Craft vs. Crunch : Burning Off That Pint

We all say it. “I’ll just have one.” One craft beer. One beautiful, golden, frothy pint of liquid joy. Then you glance at the label and realize that “one” was 230 calories. Suddenly you’re googling “how many jumping jacks in a mile” while pretending you weren’t also planning to order loaded fries.

So let’s play a little game. What does it actually take to burn off that beloved beer? And is it worth it?

Say you crack open a Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, weighing-in at 212 calories. That’s a solid IPA. Not too crazy, not too light. To burn that off? You’re looking at about 1,500 jumping jacks. That's roughly 15 minutes of pure bouncing regret. Or you could just walk for 45 minutes, but where’s the drama in that?

Maybe you went fancy and grabbed a Founders KBS, a bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout with the calorie count of a bacon cheeseburger: over 340 calories. Wanna break even? That’ll be 30 minutes of swimming, 40 minutes of jogging, or (my favorite) ignoring it completely because it was delicious and you earned it, gaht-dang it.

Now, if you’re more of a numbers-to-tacos type of person, here’s a better scale. One standard street taco clocks in at about 150 calories. So that Two Hearted? Roughly 1.4 tacos. The KBS? That’s a full 2.3 tacos. If you're downing two big stouts, you basically just ate a Mexican dinner in liquid form.

And what about the most relatable metric of all: Netflix episodes? You burn about 70 calories an hour just sitting on your butt watching TV. So to torch a 200-calorie IPA, you’d need to binge-watch 3 hours of “The Office.” Which honestly doesn’t sound that bad.

Exercise is mental too, right?

The point isn’t to ruin your beer buzz with math. It’s to appreciate that beer calories are just part of the deal. You don’t have to do one thousand burpees to earn your drink. But it’s kinda fun (and a little humbling) to know that your favorite double IPA is packing the same punch as a lunchtime burrito.

Drink what you love. Just don’t lie to yourself when you say, “I’ll work it off later.” Unless, of course, your workout is laughing through three episodes of Parks and Rec while holding a taco in each hand. That counts.

Cheers to good beer and whatever version of “crunch” you can actually commit to.