Beer Types and Sugar Content

Now that we know how much nutritional content a can of beer has, let’s continue learning exactly how much sugar content the different types of beer would have.

This information may be new to some people since they may think that most beer types have the same sugar content. Here, we will show you in a tabular form how much carbohydrates and sugar content a specific beer type has.

In the table above, you can see that regular and low-carb beer does not have any sugar, while non-alcoholic beer has the most sugar. This information should help you decide which beer to drink at certain times.

Effects to Our Health

After learning about beer’s sugar and nutritional content, it’s also a good thing to discuss the possible effects it can bring on our health. We listed below the health conditions that can be affected when we drink beer without minding how they can affect our health. Take a look at each one of them below.

• Diabetes

If you have diabetes, it is important to practice moderation when drinking beer. While it is said that one to two cans of beer can be beneficial for diabetic people, you still need to be wary of it because it can have certain risks, too, if consumed in large batches.

• High or Low Blood Sugar

As we mentioned before, beer doesn’t contain much sugar, but it can still significantly affect your blood sugar. Like every other alcoholic drink, beer will cause a sudden drop in your blood sugar until the next 24 hours after consuming it.

Since it competes with the liver for glucose production, you will have low blood sugar the next day. That, paired with cloudy judgment, can cause people to have issues with blood sugar. It can be intensified if you take anti-hyperglycemic medicines such as insulin and metformin.

Drinking beer can cause impairment in sugar metabolism and kick-start a process called glycogenolysis. When you drink too much beer, it can cause hypoglycemia. The best way to prevent beer risks is to have it in moderation.

Frequently Asked Question

• Does wine have more sugar than beer?

If we compare beer’s sugar content with wine, we will see that wine is undoubtedly the one with more sugar. As mentioned above, beer technically doesn’t have sugar in them since they are converted into alcohol. On the other hand, wine is known to have sugar in them.

Various types of wine will also have multiple ranges of sugar content. The sweeter the wine tastes, the more sugar content it has. For example, dessert wines such as sparkling and fortified are known to have more sugar content than regular wines. This is because sugar is added during the fermentation process to purposely make the wine sweeter.

• Is it possible to drink beer while on a diet?

Dieting is all about discipline in what you eat and your calorie intake. Yes, you can drink beer while on a diet. However, suppose you are following a strict diet and cutting off calories or carbohydrates. In that case, you should also be wary of liquid calories since they can damage your diet. It’s not a healthy diet if you add a few cans of beer.

Say you only drink a few cans of beer once a week. Even though it isn’t frequent, that’s still a considerable amount of unwanted calories your body will take in, thus destroying your diet.

• What is Beer Gravity?

This term refers to wort density which is affected by sugar content in the various stages of the beer-making process. High-gravity wort is known to have a high sugar concentration.

As we’ve learned from the brewing process, fermentation and yeast will turn the sugar in the brew into alcohol, so its sugar content will most likely drop. That is why an initial and final gravity is measured to assess how much sugar was converted into alcohol during fermentation.