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Comment by bung | Hacker News Reader

I was watching Inspector Morse recently for the first time and modern beer was something the character was against. I'd never heard of the history really, so ended up reading this entire Wikipedia article on Beer in England, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_England, enjoyed the read.

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At a quick skim that doesn't seem to mention that the main reason it was a staple for everybody, including children. It's because it was safer than water. The water it's made from is boiled eliminating any funkiness, and by the end the alcohol it has in it makes it inhospitable to said funkiness. By contrast stagnant water is a breeding ground for all sorts of stuff you generally wouldn't want to consume.

Isn’t that mainly a myth some people on the internet are very adamant about repeating for some reason?

> The water it's made from is boiled eliminating any funkiness, and by the end the alcohol it has in it makes it inhospitable to said funkiness

Except ale produced at home goes bad very fast. In the middle ages it basically had to be consumed on premise/same village and couldn’t be transported anywhere. Also it’s a wonderful and nutritious environment for bacteria to spread. The alcohol content is generally much too low to affect this.

It's definitely not a myth, but a lot of earlier beers might not really be recognizable to many as beer today. I have not made ale, but I've been making kvass [1] for years - which may have been much closer to what was "beer" in the past. I find it extremely curious your ale goes bad so quickly, because kvass takes ~48 hours to produce and lasts for at least months, though it becomes more alcoholic and more flat over time, which gives a less pleasant flavor but simultaneously would also make it even more tolerant against bacteria and such.

But back to beer, by the late Midages it had already even started to become a significant international trade good in many places, which wouldn't really work if it was just spoiling. Similarly in the Age of Sail (and probably before) it was also a typical ration on board ships, which again doesn't really work without very substantial longevity.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass

I came across a comment on HN a few weeks ago linking to a different post in this subreddit, but apparently this myth is confirmed and even has a FAQ entry in AskHistorians

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/vfaq#wiki_middle... (Middle Ages, subsection Health and Hygiene)

The other post I cannot find right now was much more detailed than the faq links, but I can’t seem to find it again using HN search

> extremely curious your ale goes bad so quickly

Not mine. Medieval ale didn’t have any hops in it (it didn’t become widespread until the 1400/1500s in some countries like England) so its shelf life was shorter

> It's definitely not a myth

Why do you think so?

Beyond what I've mentioned? You can find reference, both direct and indirect, to the casual consumption of what we call beer everywhere. For instance even in the Old Testament, look at Isaiah 1:22: "Your silver has become dross, Your drink diluted with water." The Bible imposes countless prohibitions on alcohol but exclusively on "wine" and "strong drink". And that's from the 8th century BC. But we can actually go even much further back. For instance Egyptian workers working on the pyramids received rations of about 5 liters of beer per day. [1]

You can also find the preservation of a certain type of mentality all the way to modern times. In many places, including Russia and Sweden at the minimum, many alcoholic beverages (like kvass) are not age restricted at all, because they're not considered an alcoholic drink in the normal connotation of such. Here's [2] also a nice quote from an 18th century book: "For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer."

There is overwhelming evidence for beer as a normal staple throughout most of all history, and for people of all ages and stations.

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-st...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer#History

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