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As I understand it the the strength of medieval beer was quite weak (barely intoxicating) and was trusted to be from clean water while regular water from the we

As I understand it the the strength of medieval beer was quite weak (barely intoxicating) and was trusted to be from clean water while regular water from the well might not be. Perhaps this is a little like the way that many people who have ancestry / family that come from places without clean water will routinely order a "coke with no ice".

duxup 5y ago
Post Cold War after Eastern Europe started opening I traveled there a bit. I was careful what I drank until one night I was foolish and drank something with ice in it. It got me the next day.
- RicoElectrico 5y ago
  I was surprised to find that they give you a free glass of water with ice in the US restaurants. However, it's very awfully tasting "Chlorine Springs" ;) No wonder people tend to avoid tap water there.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Water quality massively varies by location. It's generally all safe (spare me the low effort comment about Flint or some watershed in WV poisoned by coal, the exception proves the rule) and most of it doesn't taste like chlorine.
    - tharkun__ 5y ago
      The chlorine taste or smell is something that is very subjective and can change for other reasons as well. I.e. if you are a tourist that is not used to chlorinated water at all, even mildly chlorinated water can smell distinctly. And disgusting. Get used to it and it's like many things you get used to: you don't notice or mind it much any longer. But even then you might go take a shower and out comes a huge chlorine stink that subsides after a bit. For all you care water with chlorine smell would probably be the safest (from a microbial perspective - same caveats as you are mentioning about general guideline vs specific edge cases)
      - mywittyname 5y ago
        But, getting back to the OP's point: water treatment in the USA varies dramatically between municipalities. Some use Chlorine, but others use different processes, be it chemical or filtration, to clean water. Older water infrastructure can't support chloramine, a replacement for chlorine, because it causes water to leech metals used in pipes. So older infrastructure in poor neighborhoods still use chlorine, but older, wealthy places might use nice filters and no chemicals. It varies a lot, even with houses separated by a few miles.
    - leppr 5y ago
      The fluoride in US tap water should preclude pregnant women from drinking it regularly. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09765-4 https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31743803/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31743803/
    - rhino369 5y ago
      You also just get used to the taste of whatever other material in your local water. I drink tap water all the time and it just tastes like water. My daughter, who only ever has filtered, asked me why tap water tasted weird when I gave her some from my glass. The only place in Europe where I had good tasting tap water was an Alpine village in Austria. The owner of the AirBnB said I had to taste it--and he was right. Better than fancy bottled spring water.
neaden 5y ago
This is one of those things that has been really exaggerated. Medieval people were concerned with water quality and protecting wells, rivers, and other water sources from pollution/poisoning. Beer isn't really an efficient way to purify water either, the alcohol isn't strong enough to ensure it won't make you sick. Much like us though, medieval people didn't really like drinking plain water much, as well as beer barley water and various herbal teas were very popular.
- sbuttgereit 5y ago
  My understanding from many of those claiming that the beer was safer than the water at the time don't make the claim on the basis of beer being alcoholic, but rather that the wort production earlier in the beer making process which involves heating/boiling the water used is what kills off many pathogens that might otherwise be present in the water. This isn't to say that your other points are wrong... I'm not studied enough on the subject to say... just that the beer making process is more the point of those that make the beer-safer-than-water claim than is the alcohol content.
  - mason55 5y ago
    But if you're just trying to sterilize water wouldn't you skip the beer making process for price reasons? Couldn't they just boil the water and then bottle it and you'd have clean water for much cheaper? Or is the idea that they didn't know that the boiling is what made it safe to drink?
    - etothepii 5y ago
      I think it's more the if you've made beer I know you've boiled it. If you tell me you've boiled it you might cut costs even further and just say you've boiled it.
      - neaden 5y ago
        Who is the you in this instance? The typical person in this time period lived in a small rural village, their water would have been fetched from a well, stream, or other source by themself or another family member. If you are dealing with a professional cook then it is someone who was employed by another person/organization as an employee, in which case trying to cut costs like this would be pretty easy to find out.
ch4s3 5y ago
This sin't really true. First, there was decent drinking water in most towns and villages in medieval Europe. Most towns had "masters of conduit" and water carriers dedicated to the task. Second, we have brewers journals dating back some 500 years in England and further back in Germany. Beer is made by mashing or steeping grain in hot water and rinsing it out to produce wort, fermentable sugary/protein rich water. Historically this rinsing (sparging) would be done in 2 - 3 runnings with successively less sugar content in each. The 3rd running might produce small beer 1-3% ABV, but the first runnings could produce beer as strong as 10%, or more. sometimes the first and second runnings were combined and diluted. Much like today, beers of various strengths were available. Small beers were popular as a calorie rich energy drink for laborers, but they also had access to stronger drinks. One reason for making beer is the stable storage of surplus grain, and small beer has a very short shelf life. Before mechanization farm work was in many ways less dangerous, with a few notable exceptions. To list only one example, you can easily drive a horse cart with a fairly strong buzz as it's slow moving and the horse is largely self guided.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Also, farm work comes in bursts. It's not like farmers were toiling away all day, every day in the fields. They'd work their asses off during a few weeks of the year for prep, plant, and harvest. But the rest of the time they needed to tend to animals and do various chores. Even drunk people shouldn't have too much trouble weaving a wattle fence.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    If you read commentary about drunkenness from before modern temperance movements you’ll quickly see that people in Europe and the US considered a fairly large amount of drinking to be normal.
- aflag 5y ago
  So they had access to less power, but much stronger AI :)
giantg2 5y ago
Yes, this was also a thing in the early US as well. Beer was maybe 2% alcohol and was commonly drank with breakfast prior to coffee becoming popular.
TheCoelacanth 5y ago
It was weak, but it wasn't a replacement for water. It was a replacement for bread. Beer was first and foremost a way of preserving calories and only secondarily for recreation.

duxup 5y ago

Post Cold War after Eastern Europe started opening I traveled there a bit. I was careful what I drank until one night I was foolish and drank something with ice in it. It got me the next day.

RicoElectrico 5y ago
I was surprised to find that they give you a free glass of water with ice in the US restaurants. However, it's very awfully tasting "Chlorine Springs" ;) No wonder people tend to avoid tap water there.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Water quality massively varies by location. It's generally all safe (spare me the low effort comment about Flint or some watershed in WV poisoned by coal, the exception proves the rule) and most of it doesn't taste like chlorine.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    The chlorine taste or smell is something that is very subjective and can change for other reasons as well. I.e. if you are a tourist that is not used to chlorinated water at all, even mildly chlorinated water can smell distinctly. And disgusting. Get used to it and it's like many things you get used to: you don't notice or mind it much any longer. But even then you might go take a shower and out comes a huge chlorine stink that subsides after a bit. For all you care water with chlorine smell would probably be the safest (from a microbial perspective - same caveats as you are mentioning about general guideline vs specific edge cases)
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      But, getting back to the OP's point: water treatment in the USA varies dramatically between municipalities. Some use Chlorine, but others use different processes, be it chemical or filtration, to clean water. Older water infrastructure can't support chloramine, a replacement for chlorine, because it causes water to leech metals used in pipes. So older infrastructure in poor neighborhoods still use chlorine, but older, wealthy places might use nice filters and no chemicals. It varies a lot, even with houses separated by a few miles.
  - leppr 5y ago
    The fluoride in US tap water should preclude pregnant women from drinking it regularly. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09765-4 https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31743803/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31743803/
  - rhino369 5y ago
    You also just get used to the taste of whatever other material in your local water. I drink tap water all the time and it just tastes like water. My daughter, who only ever has filtered, asked me why tap water tasted weird when I gave her some from my glass. The only place in Europe where I had good tasting tap water was an Alpine village in Austria. The owner of the AirBnB said I had to taste it--and he was right. Better than fancy bottled spring water.

neaden 5y ago

This is one of those things that has been really exaggerated. Medieval people were concerned with water quality and protecting wells, rivers, and other water sources from pollution/poisoning. Beer isn't really an efficient way to purify water either, the alcohol isn't strong enough to ensure it won't make you sick. Much like us though, medieval people didn't really like drinking plain water much, as well as beer barley water and various herbal teas were very popular.

sbuttgereit 5y ago
My understanding from many of those claiming that the beer was safer than the water at the time don't make the claim on the basis of beer being alcoholic, but rather that the wort production earlier in the beer making process which involves heating/boiling the water used is what kills off many pathogens that might otherwise be present in the water. This isn't to say that your other points are wrong... I'm not studied enough on the subject to say... just that the beer making process is more the point of those that make the beer-safer-than-water claim than is the alcohol content.
- mason55 5y ago
  But if you're just trying to sterilize water wouldn't you skip the beer making process for price reasons? Couldn't they just boil the water and then bottle it and you'd have clean water for much cheaper? Or is the idea that they didn't know that the boiling is what made it safe to drink?
  - etothepii 5y ago
    I think it's more the if you've made beer I know you've boiled it. If you tell me you've boiled it you might cut costs even further and just say you've boiled it.
    - neaden 5y ago
      Who is the you in this instance? The typical person in this time period lived in a small rural village, their water would have been fetched from a well, stream, or other source by themself or another family member. If you are dealing with a professional cook then it is someone who was employed by another person/organization as an employee, in which case trying to cut costs like this would be pretty easy to find out.

ch4s3 5y ago

This sin't really true. First, there was decent drinking water in most towns and villages in medieval Europe. Most towns had "masters of conduit" and water carriers dedicated to the task. Second, we have brewers journals dating back some 500 years in England and further back in Germany. Beer is made by mashing or steeping grain in hot water and rinsing it out to produce wort, fermentable sugary/protein rich water. Historically this rinsing (sparging) would be done in 2 - 3 runnings with successively less sugar content in each. The 3rd running might produce small beer 1-3% ABV, but the first runnings could produce beer as strong as 10%, or more. sometimes the first and second runnings were combined and diluted. Much like today, beers of various strengths were available. Small beers were popular as a calorie rich energy drink for laborers, but they also had access to stronger drinks. One reason for making beer is the stable storage of surplus grain, and small beer has a very short shelf life. Before mechanization farm work was in many ways less dangerous, with a few notable exceptions. To list only one example, you can easily drive a horse cart with a fairly strong buzz as it's slow moving and the horse is largely self guided.

mywittyname 5y ago
Also, farm work comes in bursts. It's not like farmers were toiling away all day, every day in the fields. They'd work their asses off during a few weeks of the year for prep, plant, and harvest. But the rest of the time they needed to tend to animals and do various chores. Even drunk people shouldn't have too much trouble weaving a wattle fence.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  If you read commentary about drunkenness from before modern temperance movements you’ll quickly see that people in Europe and the US considered a fairly large amount of drinking to be normal.
aflag 5y ago
So they had access to less power, but much stronger AI :)

giantg2 5y ago

Yes, this was also a thing in the early US as well. Beer was maybe 2% alcohol and was commonly drank with breakfast prior to coffee becoming popular.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago

It was weak, but it wasn't a replacement for water. It was a replacement for bread. Beer was first and foremost a way of preserving calories and only secondarily for recreation.