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Ode To Jim Koch

Well it's that time again folks. No, not time to pay your water bill, but time for me to reflect on just how much Nectar of the Gods I've consumed in my budding and distinguished drinking career. Time to think back and try to wrap my arms around all of the frosty, yeasty goodness that has danced its way down my gullet like a world class ballerina.

My last such report was done on November 5th, 2001, so we'll be incorporating about a year and a half's word of suds into our new numbers.

And I'd also like to go on record as saying that the best Sam Adams I've ever had is *still* the one after drinking fistfuls of Coors Extra Gold at a party.

Again, my usual disclaimers before such a post. All calculations have been done on an Excel spreadsheet (which I am going to make available and where you can plug in your own numbers and compare your drinking career against mine), and for the sake of measuring convience in regards to height, I'll be using the dimensions of a 12oz can of beer (4 3/4" tall and 2 5/8" in diameter), instead of a 12oz bottle which presents us with a nonuniform shape.

Now, all hail King Sam.

Today is July 24th, 2003, which means that given my 21st birthday was May 2nd, 1993, I've been drinking legally for 3,725 days, or 10.2 years.

Ahh, the memories. Although really, not so much.

Again, you can see the peak of my alcohol intake during my stint in the Air Force, followed by a quick lull of heartache, followed again by in surge of complacency.

To date, I have consumed 5,716 bottles of frosty amber Sam Adams Boston Lager. Over 238 cases of chilled brown bottles, each glistening with tiny beads of condensation gathered in the warm summer sun, all waiting to cool and revitalize me with the lash of their delicious tongues.

Inflation. Clearly you can see the reason why the federal government gives cost-of-living increases to soldiers and the elderly on social security -- the cost of a six-pack of Sam Adams has increased on the average of $0.26 per year, or almost four and a half cents per bottle per year. Greedy bastards.

Investments. My total financial expenditure for all these beers is $5,383.14 to date, averaging $0.94 per beer. Assuming an average 15% return per year via some half assed mutual fund, had I chose to invest this money rather than drink it, I would have a balance of $11,901.82 in my checking account.

The starting price of a 2003 Kia Spectra? $11,695.00

But would you trade all your precious drinking memories for a piece of shit foreign car? I sure as hell wouldn't.

Let's say however, that I has chose to invest this money in the stock market -- given that I've been in the computer/communications field for the duration of my drinking career -- Microsoft seems like a worthwhile investment, don't you think? Microsoft stock (MSFT) has undergone five 2:1 stock splits from 1994 to 2003. The adjusted stock price on May 3, 1993 taking into account all these splits would be $2.691 per share, thus my $5,383.14 beer fund would have purchased me exactly 2,000 shares of common stock of Mr. Bill Gates' pet project. The current value of MSFT (11:12am on 7/24/03) is $26.79, thus had I chosen the career path of an stock broker instead of a drinker, pledging my full support to the future monopolist instead of the brewer and patriot, I'd have a bank account of $53,591.38.

The starting price of a shiny new 2003 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 with 405 horsepower and goes from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds? $52,235.00

But would you trade all your precious drinking memories for a bad ass American monster? Well, tempting as it is, I can't say that I would.

But while we're on the top of cars, let's talk about something else. Some religions tell us that Jesus turned water into wine, and while I admire his drinking spirit, find wine a little too fruity for my tastes. I'd have probably turned water into Sam, but alas, for the sake of argument, let us instead say I say to hell with all the hippies and their vegetable oil powered cars and instead transform my vehicles into beer powered fun machines.

We already know that I've consumed 5,716 twelve ounce bottles of beer, yielding me 68,592 fluid ounces of delicious problem solving beer. That equates to a 535.9 gallon gas can filled to the brim.

My Dodge Ram with a 5.9 liter V-8 yields me a paltry 16 miles per gallon on the highway, assuming a cruising speed of 70mph. Go even faster than that and not even Gates himself could keep up with my gas bills. So after I walk on water, say "Hallelujah", wave my magic wand and dump my precious beer my truck, I could travel a respectable 8,574 miles before sputtering on empty.

Distance from New York City to Manila? 8,490 miles.

For those of you environmentally conscious, my Audi TT is a gas sipper and yields a respectable 31 miles per gallon from it's 1.8 liter 4 banger. Again, more hocus-pocus from me and before your very eyes, I will climb in my beer powered car and drive 16,612 miles on my consumed beer.

The circumference of the Earth at the equator? 24,901 miles.

Dammit. This means I've got two choices if I want to drive around the earth in a beer-powered frenzy. Either (a) buy a Honda Civic with a standard transmission, which gets 46 mpg, or (b) drink 267 gallons (2,852 bottles) of more beer. Personally, I'll choose the latter. Look for my "Round The World Tour " sometime in January 2011 assuming I keep drinking at my current pace.

But wait, there's more.

Those of you who looked at my recent ATV crash photos knows that well, as embarrassing as it is, I've got some love handles that I need to get rid of. But first, let us look at where they came from, shall we?

A 12 oz bottle of frosty delicious Sam Adams Boston Lager contains 160 calories, thus over the course of my drinking experience of 5,716 bottles, I have consumed a belt busting 914,560 calories from beer.

Calories in McDonald’s Big Mac? 580. Thus I would have to consume 1,577 Big Macs to equal my beer intake -- about one every other day. Which is nothing compared to the calories in a Burger King Whopper with cheese (no tomato!) which yields 855 calories. I'd have to eat 1,070 of them, about one every three days. Those of you who like breakfast are in luck though, as a Dunkin Donut's Boston Creme donut only has 240 calories, so you'd have to eat 3,811 of those to catch my beer belly, roughly one per day.

But I'm a man and I don't count calories, at least not for the sake of vanity. But let us think in terms of how beer enriched and empowers us to be productive in our lives, shall we?

We know that I have extracted 914,560 calories of rip-roaring energy from my precious beer.

Typing at a computer burns only 114 calories per hour, which means I'd have to type continually for 8,022.5 hours to burn all these beer calories, or just over 334 days straight without taking so much as a potty break. That means if I had my supply of beer all in one shot, I could answer 1,444,042 emails during this almost year long drunken daze, assuming a rate of three emails per minute. That's right, I could write mocking letters to virtually every black male in the United States who cannot vote because of a felony conviction, and not need a morsel of sustenance for energy other than me beloved Sam Adams.

But let's exert ourselves a little bit; after all I've got love handles to lose, right? Running at a pace of 12 miles per hour, burns 984 calories per hour, or 82 calories per mile. That means I could enthusiastically run 11,153 miles with nothing more than a magical bottle of beer in my backpack. I could leave Boston, run 5,510 miles down to Buenos Aires, Argentina, bang some cheap hooker for 17 minutes (300 calories), and still have enough energy to get up and leave as soon as I'm done and run the 5,510 miles back home before she even knows I'm gone.

I achieve an environmentally friendly 20.8 miles per gallon of beer, about that of your average V-6 sedan.

Ah, beer.

We know that in order to lose one pound of fat, we must burn 3,500 calories, thus my beer drinking escapades have produced 261 extra pounds of Ernie. Given that I tip the scales at 171 lbs right now, we can conclude that if it were not for my partiality towards yummy Sam Adams beer, I'd have completely imploded and ceases to exist six years and nine months ago, in November 1996. Thank you for saving me Jim Koch, brewer of the best beer in America, Sam Adams.

The eleven pounds I've put on in the year and a half since my last beer stats? I've paid $226.61 for the privilege.... just over 240 bottles of beer, or ten cases worth.

Now I know many of you enjoy the height comparisons that can be drawn using the beer can dimensions I've previously stated. If you were to take all 5,716 four and three quarter inch tall cans of beer (work with me here) and stack them atop each other, just how tall would my drink be?

I'll tell you -- 2,263 feet tall. A little perspective, maestro...

The average American male is 5'8 with a vertical reach of 6'11. The average French soldier is 5'7 tall so I will assume their vertical reach to be an inch shorter as well at 6'10, or 82 inches. Thus you would need to stack 331 surrendering French soldiers atop each other -- two full infantry companies -- to equal the height and power of my drinking binges.

That means those pussy French can take TWO of their pussy Eiffel Towers and stack them atop each other, toss on the their pride and joy Airbus A-380, and they're still my little French whores by 34 feet. It'd take five of their soldiers surrendering to finally equal my tower. Bitches.

There are 1,728 cubic inches in a cubic foot, yielding 957.3 fluid ounces in a cubic foot, yielding 7.47 gallons per cubic foot. Thus my 535.9 gallons of been would fill 71.7 cubic feet of cargo space. Imagine taking your Ford Taurus station wagon I referenced last year, with it's 38.0 feet of cargo space, and filling it almost two times with beer. I drank it. I'd even overflow the 70 cubic feet of cargo space in the future 2004 Cadillac SRX sport utility vehicle.

At a weight of 8.4 pounds per gallon, I have consumed 4,501 pounds of beer, or a little over two and a quarter tons. I have drank my own body weight, in beer, 26.3 times.

Boobies. A girl I know just had breast augmentation done, and she went from a B-cup to a D-cup thanks to 475cc implants in each breast. Now, there are 2.5 centimeters in an inch, so she received (475/(2.5^3)) about 30.4 cubic inches of saline to give herself one marvelous pair of fun bags. Now, given there are 0.554 fluid ounces in a cubic inch, we can calculate each of her boobs yields 16.8 fluid ounces... 33.7 ounces total or 1.4 beers apiece. So she's got just shy of three beers tucked neatly within her new bras, I suppose I can pour out the remaining 2.3 ounces for all my dead homies, eh?. I could fill her new pair of bouncy D-cup breasts with Sam Adams a bra straining 2,036 times.

Going up two cup sizes from a B-cup to a D-cup required 475cc's -- or 237.5 cc’s per boob per cup size. This equals out to 8.6 fluid ounces per boob per cup. Thus if we were to put all of my beer into one enormous pair of breast implants, she would leap forward on the evolutionary scale a monstrous 4,073 cup sizes, and her bra size would be have 156 Z's for the cup size. But trust me, you wouldn't be sleeping.

In closing, the part I know you all await with reckless abandon, the vomit analysis.

I have vomited 59 times so far from drinking too much Sam Adams. From last year's research, we know the human stomach holds between 1.5 and 4 liters of substance, for small to large persons respectively. Let us assume that I am middle of the road thus giving me a 2-liter stomach, and to error on the side of caution, that every time I drank myself sick, my stomach was only half full with stuff -- an even 1 liter. There are 34 fluid ounces in a liter. Let us further assume that when I did vomit, I didn't empty the entire contents of my stomach since most people don't, and that I only harf 2/3 of what's in it, thus yielding an average 22.4 fluid ounces per vomity goodness per session.

Total amount puked so far for those of you keeping score? 1,324 fluid ounces, or 10.3 gallons -- enough to fill a common aquarium. I'm averaging about a gallon of puke per year.

Given it's cost me $5,383 to buy the beer that induced said vomiting, we know I'm paying $4.07 to produce one fluid once of vomit. But as previously stated, I don't puke an ounce at a time, I puke in 22.4 fluid ounce value packs, depositing my stomach contents onto anyone or anything lucky enough to be standing nearby. But don't cringe; think about the gift I've given you! Surely you could put on ebay and fetch the fair market value $91.24!

A 34.0 ounce bottle of Dom Periogn sells for $109.99, or $414.08 per gallon. My puke is worth $520.44 per gallon. So please, think of me the next time you toast your good fortune, because I'll be having a Sammy for you.

Until next time, Cheers!

see the old stats from november 2001