My tag line has been “beer, running, geeky stuff” in the past, and lately I feel like I need to add photography into that. But I guess I can just consider that a ‘geeky thing’. One area I haven’t talked about much lately though is beer. Part of the reason for that is that I haven’t been drinking as much beer the past few weeks as normal. Now that I’m trying to lose some weight for race season I need to cut back on the beer, so I’ve only been drinking occasionally.

It’s sometimes hard to think of beer as something that contributes to weight, since it’s made up of mostly water. But in reality beer is full of carbs in the form of sugars that are the result of the mashing process. To make beer, the first thing you need to do it take malted grains and soak them in warm water to extract the sugars from them. At this point you then boil the resulting wort down to concentrate it, adding hops for flavor, and then the yeast takes over, eating all the little sugars and producing alcohol. This all results in a lot of carbs in a beer, from the leftover sugars in the grain, to the alcohol that the yeast produce.

Most beers have a caloric count around 150, which isn’t too bad, but when you consider that many people drink multiple beers in a day, and then eat full meals, it’s easy to overlook these ‘extra’ calories and end up with a caloric overage. Plus, alcohol also often causes us to enjoy our food more, thereby encouraging us to eat more. All this combines to making beer something to avoid if you’re looking to shed a few pounds. Don’t have to give it up completely, but it’s better to think of beer as the same caloric drink as pop.

I’ve had a couple decent beers in the past couple weeks though, including Bell’s 2015 Hopslam, thanks to a friend of mine. This weekend is a recovery weekend from being sick, so I might also enjoy a couple brews from local taprooms to… uh… facilitate recovery… ya, that’s it.