Understanding ABV for Low-No Drinkers

Speaker 1 1:12

Hello and welcome to the very first Low-No Drinker FAQ , a new weekly look at the world of low no and light drinks drinkers and drinking where , each week , I'll help you find , understand and enjoy the amazing drinks that allow us all to live a life less intoxicated . I'm Denise Hamilton-Mace and I'm the founder , editor and host of all things Low-No Drinker . Host of all things low-no drinker . So welcome to the first in this brand new series . I'm really excited about this but a little bit nervous , I'll admit it . I'm so used to interviewing people on this podcast and , you know , just sharing the odd thought here or there and letting my guests run away with the conversation and share their wisdom , but now I would like to share some of my own wisdom . Sounds a little bit self-conceited , but you know my experience and my knowledge in this low-nose space and really help you on your journey to a life less intoxicated . If you caught the introductory episode last week , you'll know that this is going to be a series of shorter episodes , so around about the 10 minute mark in which I'm going to answer the questions that I've received over the last several months of doing research for all of Low no Drinker about the topics that I know you are curious about and that can help you feel more confident about your choices around reducing or removing your alcohol intake in whatever way works best for you . I can't go any further , though . I'm recording this in mid-January . I'm releasing it towards the end of January .

Speaker 1 2:42

Just a quick note to say that if you are joining me because you are doing Dry January , then I tip my hat to you . It is not an easy task . I have done many Dry Januaries in my life and some of them I have completed . Some of them I have bowed out gracefully or disgracefully , depending on who you ask . But the very fact that you recognize that you want to make a change in the way that you drink and you are doing something about it means that you are making a healthier choice for your life and I cannot commend you enough for that . I will be doing an episode on dry January itself and what to do after that as well , so keep an ear out for that one .

Speaker 1 3:20

And if you are one of the many people who are listening , who has not yet subscribed , first of all , thank you very much for listening to the show and I appreciate you being here . If you do decide to hit that subscribe or follow button . That really helps the show . It shows all those pesky algorithms that people do enjoy listening and then helps me reach more people who are looking to live a life less intoxicated . But let's crack on with our first question , and this week's FAQ is what is ABV ?

Speaker 1 3:48

So , as I said in my previous introduction , the point of this series is to answer some of the fundamental questions that people have around low , no and light drinks drinking and ABV is a pretty fundamental topic because it is the basis for deciding what drinks get included in what category and how we feel about them . But it might be a term that you don't fully understand , or you don't fully know exactly what the letters stand for or how they impact you . So let's go straight into it and let me tell you that ABV stands for alcohol by volume and it is simply the percentage of the liquid in your glass that is pure alcohol . So if you are drinking a beer and it has an ABV of 5% , it means that 5% of the liquid in that beer is pure alcohol . The other 95% is made up of mostly water and any other ingredients that have gone into making the drink for you . In the UK we have obviously average ABVs for different types of drinks . So what I'm going to do is share some of those average ABVs for you and then I'm going to tell you about the ABVs for the categories of drink in the low , low and light space , so that you can see how they compare and you can make choices as to where you want to take your drinking journey . So we have beers , which generally average an ABV of around four to six percent , and that's for both beers and ales and ciders . Now , obviously , some of those can go a lot higher . A lot of ciders . You get a lot of scrumpy ciders that you get in particularly your country pubs can be quite high . There's even a beer brand that made a 40 percent beer , a 40 percent ABV lager . I don't know why they did it , but they did it . I don't think it tasted very nice .

Speaker 1 5:35

Wines have an average ABV . The average ABV alcohol by volume of a wine used to be around 11 to 12% . It's now creeping up and it's now getting closer to 14 and 15% . Not to get political because if you know me at all , you know I'm not a very political person whatsoever In terms of what's happening with the planet and climate change , as the planet is warming up , the grapes that we use to make our wines are getting sweeter , and because they're getting sweeter they're producing more sugars , which means that more sugars are turning into greater alcohol . So the average ABV of wine is going up . So if you are a full strength wine drinker and the ABV of your wine is important to you , then make sure you check the labels , because possibly some of the drinks that you were used to drinking at maybe 11 or 12% , might be up to 14 or 15% ABV by now , and particularly in red wines . Red wines always have slightly higher ABVs than white wines . Back to our averages . So sparkling wines I've been looking at things like champagnes and Proseccos and that sort of thing they usually have an ABV , so an alcohol by volume of around 12 to 13% .

Speaker 1 6:42

And then spirits you know your gins , your vodkas , your whiskeys and such . They are slightly more complicated because to be classified as a gin or a rum or a whiskey , there is a minimum ABV that these drinks have to hit , and it's different across the different types . So , for example , a gin , to be classified as a gin , you have to have a minimum ABV of 37.5% alcohol . So it provides some complication for drinks in the low-nose space , spirits in the low-nose space , which technically aren't allowed to call themselves gin . So if you enjoy an alcohol-free gin , technically it's supposed to be called an alcohol-free gin alternative or a gin substitute . Okay , so those are the full strength ABVs and hopefully by now we've got our head around it being the alcohol by volume , so the percentage of the drink that is pure alcohol . So , just to remind you , if you're having a 37.5% gin , then 37.5% of that liquid in your glass , if it's just pure gin , is pure alcohol . That's before you add your mixes in .

Speaker 1 7:44

Okay , so when it comes to low , no and light drinks , then the ABVs of these drinks are what categorizes where they sit in terms of being either low alcohol , no alcohol or alcohol free . So in the UK , alcohol free drinks are allowed to have an ABV up to 0.05% . Okay , 0.05% in the UK is considered alcoholfree . However , globally , in many places that we import our alcohol-free beers from , like Australia , like the US , like Spain , their maximum threshold for ABVs for an alcohol-free beer is 0.5% . Actually , in fact , in Spain I believe it's 1% . So this means that you could have in your hand two beers that are labeled as alcohol-free , but if one is made in the UK and one is imported from the US , they could have different ABVs and the one from the US could be 10 times more alcoholic than the one here in the UK .

Speaker 1 8:51

Okay , before you freak out about that , there's something really important for you to know . The UK government is considering at the moment increasing the minimum ABV for the UK up to 0.5% to match the global average . Now , some people aren't too keen on that , but there are a huge amount of foods and drinks that you consume every day that contain up to 0.5% alcohol . You just don't know about it because they don't have to put it on the labels . Okay , so we've all heard about bananas . You know a 0.5% beer has the same amount of alcohol as a ripe banana a very ripe banana , but a ripe banana no less . But bananas aren't the only ones . I've mentioned grapes already , because they're getting sweeter . They can actually contain up to 0.5% alcohol as well in ripe grapes Ingredients like soy sauce , vinegars , pickles , keffirs and kombuchas .

Speaker 1 9:51

So be careful with kombuchas . A lot of people are drinking kombuchas as an alcohol-free alternative , but some kombuchas can contain up to 3% alcohol , or even more . Breads like sourdoughs can contain up to 0.5% alcohol , mustards . And if you are a baker , vanilla extract has 35% alcohol in it . Now , of course , some of this gets cooked away in the baking , but not that much , because the heat that you're baking at isn't high enough to burn off that much alcohol .

Speaker 1 10:20

The point to all this is to let you know that , a lots of food and drink that you consume will contain up to 0.5% alcohol , but B and this is the bit that's most important is that 0.5% alcohol is not enough for you to get intoxicated . A lot of studies have been done and they all show that your body will process 0.5% alcohol faster than you could ever get drunk on it , so it cannot impact your levels of intoxication . Now , if you have an allergy or something , that might be different , because that's a biological reaction to the natural ingredients in it , but in terms of just consuming alcohol , you are consuming 0.5% alcohol in a lot of the things that you have on a daily basis . So if that's the driving factor of your choices as to whether to drink 0.05 or 0.5 , then just know that you are in a safe place . If you decide to go for a 0.5% beer , okay .

Speaker 1 11:15

The next ABV category that we have in low , low and light are de-alcoholized drinks . Now , de-alcoholized drinks are any drinks that used to contain alcohol . So you get this a lot in wines , for example , that used to contain alcohol , but in the process they've had that alcohol removed , whether that's by vacuum distillation or osmosis or lots of the other technical ways that they do things , and I can do an episode on that if you want to . Just let me know . So drinks that have been de-alcoholized originally contain alcohol . They've had that alcohol removed and the remaining liquid is allowed to have no more than 0.5% alcohol in them . Next , we have low alcohol drinks . So low alcohol drinks in the UK are allowed to have up to 1.2% alcohol by volume . So a low alcohol drink can have anything up to 1.2% ABV . And finally we have non-alcoholic drinks , and these are drinks that usually you don't expect to contain alcohol in them anyway . So things like juices and squashes . You just don't expect them to have alcohol . So those are non-alcoholic drinks .

Speaker 1 12:27

It can get quite complicated and it can get quite convoluted , because obviously there are different categories and there are different types of drinks within that category . And the most complicated and confusing part of it is that all of this is just government guidelines . This isn't law yet , so you do need to make sure that you're reading the actual ABV on the label to make sure that you're happy with it and not just going by what it says it is on the can or the bottle , because these are just guidelines and not law . You never know if a brand has fully comprehended or is you know , sort of describing their drink using words that they really want to use to describe it because that's what they feel like it is , but it's not actually adhering 100% to those guidelines . So make sure that you're checking these bottles for yourself . I hope that has been helpful and it has clarified for you that ABV stands for alcohol by volume and simply refers to the percentage of the liquid that is pure alcohol in your glass and , of course , it doesn't take into consideration things like what you're mixing your drink with , whether it's a cocktail and that sort of thing . So these are all elements that you need to be aware of for yourself when you are choosing to live a life less intoxicated .

Speaker 1 13:35

Okay , that is it for the first episode of Lono Drinker FAQ . I hope you've enjoyed it . I hope it's been informative . I hope it's been enjoyable to listen to . I hope I've been enjoyable to listen to . I would love to grab more of your questions . I've got quite a few to be getting on with , but , as I mentioned in the introductory episode last week , I am open to hearing more from you .

Speaker 1 13:57

The easiest way to get your questions to me is to respond to one of my emails , and the easiest way to get one of my emails is to get onto my mailing list , which you can do at lonodrinkermagazinecom . My recommendation would be that you go to the free gifts page . On that page , you can download one of the free resources that I've put together for you . Page On that page , you can download one of the free resources that I've put together for you , whether that is the Seven Sides of Sober Curiosity Handbook , whether it is the New Citizens Quick Start Guide , or whether it is the free three-day mini course to help you start your mindful drinking journey . Once you're on my list , just hit , reply to one of my emails and let me know any questions that you have that you'd like me to tackle for you on Lono Drinker FAQ , and also let me know what you think of the

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Speaker 1 14:41

show .

Speaker 1 14:41

What did you think of this first episode ? Do you think it's a good idea ? Do you want me to keep going . Do you think I should just shut up and get back to the interviews ? Whatever it is , let me know , because I want to make sure that I am producing the best show for you . That's it for today . I will catch you next time .