5 ms·

Aren't modern drinks more alcoholic? 5% by vol beers, 12.5% wines.

dr_orpheus 3y ago
"The amount of alcohol consumed by drinking historical beer brews is between 0.62 to 0.107, the % of alcohol in “small beer” is taken to be around 0.05 and the % in “strong beer” is taken to be around 0.135" Although it doesn't specify weight or volume, but the 5% alcohol beer seems to be equivalent of the "small beer". There are also the "pure alcohol" charts in the table that I think try and account for it. Also there's the comment about beer for sailors in the 10-15% range.
- 26fingies 3y ago
  They did have a couple data points for volume. A historical average of ~1 liter of beer or wine per day is mentioned at the beginning of the post. Further down it seems English sailors had a daily ration of 4.5 liters(!!) of strong beer. So taken together it seems modern people are indeed an awful lot less drunk than they were in the middle ages. If you’re referring to the “0.05” figure i think that is just out of a unit of 1. IOW multiply by 100 to get %. They use % in other parts of the post.
tnecniv 3y ago
Yeah my understanding was that they drank large volumes of low ABV beer in the Middle Ages and did so in part because it was safer than many water sources
- klodolph 3y ago
  I don’t know where that myth comes from. It doesn’t seem to have foundation in the historical record.
  - worthless-trash 3y ago
    We have very little evidence the sun rose every back then either, but we can make educated reasoning based on evidence.
    - klodolph 3y ago
      Ok… is there some kind of educated reasoning that leads you to believe that people drank beer because it was safer?
      - defrost 3y ago
        In Ye Olde Days: Beers and Ales used hops and boiled water. Drinking water near large population centres were not boiled or treated. People that mostly drank wines, beers, and ales likely suffered fewer bouts of dysentry and worse.
        klodolph 3y ago
        That’s some very D-grade, armchair history work here. Straight out of the D&D handbook, perhaps. Around the D&D table is where I most heard the myth that people, historically, drank beer because it was cleaner than water. Here’s a competing theory—people liked beer, and drank a lot of it. If we want to get past armchair history, we need something more than a patchwork of unfounded speculation. We want something that would lead us to believe that one explanation was better than the other, or perhaps both are good, or neither.
        defrost 3y ago
        Ohhhhhh, you're putting the stress on because. There's no need to be a tosser (see HN guidelines), it's an argument that comes straight out of Medieaval recipe books for make beers and ales, straight from the time of the great miasma, and from the mouths of many UK historians.
        klodolph 3y ago
        Can you provide some clues or hints so I can find these UK historians that make these claims? It’s frustrating, because I’ve been told off for asking for evidence, even though I didn’t ask for evidence. Every time I try get an answer, all the resources I find contradict the claims here. Water was the most common drink. Communities were built around wells or other water sources. The Romans built massive systems of aqueducts so they could have more water. I did a Google search and found a page full of results directly contradicting the claim that people drank beer because it was cleaner.
  - bernawil 3y ago
    yeah, such a silly myth. People have known you can make water safe by boiling since forever. This myth also often dispelled along "they drank it for safety and didn't get very drunk because it was very week beer" like they couldn't just drink more of it until they got as drunk as they wanted.
    - xvedejas 3y ago
      It's actually really difficult to get drunk off of weak beer (about 2%), you quickly reach a pain point when it hurts to drink more liquid. And I suspect the dilution also slows uptake.
  - hackermailman 3y ago
    I do know they were terrified of water during the early Tudor period because of the Sweating Sickness and wouldn't even risk taking a bath, but the large beer intake I suspect would've happened anyway and isn't connected
    - klodolph 3y ago
      This is exaggerated. People did bathe, and they made soap for washing themselves.
      - hackermailman 3y ago
        Taken from Simon Thurley's book, they washed but avoided baths, and used rainwater only during the sweating sickness outbreaks: A school of though existed at the time that believed that bathing was dangerous and a time that “allowed the venomous airs to enter and destroyeth the lively spirits in man and enfeebleth the body” (Thurley, Pg. 171).
        klodolph 3y ago
        People did believe that, but it’s exaggerated how widespread those beliefs were.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    The water sources part, maybe a myth. But the weak part, not a myth. Yeasts less aggressively bred for alcohol tolerance, and short brewing times. Somewhat made up for by people having less body mass, though.
gexla 3y ago
The article covers this. It also mentions widespread home brewing. If you or your neighbors are brewing, then I imagine they can make it as strong as they like (I have never brewed beer, so I don't know how it works.)
- loeg 3y ago
  It's harder to make the very high alcohol stuff but anyone could make 5% beer.
  - gpuhacker 3y ago
    As a home brewer myself, I'd say it's not harder to make just more expensive.
    - atourgates 3y ago
      Historically, how did people make higher ABV drinks? It's my understanding that most "wild yeast" will die off at around 5-6% ABV. Were people cultivating and sharing yeasts capable of surviving higher ABVs, or am I misunderstanding?
      - hnick 3y ago
        Distillation, but if you are talking about wine/beer: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/yeast-fermentation-and-the-making-of-beer-14372813/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/yeast-fermentation... "Most yeast strains can tolerate an alcohol concentration of 10–15% before being killed. This is why the percentage of alcohol in wines and beers is typically in this concentration range." I assume temperature and other factors play a role in how successful you are at keeping them alive that long though.
      - Bombinator 3y ago
        Distill
      - mrob 3y ago
        Brewers reused yeast skimmed from the top of fermenting beer ("barm"). Wikipedia's "History of beer" article quotes a 1557 source mentioning this, and it probably goes back much earlier. The motivation here is probably speed and reliability of fermentation, which are obvious benefits to people not aware that yeast is a microorganism, but it also incidentally breeds for alcohol tolerance (especially considering the popularity of strong beers). Reusing wooden brewing equipment without sanitizing between batches has similar effects.
dangerwill 3y ago
That depends on the drink in question and which periods you are comparing. It was common up until the early modern period to have a daytime beer at like 2-3% that just keeps you going throughout the day without getting actually drunk (think of folks that drink PBR instead of water at music festivals to maintain). But 5% and 12% wines would also have been available as well. Though I will say that the current trend with Double IPAs and Hazy IPAs where they all now start at 7% and go up to 10% is definitely outside of the historical norm. But it gets weirder the more you look at it, and especially once you get into the 1700s. There is a proliferation of spirits drinking in the Anglosphere starting then, split between Gin and Whiskey. Gin became a big thing in London, probably at something like 30% alcohol, but was sold in beer volumes. People were drinking pints of straight gin, to the point where it became a big public health crisis. And of course you get the importation and rise in popularity of whiskey distilling from Scotland to the American colonies as a means to use up excess wheat and corn in a shelf stable way. From the 1700s until prohibition I get the impression that public drunkenness was FAR more common in the US and (to a lesser degree) the UK than it is now.
- pixodaros 3y ago
  Yeah, the blog post does not seem to talk about the appearance of rum and distilled liquor in 18th/19th century England. I think the decline of ale and beer consumption in 19th century England was partially a response to the increased availability of other forms of alcohol although I'm not a specialist in the period.
  - starkparker 3y ago
    Gin was a particular problem in 18th-century London: https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item105855.html https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item105855.html plus https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/36/5/401/233726 https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/36/5/401/233726 for some societal context (gin was cheaper and the economy was shit).
callalex 3y ago
This is addressed in the first full paragraph of the linked article. All analysis is normalized by pure alcohol amount from then on.
hackermailman 3y ago
Even in the early 80s a lot of beer was 3.5-4.4% in the UK like Boddingtons. I only know that from punk music made back then about consuming insane amounts of various brands they named in songs then looked up to find it very light beer. Walking into any of those craft brew places where I live I'll be lucky to find 5% almost everything is some crazy 6.5% and up now.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  When you charge $4 a tallboy it'd better be.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    I don't fully agree here, beer quality of taste is not fully a function of content of alcohol. By far the best beers I've ever tasted personally are german Munich brands like Augustiner, even the higher concentration Edelstoff which I call the pinnacle of lagers globally is 5.6%. You don't need more and each sip is a short stop in Gardens of eden for my taste buds.
xxs 3y ago
12.5% wine is a sweet one, c'mon. Wines should be 14% to be decent.
- mrob 3y ago
  There are many dry wines at 12.5% ABV or less. Alcohol level after complete fermentation depends on sugar level in the grapes. Sparkling wines are often made from grapes harvested before they're fully ripe, for about 12% ABV even when fermented completely dry. And some strong wines can be sweet, because the grapes had so much sugar that the yeast couldn't ferment it all.

"The amount of alcohol consumed by drinking historical beer brews is between 0.62 to 0.107, the % of alcohol in “small beer” is taken to be around 0.05 and the % in “strong beer” is taken to be around 0.135" Although it doesn't specify weight or volume, but the 5% alcohol beer seems to be equivalent of the "small beer". There are also the "pure alcohol" charts in the table that I think try and account for it. Also there's the comment about beer for sailors in the 10-15% range.

26fingies 3y ago
They did have a couple data points for volume. A historical average of ~1 liter of beer or wine per day is mentioned at the beginning of the post. Further down it seems English sailors had a daily ration of 4.5 liters(!!) of strong beer. So taken together it seems modern people are indeed an awful lot less drunk than they were in the middle ages. If you’re referring to the “0.05” figure i think that is just out of a unit of 1. IOW multiply by 100 to get %. They use % in other parts of the post.

tnecniv 3y ago

Yeah my understanding was that they drank large volumes of low ABV beer in the Middle Ages and did so in part because it was safer than many water sources

klodolph 3y ago
I don’t know where that myth comes from. It doesn’t seem to have foundation in the historical record.
- worthless-trash 3y ago
  We have very little evidence the sun rose every back then either, but we can make educated reasoning based on evidence.
  - klodolph 3y ago
    Ok… is there some kind of educated reasoning that leads you to believe that people drank beer because it was safer?
    - defrost 3y ago
      In Ye Olde Days: Beers and Ales used hops and boiled water. Drinking water near large population centres were not boiled or treated. People that mostly drank wines, beers, and ales likely suffered fewer bouts of dysentry and worse.
      - klodolph 3y ago
        That’s some very D-grade, armchair history work here. Straight out of the D&D handbook, perhaps. Around the D&D table is where I most heard the myth that people, historically, drank beer because it was cleaner than water. Here’s a competing theory—people liked beer, and drank a lot of it. If we want to get past armchair history, we need something more than a patchwork of unfounded speculation. We want something that would lead us to believe that one explanation was better than the other, or perhaps both are good, or neither.
        defrost 3y ago
        Ohhhhhh, you're putting the stress on because. There's no need to be a tosser (see HN guidelines), it's an argument that comes straight out of Medieaval recipe books for make beers and ales, straight from the time of the great miasma, and from the mouths of many UK historians.
        klodolph 3y ago
        Can you provide some clues or hints so I can find these UK historians that make these claims? It’s frustrating, because I’ve been told off for asking for evidence, even though I didn’t ask for evidence. Every time I try get an answer, all the resources I find contradict the claims here. Water was the most common drink. Communities were built around wells or other water sources. The Romans built massive systems of aqueducts so they could have more water. I did a Google search and found a page full of results directly contradicting the claim that people drank beer because it was cleaner.
- bernawil 3y ago
  yeah, such a silly myth. People have known you can make water safe by boiling since forever. This myth also often dispelled along "they drank it for safety and didn't get very drunk because it was very week beer" like they couldn't just drink more of it until they got as drunk as they wanted.
  - xvedejas 3y ago
    It's actually really difficult to get drunk off of weak beer (about 2%), you quickly reach a pain point when it hurts to drink more liquid. And I suspect the dilution also slows uptake.
- hackermailman 3y ago
  I do know they were terrified of water during the early Tudor period because of the Sweating Sickness and wouldn't even risk taking a bath, but the large beer intake I suspect would've happened anyway and isn't connected
  - klodolph 3y ago
    This is exaggerated. People did bathe, and they made soap for washing themselves.
    - hackermailman 3y ago
      Taken from Simon Thurley's book, they washed but avoided baths, and used rainwater only during the sweating sickness outbreaks: A school of though existed at the time that believed that bathing was dangerous and a time that “allowed the venomous airs to enter and destroyeth the lively spirits in man and enfeebleth the body” (Thurley, Pg. 171).
      - klodolph 3y ago
        People did believe that, but it’s exaggerated how widespread those beliefs were.
- vintermann 3y ago
  The water sources part, maybe a myth. But the weak part, not a myth. Yeasts less aggressively bred for alcohol tolerance, and short brewing times. Somewhat made up for by people having less body mass, though.

gexla 3y ago

The article covers this. It also mentions widespread home brewing. If you or your neighbors are brewing, then I imagine they can make it as strong as they like (I have never brewed beer, so I don't know how it works.)

loeg 3y ago
It's harder to make the very high alcohol stuff but anyone could make 5% beer.
- gpuhacker 3y ago
  As a home brewer myself, I'd say it's not harder to make just more expensive.
  - atourgates 3y ago
    Historically, how did people make higher ABV drinks? It's my understanding that most "wild yeast" will die off at around 5-6% ABV. Were people cultivating and sharing yeasts capable of surviving higher ABVs, or am I misunderstanding?
    - hnick 3y ago
      Distillation, but if you are talking about wine/beer: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/yeast-fermentation-and-the-making-of-beer-14372813/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/yeast-fermentation... "Most yeast strains can tolerate an alcohol concentration of 10–15% before being killed. This is why the percentage of alcohol in wines and beers is typically in this concentration range." I assume temperature and other factors play a role in how successful you are at keeping them alive that long though.
    - Bombinator 3y ago
      Distill
    - mrob 3y ago
      Brewers reused yeast skimmed from the top of fermenting beer ("barm"). Wikipedia's "History of beer" article quotes a 1557 source mentioning this, and it probably goes back much earlier. The motivation here is probably speed and reliability of fermentation, which are obvious benefits to people not aware that yeast is a microorganism, but it also incidentally breeds for alcohol tolerance (especially considering the popularity of strong beers). Reusing wooden brewing equipment without sanitizing between batches has similar effects.

dangerwill 3y ago

That depends on the drink in question and which periods you are comparing. It was common up until the early modern period to have a daytime beer at like 2-3% that just keeps you going throughout the day without getting actually drunk (think of folks that drink PBR instead of water at music festivals to maintain). But 5% and 12% wines would also have been available as well. Though I will say that the current trend with Double IPAs and Hazy IPAs where they all now start at 7% and go up to 10% is definitely outside of the historical norm. But it gets weirder the more you look at it, and especially once you get into the 1700s. There is a proliferation of spirits drinking in the Anglosphere starting then, split between Gin and Whiskey. Gin became a big thing in London, probably at something like 30% alcohol, but was sold in beer volumes. People were drinking pints of straight gin, to the point where it became a big public health crisis. And of course you get the importation and rise in popularity of whiskey distilling from Scotland to the American colonies as a means to use up excess wheat and corn in a shelf stable way. From the 1700s until prohibition I get the impression that public drunkenness was FAR more common in the US and (to a lesser degree) the UK than it is now.

pixodaros 3y ago
Yeah, the blog post does not seem to talk about the appearance of rum and distilled liquor in 18th/19th century England. I think the decline of ale and beer consumption in 19th century England was partially a response to the increased availability of other forms of alcohol although I'm not a specialist in the period.
- starkparker 3y ago
  Gin was a particular problem in 18th-century London: https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item105855.html https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item105855.html plus https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/36/5/401/233726 https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/36/5/401/233726 for some societal context (gin was cheaper and the economy was shit).

callalex 3y ago

This is addressed in the first full paragraph of the linked article. All analysis is normalized by pure alcohol amount from then on.

hackermailman 3y ago

Even in the early 80s a lot of beer was 3.5-4.4% in the UK like Boddingtons. I only know that from punk music made back then about consuming insane amounts of various brands they named in songs then looked up to find it very light beer. Walking into any of those craft brew places where I live I'll be lucky to find 5% almost everything is some crazy 6.5% and up now.

Pxtl 3y ago
When you charge $4 a tallboy it'd better be.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  I don't fully agree here, beer quality of taste is not fully a function of content of alcohol. By far the best beers I've ever tasted personally are german Munich brands like Augustiner, even the higher concentration Edelstoff which I call the pinnacle of lagers globally is 5.6%. You don't need more and each sip is a short stop in Gardens of eden for my taste buds.

xxs 3y ago

12.5% wine is a sweet one, c'mon. Wines should be 14% to be decent.

mrob 3y ago
There are many dry wines at 12.5% ABV or less. Alcohol level after complete fermentation depends on sugar level in the grapes. Sparkling wines are often made from grapes harvested before they're fully ripe, for about 12% ABV even when fermented completely dry. And some strong wines can be sweet, because the grapes had so much sugar that the yeast couldn't ferment it all.