Budget Booze for Both Price and Calorie Content

Budgeting is fun! Image courtesy of Flickr user Chris Waits. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.This week on Lifehacker/Mr. Money Mustache, folks have been discussing the idea of creating a dedicated alcohol budget. The suggestion in the article breaks down to an idea that most people should be getting drunk once a week, and so should budget six units of alcohol at about $1.50 a unit, leading to a budget of about $9 a week. The six drinks can be consumed as you wish (one a day or all at once), and they roll over. Good times!

The basic principle behind the article is sound. I've started doing something similar during the summer in an effort to lose some box wine weight.* However, the amount that it takes to get drunk and the per unit price of alcohol are perhaps off, particularly since the article's directed towards the middle aged and not college folks. If you're interested in doing a similar alcohol budgeting plan, here are some ways to modify the plan for a college student.

First, figure out a realistic drink budget and how much you would like to be consuming. (A good place to start is getting pretty tipsy twice a week--adjust as needed.) The six drinks a week in the original article probably aren't going to cut it, and you may wish to spend more or less than $9 a week depending on your budget.**

Second, figure out the number of calories you would like to come from alcohol in your weekly budget. Again, this is personal preference--if you're trying to lose the freshman 15, this will change things. Divide your weekly calorie allotment from booze into the number of drinks that you've decided on. This is the number of calories you should be aiming for as a maximum per drink. Use something like this handy tool to find out what booze is in your calorie range, and pick from among that list in order to figure out what you can afford. This way you can avoid the excess spending in the original article and the extra alcohol calories that are a worry to heavy-drinking college students. Cheers!

* Don't judge me.

** That being said, if you're looking to spend less you might want to explore homebrewing. It's fun and allows you to make booze in your closet!

Get Drunk Not Fat Is A Handy Chart For Waistline-Conscious Drinking

Get Drunk Not Fat helps you choose the most calorie-conscious alcohols for your next party. Image courtesy of Flickr user swimparallel and licensed under CC By-SA 2.0

We've already discussed the all-important topic of getting drunk on the cheap, but what if you're more concerned about your waistline than your wallet? Lucky for us, Get Drunk Not Fat has compiled an exhaustive list of beers, liquors, and wines and arranged them by their calorie-to-alcohol ratio.

As you'd expect, the harder alcohols rank among the least-fattening, with Everclear placing second behind only pure ethanol. Among beers that you'd expect to find in the typical frat party keg, Natty Ice is going to be your best bet, with a ratio comparable to many hard liquors. If you opt for Mike's Hard Lemonade instead, you'll be taking in more than double the calories per ounce of alcohol. 

There are well over 100 different beverages listed on the site, and you can submit your own favorite if you want it added to the list. Happy drinking!

Crowdsource Your Playlist with DJtxt

With Djtxt, the whole party is responsible for the song selection. Just be careful who you give the request number to.

Holding a little shindig but don't want the pressure of managing the playlist? With djtxt you can pawn the job off on all your friends.  The idea is pretty brilliant; anyone at your party can text an artist and song to a special djtxt phone number, and that song is added to an attractive fullscreen playlist visualizer via Grooveshark.  

This probably works better with a small group of friends than a frat house rager. If nothing else it keeps people accountable for the questionable Justin Bieber picks.  If you drunkenly submit a song you know you'll regret, you can erase it by texting "oops," and if Miley Cyrus is ruining the vibe, anyone can text "skip" to escape to the next song.  

Djtxt is a free service, so try it out tonight!

Hangovers Officially Cured by Science?

Do aspirin and coffee really cure hangovers? Image courtesy of Flickr user oooh.oooh and licensed under CC by SA 2.0

Everything you've ever read or heard about curing hangovers is officially moot. A professor at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia induced hangovers in rats (yes, rats), and discovered that a combination of coffee and aspirin blocks the pain-causing acetate that is formed by the ethanol in the alcohol.  

I'm sure this claim has been made countless times in the past, so take your pills with a grain of salt.  If it's not working for you, try nibbling on some burnt toast as you down the coffee.

[Via The Telegraph]

Four Loko Is Going the Way of the McRib - Here's How to Make Your Own

Given the recent cases of alcohol poisoning and whatnot, I can't say this is very surprising, but it looks like the FDA is about to ban Four Loko nationwide.  I won't touch the stuff, but if you can't imagine Friday night without the colorful concoction, Buzzfeed has posted this excellent tutorial on crafting your own version.  Looks incredibly nasty, but it will definitely keep you drunk and awake.  

Seriously though, be careful with that stuff.

[Via BuzzFeed and Gawker]

Guest Post: The Dangers of Four Loko

Today's gust post is from our friends at College Candy. These drinks came out after Lesinski told us the cheapest ways to get drunk, ounce per ounce, and I'd like to see how it holds up.

Here’s a quick little midterm for you: you have $10 in your pocket, but you need to unwind at the end of midterm week.

Do you:

A.) Blow all your cash on one drink at the swankiest club in town.
B.) Scour campus for a party and drink for free
C.) Stock up on cheap, flavored, and surprisingly strong cans of malt liquor.

I’m pretty sure everyone chose the last choice, and even though our little midterm isn’t graded, that answer is decidedly wrong. Four Loko is a popular new canned alcoholic beverage. Essentially an alcohol-fueled energy drink. Each can contains the equivalent of three beers, caffeine, and artificial flavoring, all for under $3. But the benefits of this cheapie drink are eclipsed by the serious threat it poses to students who intend to party hard.

Recently 23 Ramapo College students were hospitalized due to intoxication in just a few weeks – many of these incidents involved Four Loko. Currently, the president of the North Jersey school is banning this and similar beverages, and urging the leaders of other schools to do the same. We’ve all heard the warnings about cocktails like Red Bull and vodkas – the alcohol brings you down while the caffeine heightens your senses, confusing the body and making it difficult to determine just how intoxicated you are.

Four Loko is even more dangerous, as it’s fruity flavors make it easy to drink multiple cans quickly. In fact, the dangers of Four Loko are so severe that the drink is being dubbed “liquid cocaine.” The combined affects of alcohol and caffeine are even more frightening when you consider that both are diuretics, which can cause dehydration.

The possible consequences of drinks like these are undeniable: students can face hospitalization, injury, or overdose as a result of the seemingly harmless alcoholic energy drinks. Whether or not your campus chooses to ban these, we urge you to be as cautious as possible when it comes to drinking Four Loko. Or, play it safe and go for a $3 40 instead. It’s way more fun to drink out of a bag anyway….

How To Build The Ultimate Dorm-Friendly Beer Pong Table

You can indeed fit a passable beer pong table in a dorm room, you just might need to temper your expectations a bit. Image courtesy of Flickr user Manufacturer CC 2.0.

Dorm rooms have always been a great place to learn games like King's Cup and Caps, but what if I told you that you could squeeze beer pong--the Holy Grail, Superbowl, and Mt. Everest of all drinking games--into your all-too-tiny room?

Beer pong?  In a dorm room?  "Preposterous," you say.  How in the hell you can cram such a space-consuming game into your horse stall of a room?  Before we go on, I should point out that this is probably not a very good idea, and you stand a good chance of getting busted by your RA.  But dammit, if you take your beer pong seriously and want to throw caution and ping pong balls to the wind, then by all means, read on.

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Top 10 Drinking Games for College

The description for this photo on flickr is "This is a beer pong table at a frat party." How appropriate. Photo by flickr user English106 and licensed under CC BY 2.0.

As my college career winds down, I am finding myself beginning to write more big-picture posts. We're pretty good at getting into the nitty-gritty, but you can't exactly impress the majority of people out there with your knowledge of the iPad (unfortunately). Enter drinking games. We've written about the top 3 drinking games before, but I want a list even more definitive. And what better authority than yours truly? My blip.tv team has, after all, defeated College Humor at beer pong.

Now before we get started, I know we won't be able to address all drinking games out there. We will probably miss that one drinking game that you and your friends really like to play. I'm sorry. I've played plenty of drinking games and these are my faves. This is how I win. Every time. Hopefully you'll be able to find some uncoventional hacks in the standard games and bring them over to your own.

Your future of poorly constructed cardboard trophies after the jump.

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