Well, I hope not. Really, I seriously hope this isn’t dangerous. An old acquaintance of mine here in Munich has a tradition of going to the Oktoberfest on each of its 16 days – crazy. This year, to coincide with the festival’s 200th anniversary, it seems he’s taking things much, much further than that.
Jon plans to drink 100 Maß (100 one-litre mugs of beer) between the festival’s opening ceremony at noon this Saturday (September 18) and last orders on the final day (October 4). That, as the intrepid beer lover explains on his blog, equates to 6.25 Maß each day.
My initial shock spurred me on to take the sums a step further: 6.25 Maß, based on a beer of 6% alcohol by volume (roughly standard for the Oktoberfest stuff), makes 37.5 units of alcohol per DAY (one unit = 10ml of pure alcohol). Here are two ways to look at that quantity of booze:
- A 0.7l bottle of whisky at 40% contains 28 units. Jon will be drinking (on average, of course) the equivalent of 1.3 bottles of scotch every day.
- The UK’s recommended maximum consumption of alcohol per week is 28 units. Jon will drink more than nine times as much as he supposedly should, two weeks running.
I’ve always wondered how much leeway there is in those guidelines, but I was usually wondering about the effect of doubling, maybe tripling, the weekly dose. It takes one badass sumbitch to nonuple (yes, I had to look that up) the safe ethanol intake.
We wish you luck, oh brave one!
October 5th, 2010 → 9:54 pm
[...] or two fellas that take things that bit further, as if it wasn’t already strenuous enough. I reported on the attempt by one such fella a couple of weeks ago. He planned to drink 100 Maß (100 one-litre [...]