Ive been thinking about exactly this recently. I will go out sometimes after work with some coworkers for a few hours, maybe talk shop, talk about movies, books, whatever. But afterwards I want to be able to go home, make some dinner, and read for a bit (or whatever else). If I had 3-4 6+ABV IPAs, then Ill be too drunk to enjoy the rest of my evening. So Ive started drinking light beers after work.
I enjoy good beer quite a bit, but it seems that every micro brew is at least 5% ABV. That simply doesn't fit with my typical pattern of drinking now that I'm several years away from college. I wish there were more truly "session" beers available in my local bars.
Drink smaller beers, with a glass of water (or two) on the side. Just like wine (Few people drink wine from pint glasses). Allows you to taste more different (craft or otherwise) beers in one sitting, and you won't get as drunk/hung over.
Say you drink 0.25l of a 9% beer along with 0.25l of water (probably a bit more water, actually). The water fills you up, breaks your drinking "speed" -- and now you've technically had 0.5 of 4.5% beer.
In my experience, what really matters is how much pure alcohol is consumed per unit of time (assuming you're not actually drinking something stronger than 60% at an unnaturally high rate). Shotting hard liquor is a strong outlier - but sipping doesn't have to be. I find that drinks and strong beers generally end up being about the same -- if you drink at a natural pace, and no water on the side, you'll get drunk -- slow down and drink at least as much water (in volume) as alcohol and you'll be fine. Personal tolerance/degree of alcoholism will vary from person to person, of course. Adjust to what pace suits you.
We can say 0.5l/500ml of 5% beer ~ 25ml of alcohol. If we calculate 5 glasses to a bottle of wine, a glass of 13% wine is 750ml/5 = 150ml ~ 19.5ml of alcohol. This happens to be about the same as a pint of 4.5% (455*0.045) -- but it's more concentrated.
Might want to add two glasses of water to each glass of wine. Uptake will be a bit slower without gas in the mix.
I enjoy good beer quite a bit, but it seems that every micro brew is at least 5% ABV. That simply doesn't fit with my typical pattern of drinking now that I'm several years away from college. I wish there were more truly "session" beers available in my local bars.