How important is the "buzz"?

I have a conundrum. I love the taste of alcohol, but I really don't like 1) it's drying effect (makes me thirsty!), and 2) I usually am not wanting a buzz.
(and yep, I drink only decaf coffee, so there's consistency in my attitude) That being said, while decaf coffee is a good facsimile to regular, near beer is rather far.

lately, I find myself at best drinking 2 beers a week because of 1) and especially 2) (with a baby and sleep deprivation, a buzz is the last thing I need) I do miss my brews though.....

 

Honestly, I love the "buzz" and will space out my drinks so the "buzz" is just that. A buzz.

 

I've seen people spit $200 and $300 bottles of wine, even I was pretty stunned by it. And yeah, I agree with the mouthwash comment. LOL! Liquor is overrated but some people really do like that harsh alcohol taste as long as they're getting all the tasting notes, they seem to be okay with the Listerine mouthwash effect.

 

I mean if your downing in your own money, i guess thats could be a nice hobby, theres just much better things i could do with 300 dollars haha. Like buy a whole lot of good beer to DRINK!

-xICooRsYIx

 

No doubt about that. I always want to tell wine drinkers that they could get a whole case of Firestone Walker Sucaba for less than 300 and it pretty much blows away any wine they'll ever drink but I don't want to be rude. LOL!

I hope we never see the day when people spit Sucaba. hahah... that would be sacrilege.

 

Hmm, the last thing I worry about when I drink beer is how buzzed I am going to get. To each his own I guess.

 

My favorite character in Home Alone.....BUZZ!
My favorite thing about beer...................BUZZ!

 

I read how furious people get when they speak of how people go out and buy up all special released beer for trade barters and to hoard for themselves. I can only imagine how fellow winedrinkers are when they find out someone bought the last bottle of a limited release wine just to spit it out haha

-xICooRsYIx

 

LMAO!

Too funny!

I used to drink wine and still do occasionally but since I discovered craft, my wine consumption has been dwindling down to almost nothing. I was pretty much blown away by how good beer is and quite a bit cheaper too. However, I can't be too hard on the wine drinker, that was me about 4 years ago. "spit"

 

The buzz factor is not 100% nor 0%, pretty sure we all crave the buzz and appreciate the flavor, else we would be missing something

 

And I'm one of those people. Within the last year I've really gotten into craft beer and I just love the taste of it. But I've never been a big drinker and nowadays I have less tolerance than I did when i was 18(I'm 32 now). So really the only time I care about the buzz is when I'm pissed off about something so I have a couple to take the edge off, but that's it...just take the edge off. Just a couple months ago I attended a big beerfest with 80 breweries and over 400 beers. I went simply to try a bunch of new beers, because as everyone knows, the more you get into craft beer the more you want to try more often, but before I knew it, I had a buzz going and then not much later was pretty drunk. I figured I'd had about 4-5 beers total between all the samples...not all that much right? Well, for the first time in my life I got to the point where the room was spinning and I started feeling a little sick and almost threw up. Not exactly a pleasant feeling that I wanna go back to. So yeah, I don't really care about the buzz.

 

Soooo, to bring this back to the main point.

All of you who say the buzz has nothing to do with it:

You had your very first beer or two (or other alcoholic beverage), and to you it tasted soooooo good that you said to yourself, "Wow, I love this flavor, but this buzz I get is really annoying. Gee, I wish there was some way to always be able to enjoy this great flavor without having this annoying feeling of being slightly tipsy."

I am gonna echo Todd and offer that if you say this, you are lying. On some level it was the opposite, you enjoyed the buzz, and part of you wanted to revisit that feeling, and you hoped that you would grow to enjoy the flavor of the beverage enough so you could revisit the buzz. My first beer tasted awful, it was the buzz that made me even want to have a second go, and I don't know a person for whom this isn't true, to some degree at the very least.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying that feeling of a buzz, though surprisingly some folks in this thread act as though there is.

The taste and the buzz are inextricable, they are part and parcel of the same experience, and trying to have one without the other is not only impossible, but intellectually dishonest, at the least in the way I described above, but more directly in how alcohol is a key to making the unique flavor we enjoy so well, and in an analagous way. Too little, beer doesn't taste good. Too much, beer doesn't taste good. The right amount gives a sweet spot for flavor and for buzz. Cheers!

 

Beer has buzz. Yes. It makes it hard to enjoy because the buzz gets in the way after a couple hours, and a few of them. Especially with the bigger ones that brewers enjoy making so much. It makes socializing amusing because the buzz gets up in peoples business too. The buzz is an important thing to craft and to work on. Beer does that, and it ruins that.

 

Oh, thanks. Somehow I was hoping for a bit more depth than pointing to the comments of those posting in this thread. Have a nice day.

 

BTW, there are actually very few who have said that the buzz has nothing at all to do with it. True there are many who've said flavor is most important to them. But that is not particularly surprising given a site designed to attract those who favor beer. After all this is not alcohol.advocate and there is a site for whisky and multiple sites for wine so having many people say "flavor is most important to me" doesn't deny there is any role at all for buzz. There are a lot of less expensive ways of getting a buzz on than drinking the beverages we favor.

 

I have disregarded those who have been replying as though folks are saying they drink only for the buzz, it is a straw man, no one is saying that. And yes, few are saying they drink only for the taste. But I think no one finished their first alcoholic beverage and said, "Man this tastes great! But this tipsy feeling is awful! If only there was no buzz from this I would love it," which was Todd's point, and mine.

 

I agree with you as far as I am concerned, and as far as the majority of BA is concerned. What I don't agree with, is the fact that a small % who genuinely don't like the effects of alcohol are dismissed by the co-founder as lying. Is it that hard to believe? Sure, if you poll a group of 20 guys at a bar, it's hardly surprising that everyone says they're in it for the buzz (unsurprising both in terms of the small number of people being polled, as well as the current situation [drunk guys at a bar - hardly likely to elicit the response of - "no i hate a buzz"]). But out of the several hundred thousand members of BA, is it outside the realm of possibility that some do not like the effects of alcohol, period?

 

Actually my wife said that. She likes beer, but she complains that it's unpleasant when it makes her tipsy.

edit: Then again, she's not frequenting forums like this, which seems like a pretty clear case of what rollom said just above.