What’s the matter with happōshu and third beers?

4 comments

1. Happoshu is a beer, but brewed not from pure malt but from other proteins, like peas for instance. Sometimes they add some extra alcohol to give a sharper taste.

   Third beer is synthetic beer. It is not beer, but beer-flavored sparkling water with white alcohol.
   In theory, the hangover should be weaker with third beer compared to regular beer because of the hypothetically lower percentage of tanins and methanol; but for some reason I ignore hangovers are always terrible with third beers and other artificially flavored beverages (strong zero fi).

2. For most of them, you should be able to tell what’s wrong immediately by the taste.

   They all give a far worse hangover than beer and many of them skip the pleasant buzzed state and go straight to gross icky feeling.

   Also, judging by the online menu, those four mugs of “nama” you had at Torikizoku were Premium Malts, which is pretty much top tier among the mass produced stuff, next to Yebisu. That and the heavy food there (god damn I love Torikizoku) is probably why you felt mostly fine the next day.

   A little protip: Never order “nama” without first confirming it’s real beer. If it’s a name you don’t recognize, don’t bother. Get a bottle of something instead.

3. [deleted]

4. The problem in Japan is that regulations require a high malt content for a beverage to be classified as beer. Happoshu is light beer but it can’t be referred to as beer here because it has a low malt content. The third category brews are just crap that was invented to get around the taxes placed on beer and happoshu.