Why Does Light Beer Induce a Severe Headache?

[Cat Brules]

Does anyone know why light beer (popular brands I've trued in the past) give me severe headaches after I've consumed about 6-8 ounces....not bottles!) :-)

 

I'm not a fan of light beer anyway, but I have completely stopped drinking light beer because of the headaches, even in social situations where no other type of beer is available. I tried to research this a couple times, with no success.

 

So, has anyone else experienced the same issue of getting a headache from consuming a few ounces of light beer?

[Yellowhouse Sam # 25171]

Any Sam Adams beer does it to me. I suspect hop content but dont know. Maybe theres an exspurt here somewhere!

[McCandless]

Haven't a clue... but there's lots of ideas about it here: https://forums.egullet.org/topic/121297-certain-beers-give-me-a-crippling-headache/

[Yul Lose]

Lite beer doesn't give me a head ache but I do get extremely drowsy after drinking one can or bottle of it. Regular beer or scotch or whatever else I drink do not have that affect. It makes me so sleepy that I fell asleep in one of the booths at a strip joint in El Paso years ago and the bouncer thought I was dead when he discovered me laying there.

[Chili Ron]

Howdy,

Light beer is the work of the devil.

Best

CR

[Pat Riot]

Uh...because light beer is crap!?

[Wolfgang, SASS #53480]

never had such a problem . . . . but then i stick to HEAVY beer . . . . like Guinness Stout . . .

[Cemetery]

Same thing with me.

 

Then i found Amstel Light.

 

Chug a Lug!

[Noz]

My body says beer is beer, C'mon!

[Sedalia Dave]

Everyone knows that light things float.

 

Regular beer settles around your middle creating the infamous Beer Belly

 

Light beer goes to your head and because you skull prevents your brain from swelling you get a headache instead of a beer head.

 

[Cat Brules]

My body says beer is beer, C'mon!

C'mon, Noz.....good for you if it doesn't bother you. But there's something different about light beer that gives me an almost incapacitating headache. i can drink "non-light/lite" beer with no headache affect. There's something different about lite beer. Just trying to figure out what that is. The website link above to a beer forum reveals to me (finally) that this "headache affect" isn't limited to lite beer, which makes the issue more complicated. My answer seems to be what I'm doing; I just don't drink lite beer. I'm glad that most folks don't have this headache problem. Bartender!! Give Noz a beer and mark my tab for it! "Cat Brules, when you actually pay your long-standing tab here, then maybe we'll start another one for you!!" Geez....okay, here's yer nickel, set up Noz with a beer! :-)

:-)

[Pat Riot]

Cat, are you drinking this beer at a bar from a tap or is this canned or bottled beer?

I ask because sometimes at bars they have to clean the tubes that the beer flows through from the keg. If they do not fully rinse those lines the cleaners get into the beer being dispensed and that can cause really bad headaches, or at least it used to for me.

 

If it's canned or bottled it may be that the light beer has higher sulfites (I think that's the word). Cheap wine has high sulfites, Cheap wine used to give me raging headaches. Almost migraine-like.

I also read that some beers have "histamines" in them that may be a headache culprit.

[Trailrider #896]

Neither light nor heavy beer or alcohol in most any form both me. 'Cause I don't drink! Howsomever, my younger daughter (grown and let's say over 21) has problems with any food that contains sulfites. So, I would guess the sulfites might be the problem. Of course there might be other ingredients that cause the problem. There are certain oral medicines that cause me to have rapid heartbeat, lightheadedness, and jitteriness. Sometimes it's the generic version, so I have to take the brand name. Sometimes visa versa. When I have to take the brand name, sometimes insurance won't pay for it. It isn't the medication, it's the dyes and binders. A lot of folks have this problem, according to a retired professor of pharmacology I talked to. Might be the same thing with lite beer. Sorry, Pard!

[Noz]

Cat, I had no desire to make fun of your problem but it is totally foreign to me as beer has never affected me much in anyway.

[Cat Brules]

Cat, I had no desire to make fun of your problem but it is totally foreign to me as beer has never affected me much in anyway.

I know tha Noz. I wuz just pulling your leg. Stuff sometimes gets lost between the head and my written words. It's cool...really.

:-)

[Blackwater 53393]

The headache effect some feel after consuming light beer is simply that full weight beers deliver enough anesthetic to relieve the pain of listening to bad funeral music coming from the services being performed for the brain cells you've killed. Light beer simply lacks that clout!!

[DocWard]

What is this "light" beer of which you speak?

Another confirmed Guinness drinker.

[Shorty Jack Hammer]

I have a similar issue with light beer, dark beer, ale, tequila, gin, whiskey, schnapps, brandy, vodka etc..... still trying to figure it out but I think it has to do with the fact that they all contain some varying amount of alcohol.....or it could just be me. I should mention it not one that does it, but one night of drinking too much of it....

[Lost Trail]

When forced, Sam Adams Boston Lager is as light as I go.

Sticking with Guinness, I have no troubles.

[The O'Meara Himself]

I have the same problem with light beer - instant headache. So I'm not much of a beer guy these latest 30 years or so. I like Guiness Stout But thats a pretty heavy ale and very few people ever chug a half-dozen pints. If no Guiness or no irish whiskey I can tolerate. Harp lager or Sam Adams Boston lager. But a couple pints is my limit, after that it's headache time again.

 

The O'Meara Himself

[Conestoga Smith, SASS #18219]

Heck, light beer can only give you a headache if you drink it!