What To Serve At The Pre-Game

Big party tonight. You’re hosting the pregame. A good pregame is the foundation of a good party experience. The pregame must be fun of its own accord, to start the night’s mood in the right direction. Furthermore, it must accomplish its primary objective: to start the buzz flowing. But possibly the most important part is to make sure no one pregames too hard and winds up sick at the end of the night. Straight up, no one has a good time while sick and puking. So what’s the better way to go, beer or liquor? Predictably, there are pros and cons of both, and that’s pretty much what this article is about.

What’s Going On

The most important factor in deciding is the kind of night you have planned, and what type of alcohol you’ll be drinking over the rest of the evening. The old adage is: “Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear.” After careful analysis of field data, it seems this is partially true. In the lab, the order in which alcohol is consumed does not appear to have a physiological difference. But real-world circumstance often leads to the saying being validated. Most of the time, save for shot-gunning, beer-bonging, and keg-standing, beer takes a little time to consume. As you’re walking around a party drinking a beer, you will most often have time to notice as you get drunker, and alter your drinking accordingly. Most of the time in the college atmosphere, hard alcohol comes in the form of shots. One can easily take a fair number of shots before noticing the first one set in. So imagine the scenarios. Dude A takes three shots of vodka, then proceeds to start drinking beer. Probably as he’s on his first beer he’ll feel the effects of the shots and drink three beers slowly enough to have a very pleasant evening. Brosef B drinks three beers, then sees people are doing shots. In his tipsy arrogance, brosef decides he should take three shots right now. All of a sudden he finds himself six drinks deep. He proceeds to tell the girl he’s targeted that she has nice breasts, dance like an idiot by himself, and pee in the bathtub. Tough luck, Brosef. There’s probably alot of you brosefs feeling macho right now saying “Ha I can drink much more than that, this doesn’t apply to me.” Well just bump the numbers up enough to apply to your masculinity, it’s easy to see that the adage still works.

Going Hard

So alot of the time, hard alcohol is a better bet for pregaming. Not only because of the liquor-before-beer phenomenon, but it also helps with all the other requirements of a good pregame. Taking shots is fun and sets the mood right; best done at the onset of an evening to avoid over-drunkenness. Also, beer just fills up your stomach. Especially if you’re going to be drinking alot of it later, drinking 3-4 beers at the pregame will get you pretty full. This isn’t to say that beer is always a poor choice though. If you’re not going out until midnight or so, then before that is a great time to relax and take your time killing a few brews. In fact, beer is really always a solid choice. I literally just grabbed one while writing this line. Beer is good. But of course, I’m by myself writing an article, pregaming nothing but dinner. So in general, most pregames will be more successful with hard alcohol. And watch out for end-of-the-night shots. Those’ll get ya. Cheers.

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