch whisky, white rum, red wine and brandy. That study also determined that Scotch whisky has about four times more congeners than gin; brandy has six times more, and bourbon has eight times the amount of congeners as gin or 30 times more than vodka.

What does all this mean?

It means that it is time for few new, New Year's resolutions. Repeat after me:

— I will ignore the old saying “Drink bourbon instead of vodka, so people know you are drunk and not stupid,” because it is exactly backwards when it comes to hangovers.

— I will heed the old saying “Don't mix your liquors,” because as it turns out, when you mix different types of alcohol, with their different congeners, your body has a more difficult time identifying and neutralizing them.

— I will remember that Ambrose Bierce wrote of brandy in his “Devil's Dictionary”: “A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan.” When it comes to hangovers, it turns out he was right.

— I will not have more than four drinks in a day, because regardless of congener content, the alcohol content in those drinks will produce hangover-like effects. Other contributors besides sheer volume are drinking on an empty stomach, a lack of sleep, increased physical activity while drinking and already being in compromised health.

— I will take aspirin for my hangover symptoms because it contains prostaglandin inhibitors that help decrease hangover severity. I will not take acetaminophen or ibuprofen because some studies suggest that they can have potentially serious effects on the liver.

— I will never ever drink and drive. No matter how long a cab takes to get there.

Jeff Burkhart is an award-winning bartender at a Marin bar/restaurant and an author. His columns appear weekly in Here. Contact him at jeffb@thebarflyonline.com.