Wednesday, January 12, 2011

A reaction to Mississippi's beer laws

Last week, a fellow beer blogger took the time to figure out the cost effectiveness of drinking higher alcohol content beers versus drinking lighter macro beers.

I wasn't too surprised to read her conclusion: "macro" beers with lower alcohol content are generally more cost effective for those who are drinking solely to get drunk.

So firstly, the idea that drinking extremely high ABV beers are somehow a cheaper way toget drunk is false. It doesn’t matter what size bottles you buy, the cost per oz of alcohol is clearly in the favor of the cheaper macro brews – who have gotten that price point based on volume. In the first example above, there isn’t a huge price differential in craft and micro (7 cents?) so I also decided to look further.
 She goes on to discuss the percentage of each purchase (a 12 pack of cans for the macro beers, a 6 pack of bottles for the lower alcohol craft beers and 2 bombers--22.9 ounce bottles--of "imperial" or higher alcohol content beer) that you would consume to consume a certain amount of alcohol.  This is where the low alcohol stuff comes out on top.  You would need to consume the entire purchase of craft beer or all but 0.9 ounces of the bombers, but you would still have a can of the macro beer remaining.

In other words, people who want to get drunk for cheap are probably not buying high alcohol content beer, and Mississippi is likely not accomplishing its goal by banning high alcohol content beers.  On top of that, other types of alcohol that have a higher alcohol content are unaffected by the laws. 

I'm in college, and believe it or not I've been to a few parties.  To this point, the only times I've seen craft beer, or even Blue Moon, at a "party" was at small gatherings that happened on weeknights.  When people want to get drunk they get Keystone, not Dogfish Head.

Bottom line: Mississippi is stupid.

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