The notion of a dry January has a double meaning in California. After all, it’s barely rained all year, and meanwhile, avid beer drinkers are giving up alcohol for the first month of the year.
Going dry for January — that is, quitting drinking for the first 30 days of the year — has become a wildly popular trend. Across the nation, millions of regular drinkers cut back or eliminate alcohol between December and February. They gab about it on social media, blog about it and often make a social go of it, drying out for the month with a group of friends. The idea is largely symbolic — a fresh start to the year, a reset, a clear-headed beginning, a deep cleaning of the body and mind.
Yet, all this talk of giving up booze, beer and wine during January seems awkward to me. I think it’s because I get uncomfortable when there are elephants in the room — and in this case, the elephant is the unspoken understanding that drinking alcohol is, or at least can be, bad for us, and if someone knows drinking is bad for them, maybe they should quit entirely, or make an effort to cut back on a long-term basis — not just quit for a few weeks.
I say all this as someone who has a beer or cider most nights but can’t remember when I was last dizzy-drunk. That is, I drink routinely, but I never get wasted. I think that’s why I’ve never been much interested in the dry January thing; I don’t feel that I have much to correct. In the past five years or so, I have veered sharply away from high-alcohol beers, which I once had a taste for but no longer enjoy except as special-occasion drinks. Lately, I’ve been enjoying 4% to 5% ABV lagers, lower-ABV IPAs and homemade cider, and at just a drink a night, that’s plenty dry.
Still, research has demonstrated benefits of briefly abstaining from alcohol. Scientists have observed improved sleep patterns, improved mental clarity and weight loss in people who quit drinking for a month. The benefits are reportedly more pronounced in moderate to heavy drinkers, and those who might be labeled light drinkers will probably see or feel fewer obvious benefits from a cold stop to drinking, at least for just 30 days. Thus, if I was a heavy drinker, I might feel more inclined to join the dry January wagon.
Breweries, ironically, are managing to cash in on dry Januarys. Samuel Adams has released a “near-beer” called Just the Haze, a hazy IPA sans alcohol. The brewery’s owner Jim Koch reportedly once vowed that he would never brew a non-alcoholic beer, but the demand for such a beer choice — during January as well as the rest of the year — has apparently swayed him to change his mind.
Lagunitas recently released a beer called IPNA, hopped like an IPA but containing just a fraction of a percent of alcohol. The beverage is potently hopped, as we would expect of a Lagunitas IPA, but it is light-bodied. While it’s a tasty drink, it lacks the full flavor and mouthfeel of more conventional beer. I have never tasted the non-alcoholic beers of Athletic Brewing Co., but they have received good reviews.
Some might ask why a vegetarian chooses to eat imitation meat rather than just embrace the epicurean joys of the plant kingdom, and one could ask a similar question of people aiming to quit alcohol who drink non-alcoholic beer. Just drink water.
Speaking of which, low-alcohol beers are almost entirely water. Consider Deschutes Brewery’s new hazy IPA that runs 2% alcohol-by-volume.
Beers like that are dry enough for me, even in January.
Alastair Bland’s Through the Hopvine runs every week in Zest. Contact him at allybland79@gmail.com.
The Link LonkJanuary 20, 2021 at 03:15AM
https://www.marinij.com/2021/01/19/some-breweries-are-cashing-in-on-dry-january/
Some breweries are cashing in on dry January - Marin Independent Journal
https://news.google.com/search?q=dry&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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