Paul Newman Drank Over 3,500 Beers In A Year – Here's His Favorite Brand

Paul Newman was a major movie star, and thanks to movie magic, he did not, in fact, eat all 50 eggs while filming "Cool Hand Luke." He was also an outspoken humanitarian and philanthropist; he famously founded the Newman's Own food brand, which started with salad dressings before expanding to other products, like frozen pizza (which nabbed a high spot on Food Republic's ranked list). Proceeds from Newman's Own go 100% to charitable causes. But there was a real person behind all the Hollywood glamour and do-gooding — and that person liked a drink. He once said that he downed at least 10 beers a day; multiply that by 365 days in a year and you have 3,650, and his brand of choice was none other than St. Pauli Girl (via Town & Country).

St. Pauli Girl, or just St. Pauli's for short, was his drink du jour for Christmas 1968, and he told the magazine it was his favorite for every non-Yule-related day, too. His love affair with this adult beverage spanned decades. In 1981, well into his 50s, he was photographed doing what looks to be quadruple-fisting bottles of St. Pauli's (ID provided by a commenter with 52 upvotes on Reddit), though whether he was just getting started on his 10, in the middle, or finishing for the day, we'll never know.

While Paul Newman didn't leave us any exact indication as to why he favored St. Pauli Girl beer, we can take a few guesses. It helps to know its history, which starts in Bremen, Germany, in the 1600s. The St. Pauli Girl brewery was built in the same location where once a monastery devoted to St. Paul stood, hence the first part of its name. Since the brewery's inception, it has followed the rigid purity laws set forth by the German state in the 16th century — yes, even today, and even after St. Pauli's American manufacture came under the AB-InBev portfolio in 2012. The laws limit the permitted ingredients to just three: water, hops, and barley malt, and that very well could have had something to do with Newman's taste for it.

There is also the fact that St. Pauli Girl beer is a pale lager with only a 4.9% ABV (remember, lagers are different from ales). Its relatively low alcohol content, combined with the simple recipe, means that it's super drinkable. Without a strong flavor profile, too, it's quite versatile, so it goes as well with pizza as it does a roast dinner, and if we had to guess, Newman likely enjoyed it both ways.