I love drinking beer, but hating getting drunk. Whenever I can find it, I drink Bud Select 55 or Miller 64, both at about 2.8% ABV. I can roll through them, not worry about DUI and not feel like crap the next morning. I love a 6.5% IPA as much as the next guy, but these work much better for me.
I love that my local Tom Thumb is now carrying Boulevard Tank 7. Opposite of O'Doul's.
I now cut regular full-flavor beer with club soda. You can slowly work the alcohol content down to exactly where you want it getting used to the taste instead of a sudden watery shock. I live in the desert and I can drink 2.5% beer as a thirst quencher all day.
You think you might have a hangover the next morning?
Simple fix!
Take two aspirins (the real thing, not fake aspirin Tylenol) with a tall glass of Gatorade before retiring for the evening.
6.5%?
Wimp.
Give me a Malheur Dark Brut 12%!
On the other hand, the craft beers are much more filling. So even though they are more around 6%, I can only drink about 3 or 4 of them before I am full. I also end up nursing them for an hour or more which keeps me well out of DUI territory. Craft beer tastes good even when it’s warm as opposed to Budweiser, which must be drunk ice cold to be palatable.
Low alcohol ‘small beer’ was a common way of insuring something safe to drink in the era before chlorinated city water.
It was very popular in Colonial America and goes back to Medieval Europe, if not earlier.