Beer Forum

So last the wife and I had some friends over and sampled a range of craft beers, starting more "commercial" Widmer Bros and New Belgium Brewing, and worked along to different styles from some smaller breweries (Ninkasi) then finished with some Duvel. Now I'm certainly not Brewtat2 but I can hold a steady night of drinking with few ill effects. I had the equivalent of 5 pints at most over 4 hours on a full stomach with water along the way and still woke up with a raging headache.

I really notice this when I drink belgians and I'm curious- do others notice the same thing? I know wheat beers adversely effect some so it wouldn't surprise me if the belgians would have adverse effects on some.

I can't speak directly to fusel alcohols produced by belgian yeast, someone else surely has info on that. My take is that belgians usually are high alcohol, with a light body and dry finish. So they go down smoother than, say, a Russian Imperial Stout of the same ABV. You drink more, therefore, headache.

You said that you had 5 pints. You said not all of it was belgian, but for example sake if you had 5 16oz pints of 9% Duvel, that would be the alcohol equivalent of (roughly) 12 12oz bottles of a 5% beer like Widmer Hefe. Enough to give me a headache, and it went down just as smooth.

The only Belgian that ever regularly gave me a headache was a crappy triple I brewed last year that fermented too hot and was loaded with fusels. 1 750ml would do it.

Fusels in a beer are downright nasty. I have to dump the batch when I can taste them. Thank god for temperature control! Oh wait, mine just broke this weekend....Doooooh~!

Short answer:
Cheap alcohol (i.e. produced with no attention to fermentation temps) and overconsumption of alcohol= hangover

Long answer:
Alcohol is metabolized in the body to acetaldehyde. This is the compound mostly responsible for your hangover and a host of other nasty things (i.e. vitamin depletion, cirrhotic liver, accumulation of carcinogens ect...) Acetaldehyde is then converted to another more benign metabolite which eventually makes it to the toilet (in most cases anyway). This conversion of acetaldehyde to its metabolite is the rate limiting step in this process and the amount of acetaldehyde in your body at one time is directly proportional to the size headache you get the next morning. So if the concentration of acetaldehyde exceeds the concentration of the enzyme responsible for its metabolism (acetaldehyde dehydrogenase for all you fellow biochem geeks out there) you get a build up of acetaldehyde. Now fusel alcohols given off by high fermentation temps are more readily converted to acetaldehyde than pure ethenol. So more fusel alcohols wil give higher concentrations of acetaldehyde. However even pure ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde and if you drink enough of it you will accumulate acetaldehyde. Do this repeatedly and you will end up with the other nasty effects stated above. Hence the current medical recomendation to limit your intake to one to two drinks per day. The other confounding factor is genetics. Some peoples enzymes just can't keep up with others.

As to whether belgian yeast strains produce more fusels then others I can only cite my current brew which is JZ's english strong with some oak and vanilla. I let it ferment uncontrolled at room temp (68 nottingham dry yeast). My temp control equipment is currently under the christmas tree. Anyway it has settled down after 4 days and I tasted it today when I checked my gavity. Fusel city! This thing is hot and nasty. I'm sure it will mellow some over the next ten days but it will probably need some significant aging befor its drinkable if it ever will be. Anyway IMHO I don't think the production of fusels is so much yeast strain dependant as it is temperature dependant.

Sorry for the lengthy boring post but I did offer the short answer

PB

I didn't think fusels mellowed with age. At least not in the beers I brewed

This isn't quite so scientific, but my mom is a nurse and she told me 2 things that can influence whether or not you get a hangover: Dehydration is a big one, so obviously drink a lot of water. I can't remember a night when I diligently drank a glass of water for every beer I drank and got a hangover. The other is speed at which you start and stop drinking. For instance if you start pounding shots, get drunk and then stop quickly, your body actually goes into alcohol withdrawal, which is when the "hair of the dog" trick comes in the next day. Fusels can definitely be pretty nasty, but I'd say the most of the best Belgians have low amounts of fusels, so that's not necessarily why you got a hangover, but it might have been a factor.

I don't know if the BEST belgians have fusels so much as an alcohol nose. Fusels are that lacquer, paint thinner, solventy smell and taste that is truly disgusting and not EVER a good thing in any beer. Strong belgians and other strong beers (made well) will present the alcohol in different ways (pepper spice, roses, etc.). At least that is what I have experienced.