Table beer

I was grocery shopping today and happened to come across table beer for adults. the bottle I bought has 3.4% alcohol. for comparison's sake : regular beers (not specialty beers) have about 5.2% alcohol over here. it is sold in large bottles (75 cl which is about 25 oz). bottles go from $1 to $1.5 so the stuff is cheap. I'm downing a glass right now to see what it tastes like. it's alright I guess lol


http://www.drankenhandelvannueten.be.../Piedboeuf.jpg
the most famous local brand. I bought the cheap knock off though


table beer is meant to be drunk with lunch. most school refectories over here in Belgium served them until the 1990s. then soft drinks took over in popularity I guess. kids' table beer has about 1.5% to 2% alcohol. I remember drinking this stuff at school every day from age 9 to age 14 or 15. it was one of those things that was just standard issue at school. we never had it at home though


the product has become pretty much obsolete by now


kind of crazy to think about the fact they served kids light alcohol beverages at schools. I don't see this happening anymore in the current climate of helicopter parenting etc.


then again some scientists are asking for table beer to return to schools since it would keep kids off sugar (soft drinks)


this kind of thing ever exist around your neck of the woods?

In PA here, they aren't allowed to sell beer at grocery stores, so I don't think they would be selling it at schools either. lol

Lol table beer? Never heard of that.

They sold kids drinks with alcohol AT SCHOOL? LMAO was everyone not just trying to drink as much as possible to get wasted?

well you didn't even have to pay for it. you could drink it for free. there were water & table beer bottles on every table in the school refectory. I don't remember anyone getting drunk. maybe 1.5% to 2% alcohol is harmless?



the alcohol percentage for table beer for Belgian kids was lowered to 1.1% mostly in the 2000s, I had a look around. don't know if it's a strict law though



this is the best description in English I could find http://www.brewerydb.com/style/69





EDIT : I dug into this some more and the way it works (over here at least) is the indicated alcohol percentage on a bottle didn't necessarily reflect the actual alcohol percentage...


here's how it worked before the European Union had manufacturers mention the actual alcohol percentage. the percentage stated on the bottle used to refer to the amount of alcohol that theoretically could be gotten from the wort that is used to make a particular beer. (wort = an infusion of malt that is fermented to make beer)


the reason for this 'theoretical percentage' is that there were taxes to be paid on alcoholic beverages. the higher the alcohol percentage, the higher the taxes (at least back then). by having breweries' wort checked (instead of the final product) the Belgiangovernment could ask for higher taxes since the alcohol percentage would be theoretically higher than it might have been in the final product


I also looked into online results of a scientific study that showed that kids' alcohol level wasn't raised after drinking table beer (the 1.5 to 2%) in the 24 hours following the consumption of the drink












on an unrelated note, when I'm home I drink one different specialty beer every evening (next to regular ones if any, I mean). been doing so for a while and there are still plenty of beers to go. it is estimated that there are about 1,150 different Belgian beers. I'm about to drink an amber specialty beer called 'Piraat', suposedly established in 1784, with a (non theoretical) alcohol percentage of 10.5%

http://www.bierpassie.com/beericon/6...1375194332.jpg

cheers!

btw I heard the brewery that makes Beck's was sued a while back for pretending that the beer was brewed in Germany, when it is made in St Louis lol



this was in the local papers again today cuz a group of Americans are now sueing the same brewery for its belgian specialty beer Leffe, which is marketed as an 'abbey beer'. there's also a picture of the abbey on the bottle label. an American called Henry Vasquez found out it wasn't actually brewed in an abbey



but the thing is that according to Belgian law abbey beers don't need to be manufactured in abbey. in fact none of them are. there are 2 rules : the beers need to be connected to an abbey/monastery historically (so it was first brewed by monks) and secondly a part of the profit goes back to said abbey



this is different from 'trappist' beers, which are still brewed in or very close to abbeys by law. any profit is meant for the livelihood of said abbey. there is also a limited amount of those beers that can be brewed a year



if you ever get the chance to get your hands on a trappist beer, you should definitely give it a try. they are excellent


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist_beer



there's one such brewery in the US (they got advice on brewing the stuff from Belgian monks), in St Joseph's Abbey (Spencer, Massachusetts). the beer is called Spencer Trappist Ale


http://drinkbelgianbeer.com/wp-conte...640x1029_c.jpg





apparently there's an annual Belgian Beer fest in Boston btw?

Yea we have that low volume beer in our grocery stores but they sell it for the full retail price lol. Feel bad for people travelling who don't know better and buy it.

Almost picked up a bottle of Unibroue TERRIBLE earlier but realized I didnt have the right glassware at home for this style brew, so settled on a Pale Ale.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ak0-BirhkM...e+Terrible.JPG

That's fucking wild they served that shit in school. A few 1.5%-2% beers could def get kids drunk. For a while I was drinking light beers, I think somewhere around 3%, and I'd still feel a buzz from drinking 5 or 6. My skinny mate used to drink them and get pissed. And that's a 30 year old.

The only "beer" you can get in supermarkets here is something like 0.2% alcohol.

Btw Belgian beers are fucking awesome. When I was staying with my uncle in Holland, most nights he'd break out a couple of fancy Belgian beers his mate was hooking him up with, and we'd drink them out of those big fuck off round, bowl shaped sort of glasses. Shit was mad dope yo.

I remember people ordering beer in mcdonalds in Amsterdam. It was weird.

The only time I Drink alcohol with a meal is if I'm at a bar eating hot wings.

Otherwise I don't like the pairing.

You can buy alcohol everywhere at home. Go into a tiny grocery store in the country and they usually have more alcohol than anything else. Every supermarket has a huge grocery section, usually cheap as fuck as well. 20 500ml cans for 15 euro n shit.

Westmalle. The best.

The best.

The best.

The best.

The best.

The best.

The best.

The best.

I don't drink beer though.

I love westmalle.

I really like poperings hommelbier as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by check two

In PA here, they aren't allowed to sell beer at grocery stores, so I don't think they would be selling it at schools either. lol

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Damn Pennsylvania is such a shitty state.

I wouldn't live there if I had a chance to make $15,000 more per year. I refuse to live in that commonwealth, huckster, state trooper ever mile mark on the highway, corrupt self hating district attorney quaker fuckboy state. Even Pittsburgh and Philadelphia suck.

After I did time up there around 2006 for a bullshit charge (I couldn't find a really good attorney in PA in short time) I got the fuck out and never came back. Later turned out the cop who hyped up charges against me was soon later caught doing it to someone else and got terminated from the job. I should get my record expunged, but of course PA makes that difficult as hell too. It wouldn't surprise me if Pennsylvania turns out to be the shithole state that puts Biden over the top and hand delivers the most senile, pedophile, corrupt president of our lifetimes.

And you won't even be able to buy a six pack of beer from the grocery store because some drunkard dickhead state legislator didn't like his drunk daddy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hal Incandenza

kind of crazy to think about the fact they served kids light alcohol beverages at schools. I don't see this happening anymore in the current climate of helicopter parenting etc.

then again some scientists are asking for table beer to return to schools since it would keep kids off sugar (soft drinks)

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Belgium's beer is so great they gave it to kids. Honestly, some low percentage beer is probably far healthier for kids than all the high fructose corn syrup that Americans feed their kids. And the fake styrofoam shit they put into potato chips. Monosodium Glutamate and Hydrolized Vegetable Protein. People who feed their kids those frozen box dinners. I don't even let my kids drink soda unless it is a special occasion. It's usually water with lemons, limes, or orange peels for flavoring or 100% juice (apple, grapefruit, grape) not the fake flavored juice that's 5% or less from concentrate.

Those scentists have a good point. A very low percentage table beer is probably healthier than a high fructose corn syrup soda drink that many American schools allow (although less these days).

It's not unprecedented either. I imagine that before refrigeration and modern preservatives that lots of juice kids drank over the last 1000 years had some fermentation going on and had a low dosage of alcohol in it. It actually acted as a natural preservative before we had laboratory cancer causing preservatives and refrigeration. I bet kids were drinking wines and such for thousands of years. We're all evolved from it.

I still mentor middle school kids once every other week and they throw most of their food and milk in the trash. It's sad to see. I ask them why they went and got a milk if they were just going to throw it away. The cafeteria food isn't too bad, but costs a lot more than it used to. I remember paying like a quarter, then 50 cents, maybe a $1.25 by the time i was in high school. Now if I try to buy a tray there it costs me over $3.00 and for that price I can go to a deli and get a good fresh sandwich for not too much more. That's why I pack lunch and then the kids all fight over the good stuff i brought. They mostly fight over the comic books I bring for us to read and draw.