Not a grain of truth in the old drinking yarn about downing beer before wine

Scientists investigating the truth of the old saying “beer before wine and you’ll feel fine, wine before beer and you’ll feel queer” have concluded it is a myth.

Researchers gave alcoholic drinks to 90 volunteers as they sought to examine the “influence of the combination and order of beer and wine consumption on hangover intensity”.

Volunteers were split into three groups. The first drank around two-and-a-half pints of beer followed by four large glasses of white wine.

The second group had the same amount of alcohol, but in reverse order. Subjects in the third control group had either only beer or only wine.

Participants, several of whom vomited, were asked about their hangover the following day and given a score on a so-called acute hangover scale based on factors including thirst, fatigue, headache, dizziness, nausea, stomach ache, increased heart rate and loss of appetite. The volunteers, aged between 19 and 40, were asked about their wellbeing at regular intervals and kept under medical supervision overnight.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed no matter how the drinks were ordered, a person who drank too much was still likely to be ill.

“Using white wine and lager beer, we didn’t find any truth in the idea that drinking beer before wine gives you a milder hangover than the other way around,” study author Joran Kochling from Germany’s Witten/herdecke University said.

“The truth is that drinking too much of any alcoholic drink is likely to result in a hangover.

“The only reliable way of predicting how miserable you’ll feel the next day is by how drunk you feel and whether you are sick. We should all pay attention to these red flags when drinking.”

Old folk wisdom such as “grape or grain, but never the twain” exists in several languages. To test the adages, the study used a crossover in which participants in study groups one and two were switched to the opposite drinking order a week later.

Control group subjects who drank only beer the first time around received only wine on the second study day and vice versa.

This way, the groups were not only compared with each other, but each participant was their own control too.

Dr Kai Hensel, a senior clinical fellow at Cambridge University and senior author of the study, said: “Unpleasant as hangovers are, we should remember that they do have one important benefit, at least: they are a protective warning sign that will certainly have aided humans over the ages to change their future behaviour.

“In other words, they can help us learn from our mistakes.”

Asked about the reasons for conducting the study, he said: “Firstly, a clear result in favour of one particular order could help to reduce hangovers and help many people have a better day after a night out – though we encourage people to drink responsibly.

“Unfortunately, we found that there was no way to avoid the inevitable hangover just by favouring one order over another.”