Comment by jdlshore | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdlshore | Hacker News Reader

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Your world-weary nihilism is appealing, but I don’t buy it. Your core premise is flawed: perhaps you drink to get drunk, but that’s not true of everyone. Heck, I don’t think it’s true of most people, other than alcoholics. It’s not true for me. I can’t remember the last time I was drunk.

(Yes, that’s a great straight line. Let it pass.)

Moreover, it’s obvious that different drinks taste different. My wife loves vodka, hates whiskey. I like whisky, not fond of vodka. We both adore Crabbie’s hard ginger ale, which is an objectively terrible beverage (“glucose wine”) made palatable with copious amounts of sugar and ginger. I’ve got a case of it in my living room. We’re not exactly high-brow.

Sure, there’s a lot of pretentiousness in the wine world. There’s still wines I enjoy, and wines I don’t. (And sugar monstrosities I’ll even admit drinking.) I’m not in it to get drunk. And that’s why I don’t buy your nihilism.

> perhaps you drink to get drunk

I like that your response to a comment that boils down to “Just buy what you like” is to (in so many words) accuse the GP of being a nihilist alcoholic. Please do go on about the “objectively terrible beverage” that you keep a case of in your living room though

People also like to emotionally justify how they're better than others.

In some cases it takes on the form of a phrase like "world-weary nihilism".

BRB buying a case of objectively terrible glucose wine to keep next my couch in furtherance of my Jedi-like adherence to temperance and sobriety

lol

OP said "all of it gets you drunk, which is what you're after"

Fundamentally it's true. You buy it because it contains alcohol no? If you're not after the drug inside, you'll just buy juice or soda. Hammered or buzzed, you wouldn't buy it if not for it's mind altering effect.

I know vodka is different than whiskey. They even contain different volatiles, which changes the buzz considerably, and the wood esters and things in whiskey are bad for you and give you hangovers.

Why are you drinking alcoholic beverages if you don’t care about getting drunk?

Most of us in the developed world have ready access to a variety of alcohol free drinks if the goal isn’t to get buzzed.

Do you have an equivalent to an oaky bourbon that isn't alcoholic?

In the same way I drink coffee for the taste, decaf even is often not the same.

I've had good decaf where I can't taste the difference between that and the caffeinated stuff.

That's not the same issue here.

And when it comes to soft drink, I can actually taste the difference between the caffeinated stuff and decaf. My mom ran that double-blind test on me when I was younger, where I was not exactly a willing participant. When I proved to her that I could actually taste the difference, she stopped trying to run double blind experiments on me.

> Why are you drinking alcoholic beverages if you don’t care about getting drunk?

For the taste? If I could get my favorite wines, Scotches and beers without the alcohol- WHILE retaining the exact same flavor- which I admit is likely impossible, I'd never go back.

Dunno about the GP, but I stopped "getting drunk" in my 20s

Non alcoholic beer, wine, and champagne are pretty good. Athletic brewing and Brewdog make the best craft NA beer and they are amazing. NA corona, Bud zero and heneniken zero are good too. Same flavor profile as the original. I haven't tried NA gin or NA bourbon yet.

Is there a non-alcoholic Pineau de Charante? Chateau d'Yquem? A non-alcoholic Belgian Trappiste beer?

Sure, there may be some flavors of non-alcoholic drinks out there, but there's a lot more types and flavors of alcohol out there for which there is no non-alcoholic equivalent.

These days, if I'm drinking anything that is alcoholic in any way, it's because of the flavor. I've never liked the feeling of loss of control that comes with being drunk. My only problem with drinking alcohol is that if you drink too much of it because you like the flavor, then you end up getting drunk.

There are some Belgium style NA beers but I haven’t tried them yet. I’ll do so an report back.

Non alcoholic beer, wine, and champagne are pretty good.

Non-alcoholic beers are OK when compared to mass produced beers (NA Guinness for example is not a million miles from regular Guinness, if drunk cold). None of them can stand up to genuinely great beers. Non-alcoholic wines are way way behind, and way inferior to even cheap wines. NA gin tastes very little like gin if you drink it straight, but can be used to make some very nice non-alcoholic mixed drinks. In fact the only space making serious progress on non-alcoholic drinks is the cocktail space and there are many bars out there where their NA cocktails can comfortably hold their own against their alcoholic counterpart.

Interesting. I think I agree with you. But I second guess it as well. Think about it: you might genuinely like the way these things taste. But what if your body has built up a positive association because of the way it makes you feel? Isn’t it possible that even if it were identical in taste, you’d grow indifferent unless you mix it up?

I love wine, I love the taste. But I don’t really know why I love the way it tastes.

People drink for the buzz it gives. It might be a very light buzz or past out drunk. The difference is the intensity of the buzz. You can't tell me one drink does not affect your senses. It does. Otherwise why do it at all. Fruit punch would do just as well.

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