What are your local drinking traditions? (alcohol of all kinds)

[shadowmouse]

I forget which cookbook it was, but there was a series of pictures with Max von Sydow showing the way to drink Akvavit. I remember similar things from living in Germany, where I adjusted my drinking to fit groups of Germans, Italians and Greeks.

I've had a Korean guy give a series of pointers on how to drink according to Korean drinking etiquette that went on into a pretty drunken evening, with pointers on how to hold the bottle, how to pour and a host of other details.

Last night, Fiancee 2.1 was tired, so we went out for a massage and then she, a buddy, and I went out for skewers of stuff, and the guys were supposed to drink. It wasn't Korean levels of baroque, but there was a degree of ritual in how to toast and how to drink, and that went on through (this is part of the drill) 250 ml each of 56% alcohol by volume booze.

So, since I was rambling about culture differences earlier, I thought this would be as good a time as any to ask what your local drinking traditions are!

I don't want this to start off as a wall of text, so I'll chime back in in a bit with an update (should anyone seem interested) in basic drinking here in Hebei. Gods know, in Xi'an it might be different.

What do you drink? Are there particular rituals? How do you drink in a group?

[Deleted]

Each Belgian specialty beer has its own dedicated glass. Serving beer in a different glass is heresy and an excellent reason to avoid that pub in the future. Or burn it down.

[GennGreymane]

NY here

go to the city and have a blast
go to the city and have a good time
go to the city and just chill at a nice place

go to local bar towns and go crazy

or just do to your local dive and play some pools.

[shadowmouse]

@GennGreymane So, erm, basically your local drinking tradition is to drink something? Well, NY did give us the Trumps so I suppose I shouldn't have expected finesse. You couldn't even have brought up green beer? No beer pong? I now suspect you of eating well done steak with ketchup! <.<

Each Belgian specialty beer has its own dedicated glass.

Fair enough, there are certainly a lot of specialized beer glasses for Belgian beers, and I gather that beer is the thing to drink there. Any other ritual to go with it? What do you guys do if you ever do shots?

Around here, and by that I mean Northeast China primarily in the Hebei area, there are minor tweaks to how you drink depending on the setting. Sometimes when one will be expected to do a lot of toasting, the local booze will be served in dainty thimble sized glasses because you're going to drink a whole lot of them. On an ordinary day, just out at a restaurant, you're apt to encounter something closer to a juice glass. Be prepared to drink several of them, because splitting a bottle (500 ml) between two people is fairly common and it may go past one bottle.

The toasts usually involve a certain amount of jockeying for position, whose glass is higher is tied up with ideas about respect and courtesy even in what we might consider very casual settings. This can end up with people just sliding their glass across the table so that nobody can really dip their glass lower, and even then there will be a bit of tilting the glass to give a minor nod to courtesy. Beer is given a similar treatment, and if drinking directly out of the bottle (common in a casual setting) it is often preferred to toast by crossing the necks of the bottle.

As you'd imagine, drinking something running 52% alcohol by volume out of a juice glass makes pacing a bit of a trick. Each drinker will tend to watch the other's glass and generally try to match them, with each finishing a glass at the same time. Courtesy can make that a challenge at times because it turns into something like an unintentional game of chicken, with neither quite certain who stops first. Oh, and about those toasts, you may have seen ganbei translated as cheers! Nope, it means dry cup, thus bottoms up! On finishing a glass, especially if someone has called bottoms up, it is common to tilt your glass over to show that you did actually finish your drink. When drinking out of the larger glasses, ganbei is usually the signal to finish up and start the next round.

I mentioned in the first post that "the guys" were supposed to drink. There are often generally accepted roles here, and in many situations women will skip the drinking. That depends very much on the region though, drink with women from Inner Mongolia or even many parts of the Northeast at your peril. I remember a woman from Inner Mongolia horrifying the staff of a somewhat upscale Sichuan restaurant. She was being polite, so although she was merely sipping a half liter of Hoegaarden, she got a small flask of local spirits for me. She said that back home, guys would start the drinking with each guy getting a liter of booze, then moving to a case of beer in liter bottles. She said that her father would drink something like that flask right out of the bottle, and wondered if I would mind doing that (an implied compliment). I took the hint and said I would, and as soon as staff saw a foreigner swilling right out of the bottle the waitress hurried over with a dainty little pitcher and two little glasses. This caused my dinner companion much amusement as she told them we preferred to drink the way we were.

So, anyone else with tales?

[Unhinged]

Binge drinking then starting a fight seems to be the most common one in Australia

[Deleted]

Beer - many little local breweries here.

[Deleted]

beer too

[GennGreymane]

@GennGreymane So, erm, basically your local drinking tradition is to drink something? Well, NY did give us the Trumps so I suppose I shouldn't have expected finesse. You couldn't even have brought up green beer? No beer pong? I now suspect you of eating well done steak with ketchup! <.<

Manhattan didnt vote for him in the primaries and NY didnt vote for him in the general election. Leave us alone, we were already kinda sick of him.

Our drinking tradition is to go out with friends and have fun. Then again, that is my tradition and I cannot speak for others.

[Ghostpanther]

One glass of red semi-sweet wine with my supper per day. Occasionally during the summer, I may have a beer or two instead. In moderation and if you are not taking some other drugs or are allergic , drinking alcoholic beverages can be good for you.

[Nalorakk]

Sydney here.

Goon sacks and a good old piss up on the cheapest beer that isn't fosters with the lads.

[Deleted]

One glass of red semi-sweet wine with my supper per day. Occasionally during the summer, I may have a beer or two instead. In moderation and if you are not taking some other drugs or are allergic , drinking alcoholic beverages can be good for you.

It's actually a fallacy that a glass of red per day is healthy. This was probably propagated by those that do like to drink that glas or 2 of wine a day. It's not unhealthy and of course more healthy than binge drinking a bottle of Bourbon per day, but it is definitely not healthy either.

[Piglord]

The only somewhat local drinking tradition I can think of is not to pass out in cactus.

[Ghostpanther]

It's actually a fallacy that a glass of red per day is healthy. This was probably propagated by those that do like to drink that glas or 2 of wine a day. It's not unhealthy and of course more healthy than binge drinking a bottle of Bourbon per day, but it is definitely not healthy either.

It's actually not.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/fe...good-for-you#1

There several other medical opinions and research which support this. One is from the Mayo Clinic. Check it out.

There is also this article from Time Magazine. http://time.com/4070762/red-wine-resveratrol-diabetes/

[shadowmouse]

@Piglord A related rule is that if one is outside, perhaps enjoying a campfire and some beer ...



This is out there, somewhere, waiting for you and it is not your friend. Jake the Snake may at least give a warning.

[luc54]

Finnish drinking traditions? Go in the middle of nowhere to a cottage and then drinking like crazy while doing dumb shit. I don't think I want to sugarcoat it at all. Of course there might be some that are more civilized like my parents who drink that couple of glasses of wine during dinner in weekends. I don't drink at all so the first part seems baffling as people then tend to complain about bad hangover. You reap what you sow.

[Medusa Cascade]

Get hammered, punch at least two people, have at least one embarrassing picture taken by your mates, attempt to stagger home and wake up in a ditch hours later with an oddly sore arse