The Strange, Scientifically Backed

Method for Drinking All Night Without

Getting Drunk
Jim Koch of Sam Adams knows beer. He also knows a
weird secret trick that will let you drink beer after beer
without getting sloppy.
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By Aaron Goldfarb
Dec 18, 2015

3.1k

Boston Beer Company

"That guy from the TV commercials!" That's what they call him, either because
they don't know his name, or are by now too drunk to remember it. As the cofounder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, he has appeared in
countless Sam Adams commercials over thirty years. And, while this alwayssmiling man is a regular guy like you and me while walking the street, the second
he enters a bar Jim Koch becomes a celebrity.
We met at a midtown Manhattan monstrosity called The Keg Room, where at
least four people stopped Koch to say hello as we made our way to a table. One
apologized for currently drinking something yellow and fizzy as opposed to a
Boston Lager as we sat down.
"So many beer lists are poorly arranged, but this is pretty nice," Koch noted. "A
good mix of styles, not just a bunch of IPAs like most bars have nowadays.
Seconds later, he learned that one of the two Sam Adams offerings on tap was
their new IPA, Rebel. We ordered two, though there was another surprise: they

arrived in shaker pint glasses, which "aren't right," he said. "You won't get all the
aromatics."
He reached in his bag and withdrew a Perfect Pint glass, the shapely, anglerimmed piece of glassware his brewery helped design back in 2007 and sent the
waiter back to the tap. "I always carry one with me," he said. "You'll see"
He was right I did see. And then I saw a whole slew of beers almost magically
appear on our table. Nitro stouts, sours, two big bottles from their Belgianinspired Barrel Room Collection. That's when Koch snapped into full salesman
mode, enthusiastically talking about Brewing the American Dream, his brewery's
micro-lending program which has helped over 300 food and beverage startups
over the past half-decade. But as much as Koch likes to pitch his company, what
the man really loves to do is drink beer.
He popped the top on Tetravis, the brewery's version of a Belgian quadruple. I
had never had it before and was blown away by its freshness and bursting dark
fruit flavors, atypical of most quads, which are usually muted due to aging and
oxidation. Noticing my pleased reaction, Koch quickly moved to uncork the
second bottle, a Belgian stout named The Thirteenth Hour.
"I'm gonna be wasted before this interview is up!" I laughed.
That's when things got dead serious for the first time all afternoon. Koch leaned
in toward me, stared straight into my eyes, and whispered.
"You wanna know my secret? How I can drink beer all night long and never get
drunk?"
In fact, I had always wondered that. Though this was the first time I'd ever
formally met Koch, I'd "met" him in the past at a few beer festivals. Those sorts of
events are always kind of Bacchanalian shit shows, with people imbibing dozens
of beer samples in a short period and soon stumbling around large convention
halls drunk of their asses. Brewers included. But not Koch, who I'd long noticed
was always lucid, always able to hold court, and hold his own with those much
younger than him. This billionaire brewing raconteur was doing likewise with me
at 4 PM on a Thursday afternoon despite the fact we were both now several
beers deep. So what wasthe secret?

"Yeast!"
"Yeast?"
"Active yeast. Like you get at the grocery store."
Koch told me that for years he has swallowed your standard Fleischmann's dry
yeast before he drinks, stirring the white powdery substance in with some yogurt
to make it more palatable.
"One teaspoon per beer, right before you start drinking."
He'd learned the trick from his good friend "Dr. Joe," a craft beer legend in his
own right. Educated at Harvard with a troika of degrees (a BA, a JD, and an
MBA), Koch is no slouch, but the late-Joseph Owades was a flat-out genius. With
a PhD in biochemistry from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and an early job in the
fermentation sciences department at Fleischmann's, Owades probably knew
more about fermentation and alcohol metabolism than perhaps any man who has
ever lived. Koch calls him, in fact, "The best brewer who's ever lived." He used
that immense knowledge to eventually become a consultant for most of the
progenitors of America's early craft brewing movement such as Anchor Brewing
in San Francisco, New Amsterdam Brewing in New York, and, yes, the Boston
Beer Company. There he became good friends with Koch, helped perfect Boston
Lager, and passed on to Koch his little yeast secret.
You see, what Owades knew was that active dry yeast has an enzyme in it called
alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH is able to break alcohol
molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
Which is the same thing that happens when your body metabolizes alcohol in its
liver. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the
alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your
bloodstream and, thus, your brain.
"And it will mitigate not eliminate but mitigate the effects of alcohol!" Koch told
me.
In his final years Owades even patented a product called Prequel, an all-natural
pill similarly designed to limit drunkenness. No companies wanted to deal with the
potential liabilities of the product, and Owades died in 2005 at the age of 86.

Of course, I had to honor my longtime hero Koch, and a new beer hero I'd just
learned about in Owades, and try this trick myself. So the next day I grabbed a
six-pack of beer and a packet of Fleischmann's and went to work. The older I get,
the more of a lightweight I surely become, but after shoveling down six teaspoons
and tilting back six bottles I felt nothing more than a little buzzed. Koch told me he
keeps a breathalyzer around at all times just to assure he's never too drunk. He
never is. And, though I had no tangible "proof," besides the fact I was still awake,
I was pretty sure I wasn't all that drunk either. Forever more I'd be yet another guy
discreetly carrying a white powder around at bars. I'd advise you do likewise.