I Washed My Hair with Beer and Here's What HappenedBeyond being tasty, it turns out beer just might have some serious hair benefits |
Finally, I decided to do what Machen recommends most: a beer rinse. That being said, Machen advises, "Beer can have a drying effect on hair if used too often, so you should really do it no more than once a week if you have oily hair or every other week if you have normal to dry hair." Unlike beer shampoos, which can be used every time you shower, straight-up beer rinses aren't something you should do on the regular.
Machen suggests mixing a quarter to half a cup of beer (depending on hair length) with an equal amount of water. Because I have long hair, I went for half a cup of beer and half a cup of water, and I added in a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar at Machen's suggestion to help neutralize the beer smell.
"A beer rinse works best if the beer is room temperature," Machen says. "If the beer is cold, it automatically closes the hair follicle and prevents the proteins from penetrating into the shaft of the hair." So I let my beer concoction sit on the counter in a measuring glass for an hour (while I drank the rest of the bottle because I wasn't going to let good beer go to waste).
Once my beer was room temp, I hopped in the shower, shampooed my hair, then poured the beer mixture over my hair and made sure my hair was completely saturated. The concoction smelled strongly of beer (it was honestly pretty gross!) and didn't make for the most relaxing shower experience. I much preferred the beer shampoos, which each had fragrances to mask the scent of the beer.
I rinsed out the beer, then followed up with conditioner. After I got out of the shower, I applied a heat protectant and blow-dried my hair as usual. I thought my hair would feel really dry and sticky (and worse, that I would reek of beer) but I was pleasantly surprised: My hair actually felt very soft and the apple cider vinegar definitely did its job of curbing any odors on my hair.
When I was done blow-drying, I called it a night. My hair is super-thick and really wavy—usually, when I blow-dry my hair and then go to sleep on it, I wake up with seriously frizzy waves. But in the morning, my waves had some nice definition and shine without a ton of frizz (as you can see in the pic here).
Image via Gregory Leporati
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