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I found this article a bit hard to follow, though it's an interesting topic. The constantly changing units of consumption, historical timing, changes between d

I found this article a bit hard to follow, though it's an interesting topic. The constantly changing units of consumption, historical timing, changes between daily and annual rates of consumption and similar made it difficult to understand exactly the point that was being made. The author dug up a lot of data and put it together, but didn't going the extra step of unifying things in a way that's easy to understand. I kept having to convert the units they were using to units I could understand, and since those units weren't constant, it's difficult to get an overall impression. But, a few examples I did convert to amounts of drinking I understand: * In Florence in 1455, someone (IDK if this is an average, an individual, a certain class of people or what?) drank 250L of wine in a year. That's about .9 modern size bottles of wine per day. A good amount, but I expect if you were practiced at it and drank it fairly evenly throughout the day, you certainly wouldn't appear drunk. * In the medieval city of Ghent, the apparent average per person annual consumption was ~40-liters wine and ~1300-liters beer. That works out to basically 7.5 pints (16oz, or the size of one of the tall cans of that craft beer often comes in in the US) of beer every day, and a quite small glass of wine. Depending on how strong the beer was (doesn't specify if this was small ~5% or strong ~12% beer), I expect even a practiced drinker would be quite tipsy after close to 8 pints and a touch of wine every day. * Sailors got a ration of 8 pints of strong (13% ABV) beer a day, which would have me absolutely knocked off my feet. 3 pints of what I think of as strong beer (~6-8%) in any kind of close succession and I'm definitely feeling tipsy, and shouldn't be let anywhere near something so complex as rigging. Though, after reading a few books on naval life aboard 16th century British sailing ships, perhaps being totally out of it for as much of the journey as possible would be a solid survival tactic. * The "historical average" (IDK what period of history, or how average) beer consumption was around 380 liters per person per year. That's just over 2.2 pints per person per day. A long way from "being drunk all the time", even if it was higher ABV strong beer (and it certainly wasn't all high ABV). Certainly, people seemed to have drunk much more in the past than they do today, but it's hard to make clear conclusions when the units are all over the place.

noja 3y ago
> doesn't specify if this was small ~5% or strong ~12% beer iirc "beer" as it was back then was more like 0.5% ABV
- ch4s3 3y ago
  Beer wouldn't have bee 0.5% historically. Historical recipes where they survive are pretty much exclusively much stronger than this. Moreover a beer at 0.5% will spoil in basically a small number of days, unless it's heavily soured which isn't described in historical sources. Table beer of that strength, while it exists wouldn't be very good as beer. It's a real art to produce a beer that weak that tastes good at all. Moreover manual laborers in fields were drinking beer for calories as much as for hydration, and any beer with a significant calorie count, say 200 will be in the range of 4%. Pre-modern brewing didn't have precise fermentation controls.
hommelix 3y ago
Medieval beer was used in place of water and was rated at 2% or less. That was the beer people would drink 1300 liter per year. It was the common way to sanitize water, as the river was the source of clean water and the dumpster for dirty water at the same time.
- hnick 3y ago
  I think it's worth noting it was the process that sanitised the water, not the alcohol - even raw eggnog with much higher concentrations is considered acceptable for most people but risky for the at-risk, due to eggs being largely but not completely clean.
  - clbrmbr 3y ago
    A good alewife could get the alcohol % even lower by using strong herbs like mugwort.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  > It was the common way to sanitize water That’s mostly a myth. > as the river was the source of clean water Also mostly a myth. e.g. they weren’t drinking water from the Thames in medieval London for instance but from the Tyburn river. The case in most cities was that you had stream and springs which were legally protected and you poured your waste downstream into some major river. Obviously shit happened and water sources got polluted from time to time with terrible consequences but they still drank water all the time.
chefandy 3y ago
I can't imagine they were drinking it all at once, either. The body eliminates something in the neighborhood of one unit of alcohol per hour— usually considered to be 12oz of 5% beer, 5oz of 12% wine, or 1.5oz of 40% liquor. 8 strong pints over the course of a day is doable. Working as a line cook, many of my coworkers, and points, I myself drank amounts approaching that... And we had completely safe drinking water! I worked at one place where a 6 pack was part of everybody's station setup and customers could buy a discounted 6 pack for the kitchen— and many regularly did. 16+ hour days of hard, hot, hypervigilant, dangerous work with a chunk nearly always unpaid; no health insurance; socially isolated from everyone you don't work with, and they also probably have unhealthy lifestyles... I imagine our reasons weren't much different than others throughout history. Hard to make healthy life choices in that life.
- atourgates 3y ago
  I've heard stories of the healthy, positive and wholesome environments in restaurant kitchens. But still - by the article's definition, 8 strong pints would be the equivalent of 16 16oz IPAs in a day. I'm sure there are heavy drinkers that could do it and hide it pretty well, but I think your average person would be pretty flat. I expect I'd be asleep in the corner if not passed out.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
    I don't think I could physically stomach it anymore. At some point my body would just say no, I'm not drinking that.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    I know a bartender who would drink a fifth of whiskey every shift and still be totally coherent at the end of it. (That was a decade ago and she's still a bartender... but I have no idea how much she drinks now.) Some of it has to do with biology, but some people can just adapt.
twic 3y ago
If you're not actively manoeuvring (or fighting etc), sailing involves a lot of downtime. Once you're at sea and heading in roughly the right direction, there's not a lot of actual sailing work to do, and only so much make and mend that people can stomach. A few pints of strong beer would presumably keep the men happily idle. It's basically early modern suspended animation.
GuB-42 3y ago
The strength of beer is probably way too high. According to Wikipedia "The strength of beers has climbed during the later years of the 20th century. Vetter 33, a 10.5% abv (33 degrees Plato, hence Vetter "33") doppelbock, was listed in the 1994 Guinness Book of World Records as the strongest beer at that time". So obviously, sailors during the age of sail couldn't have 13% ABV beer. They had rum though, so maybe the drinks they had were mixed with rum to reach 13%. If sailors were issue "strong beer", I would guess it is like today's regular beer, maybe in the order of 5-6%. As opposed to "small beer", that was maybe 1-2%. Sometimes it was less than 1%, not even enough to qualify as an alcoholic drink in many countries today. As for wine, it also tended to be weaker than modern wine, most likely under 10%, and it was often watered down. The reason beer and wine are so consistently strong today is that we have good knowledge of the fermentation process and we are able to precisely control all the variables. They didn't even know what kind of yeast that had back in the days, they mostly used what was floating in the air where they were. Now we have lab grown yeasts, selectively bred for maximum performance.

noja 3y ago

> doesn't specify if this was small ~5% or strong ~12% beer iirc "beer" as it was back then was more like 0.5% ABV

ch4s3 3y ago
Beer wouldn't have bee 0.5% historically. Historical recipes where they survive are pretty much exclusively much stronger than this. Moreover a beer at 0.5% will spoil in basically a small number of days, unless it's heavily soured which isn't described in historical sources. Table beer of that strength, while it exists wouldn't be very good as beer. It's a real art to produce a beer that weak that tastes good at all. Moreover manual laborers in fields were drinking beer for calories as much as for hydration, and any beer with a significant calorie count, say 200 will be in the range of 4%. Pre-modern brewing didn't have precise fermentation controls.

hommelix 3y ago

Medieval beer was used in place of water and was rated at 2% or less. That was the beer people would drink 1300 liter per year. It was the common way to sanitize water, as the river was the source of clean water and the dumpster for dirty water at the same time.

hnick 3y ago
I think it's worth noting it was the process that sanitised the water, not the alcohol - even raw eggnog with much higher concentrations is considered acceptable for most people but risky for the at-risk, due to eggs being largely but not completely clean.
- clbrmbr 3y ago
  A good alewife could get the alcohol % even lower by using strong herbs like mugwort.
ffhhttt 3y ago
> It was the common way to sanitize water That’s mostly a myth. > as the river was the source of clean water Also mostly a myth. e.g. they weren’t drinking water from the Thames in medieval London for instance but from the Tyburn river. The case in most cities was that you had stream and springs which were legally protected and you poured your waste downstream into some major river. Obviously shit happened and water sources got polluted from time to time with terrible consequences but they still drank water all the time.

chefandy 3y ago

I can't imagine they were drinking it all at once, either. The body eliminates something in the neighborhood of one unit of alcohol per hour— usually considered to be 12oz of 5% beer, 5oz of 12% wine, or 1.5oz of 40% liquor. 8 strong pints over the course of a day is doable. Working as a line cook, many of my coworkers, and points, I myself drank amounts approaching that... And we had completely safe drinking water! I worked at one place where a 6 pack was part of everybody's station setup and customers could buy a discounted 6 pack for the kitchen— and many regularly did. 16+ hour days of hard, hot, hypervigilant, dangerous work with a chunk nearly always unpaid; no health insurance; socially isolated from everyone you don't work with, and they also probably have unhealthy lifestyles... I imagine our reasons weren't much different than others throughout history. Hard to make healthy life choices in that life.

atourgates 3y ago
I've heard stories of the healthy, positive and wholesome environments in restaurant kitchens. But still - by the article's definition, 8 strong pints would be the equivalent of 16 16oz IPAs in a day. I'm sure there are heavy drinkers that could do it and hide it pretty well, but I think your average person would be pretty flat. I expect I'd be asleep in the corner if not passed out.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  I don't think I could physically stomach it anymore. At some point my body would just say no, I'm not drinking that.
- chefandy 3y ago
  I know a bartender who would drink a fifth of whiskey every shift and still be totally coherent at the end of it. (That was a decade ago and she's still a bartender... but I have no idea how much she drinks now.) Some of it has to do with biology, but some people can just adapt.

twic 3y ago

If you're not actively manoeuvring (or fighting etc), sailing involves a lot of downtime. Once you're at sea and heading in roughly the right direction, there's not a lot of actual sailing work to do, and only so much make and mend that people can stomach. A few pints of strong beer would presumably keep the men happily idle. It's basically early modern suspended animation.

GuB-42 3y ago

The strength of beer is probably way too high. According to Wikipedia "The strength of beers has climbed during the later years of the 20th century. Vetter 33, a 10.5% abv (33 degrees Plato, hence Vetter "33") doppelbock, was listed in the 1994 Guinness Book of World Records as the strongest beer at that time". So obviously, sailors during the age of sail couldn't have 13% ABV beer. They had rum though, so maybe the drinks they had were mixed with rum to reach 13%. If sailors were issue "strong beer", I would guess it is like today's regular beer, maybe in the order of 5-6%. As opposed to "small beer", that was maybe 1-2%. Sometimes it was less than 1%, not even enough to qualify as an alcoholic drink in many countries today. As for wine, it also tended to be weaker than modern wine, most likely under 10%, and it was often watered down. The reason beer and wine are so consistently strong today is that we have good knowledge of the fermentation process and we are able to precisely control all the variables. They didn't even know what kind of yeast that had back in the days, they mostly used what was floating in the air where they were. Now we have lab grown yeasts, selectively bred for maximum performance.