Beer before wine is similar to wine before beer in inducing hangover

Reference

Köchling J, Geis B, Wirth S, Hensel KO. Grape or grain but never the twain? A randomized controlled multiarm matched-triplet crossover trial of beer and wine. Am J Clin Nutr 2019;109(2):345-352.

Synopsis

In many cultures, the folk wisdom is that consuming wine before beer will trigger more hangovers than consuming beer before wine. So these multinational authors recruited 105 adults via an online survey and conducted the study on the campus of Witten/Herdecke University. The participants had to be aged 18 to 60 years, physically fit, and previous alcohol consumers. They were each given 2 matching partners (this is just getting better—drinking buddies!). The triplets were matched on the basis of age, sex, weight, height, body mass index, reported alcohol consumption, and hangover frequency. Although there was no external funding for the study, the authors received free beer (a premium lager recipe from 1847, chilled) from Carlsberg, presumably for the sole purpose of use in the study and not for personal use. They served a 2015 quality white wine, also chilled. The researchers rolled a 6-sided die to randomly assign each triplet to a control group or 1 of 2 study groups, each with a single day of "treatment." After the initial intervention there was at least one week before the next "treatment." The control group consumed only beer or only wine until a breath alcohol level of 0.11% was achieved and the following session switched to the alternate adult beverage. In the other groups, the participants consumed beer or wine until a breath alcohol level of 0.05% and then consumed the alternate adult beverage to a breath alcohol level of 0.11%. One week later, these participants crossed over to the opposite order. After the "treatment," all participants remained onsite overnight, supervised by volunteers, and received a standardized meal based on gender-specific and age-specific caloric requirements. The researchers monitored breath alcohol levels and when the levels reached 0%, generally the morning after, they administered an acute hangover scale consisting of 8 symptoms (eg, headache, nausea, thirst, and so forth) rated from 0 to 7 (total range 0 to 56 with 56 being the worst possible hangover). Ninety participants completed the study. Overall, the 3 groups had similar hangover severity scores (range = 10 - 25).