Draught Beer = Headaches? This sounds like BS to me.

Sounds like utter bullocks to me too.

 

Your friend is prob allergic to the mold growing inside the beer lines

 

Possible but what's the likelihood that every draft beer he's ever had has come from dirty lines? You would think at some point he had a beer from recently cleaned lines.

 

Maybe some residue from cleaning solution left over in the draft glasses? This, however, would only be viable if he wasn't drinking the 'bottled' brews out of those same glasses. In the end, barring something we're not seeing, sounds a load of bollocks!

 

My first thought was bottle conditioned beers vs. force carbed kegs. If the beers he drinks from the bottle contain yeast he'll be consuming B-complex vitamins which will help prevent dehydration to an extent. The kegged beer will not have the vitamins if it's force carbonated and will contribute to dehydration. So he may experience dehydration headaches from draft beer, but it seems like a stretch to me. Feel free to correct me guys, this was just my first thought.

 

Sounds reasonable but surely the guy has not been drinking bottled beers that are all bottle conditioned?

 

I actually had the same thought. If he's slurping down the sediment in every bottle, he's getting a high dose of vitamin B, which is known to help keep a person hydrated, which helps avoid the hangover.

There is also a carbonation issue at play. Carbonation helps your body absorb alcohol, and draft is often more carbonated than the bottle.

It's all a stretch and it's most likely in his head, but there are some tiny kernels of possibility here...

 

sounds like BS to me

 

I definitely agree with you. It seems more likely this may have happened once or twice where he had bottles of conditioned beer and felt fine then had a night or two of draft and had the headaches. Which has led to an association with each type that has persisted.

 

It is much more likely that even though the amount of beer he drank was the same, the other factors such as how much water he drank and how much food he ate were different.

 

Well, many draught beers are not pasteurized...so you got that part correct. Bottled beer may or may not be pasteurized, but there are no additives to preserve and stabilize bottled beer other than hops and CH3CH2OH. (unless you consider the yeast used to bottle-condition a preservative)

This phenomenon has been reported for years and without knowing exactly which beers cause this, it all comes down to speculation:

• Pasteurized vs. non-Pasteurized
• Dirty lines may be a suspect, but it's highly unlikely
• People who drink draught beer from a glass may tend to consume it faster/slower than when they drink from a bottle or can
• It could be completely psychological

Bottom line, if he gets a headache...he gets a headache.

 

Alcohol is alcohol.

I'd wager there's something more to the picture such as what else he's eating/drinking when at the bar vs. at home. In some bar contexts I find that the beers go down faster per hour, and faster per hour is one factor that will make it more likely to have a headache, for example.

 

To the OP

Has your friend pinpointed any particular styles of beer that may produce these headaches? The only thing I can think of, keeping everything else equal, is the carbonation level difference(higher producing more headaches).

 

Possibly noise in the bar or other environmental factors? Or does he drink from bottles at bars too?

 

Plenty of people can be "intelligent and educated" while still being completely wrong in other areas. The inverse is also true; an idiot may be right once or twice! What I'm getting at is that we have someone who should back up what he's saying with facts, and isn't. So there's really nothing to discuss here.

 

my sister-in-law gets wicked headaches from many non-pasteurized beers (SNPA being one of her classic examples), and it seems to have come down to an allergic reaction to certain ale yeast strains. could be that he's dealing with something like that, and just hasn't developed a nuanced understanding of what beers do it and what beers don't, given that many kegs are (to my understanding) non-pasteurized (even if they are force-carbonated as well). seems like he needs to do some experimentation to try and pinpoint what about the kegging vs. bottling in the types of beer he drinks is causing the headaches.

 

this complaint, that draft beer is the cause of headaches, is part urban myth and part historic fact. your Grand Dad was talking about this in the saloon it's such an old debate.

Ice Ace summed it up. there are many speculative reasons but without knowing the exact situation it is not likely we can figure out exactly why your friend has this belief. it could be he experienced headaches a few times after going out to the bar, drank too much beer, and rationalized that his headache was because it was draft beer and not bottle beer. could have been over carbed beer which certainly hurts a bit. may have been the beer nuts or the popcorn too.

 

It's all in his head. Seriously. A self-fulfilling prophecy if ever I heard one.