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Less liquor and much of the beer was whats called small beer or table beer and had very low ABV between 0.5 and 2.0%. George Washington in particular was fond o

Less liquor and much of the beer was whats called small beer or table beer and had very low ABV between 0.5 and 2.0%. George Washington in particular was fond of brewing a bran and molasses based small beer.

User23 3y ago
Franklin warns against “dram drinking” in his excellent autobiography.
8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
It was 4.5L per day though. Enough to stupefy any man or keep them drunk all day. "For sailors the beer supplied was of the strong kind (10%-15% alcohol) since this was the only kind that preserved itself well in the sea, hence drunk as a sailor."
- crooked-v 3y ago
  Though historical sailors in various navies were punished if they were visibly intoxicated while on duty (off-shift was fine, of course), so either they were incredibly functional alcoholics, they were great at pacing themselves, or that booze was heavily watered down.
- robga 3y ago
  Who drinks 4.5L of anything a day? That’s 18 x 250ml glasses.
  - hanche 3y ago
    If you’re doing hard physical labour all day on a hot day, maybe you need about that much? It does match advice I have seen for desert hiking.
  - yetihehe 3y ago
    It's much easier to drink beer than water. When you are working physically in hot weather, it's pretty easy to drink 5L and perspirate most of that.
    - gcanyon 3y ago
      One time I bicycled something over 40 miles in the hills outside Las Vegas on a 105-degree day. I: 1. Drank a gallon of liquid (could have been water or sports drink, I don't remember) on that ~3 hour ride. 2. Didn't pee until I got home -- and not much then. 3. Came home with dry clothes, despite (obviously) sweating something like a gallon of liquid. There was no evidence of sweat, ever -- it all evaporated.
      - yetihehe 3y ago
        One time I was helping build a house in summer. I drank 5L of watery low-sugar tea apart from about 1,5L other liquids and peed maybe three times that day. I had dry clothes but very visible traces of salt on them. Other time I drank 7L of beer in a night, but peed like every 20min.
        gcanyon 3y ago
        When I was a kid my mom stocked Minute Maid frozen orange juice and powdered vitamin c. When I was sick I would stay home (maybe 11 or 12, different times) and watch TV and drink orange juice. I would fall into a pattern of drinking a 10-12 oz glass of juice during a show segment (maybe 7 minutes) and during the commercial break I’d go pee and refill my juice. On the half hour break i’d make another pitcher. So that works out to something like 3 quarts of heavily-vitamin-c-dosed orange juice per hour for at least several hours out of the day. I have no idea how my kidneys kept up with that.
      - brewdad 3y ago
        Ok, but that’s an extreme example and you only consumed 3.8L. 4.5L is a LOT. Even the 8 glasses a day of water suggestion is considered on the high side and that’s only 1.9L.
        kgwgk 3y ago
        > Even the 8 glasses a day of water suggestion is considered on the high side and that’s only 1.9L. The recommended amount depends on who does the recommendation but 1.9L doesn't seem high. https://www.efsa.europa.eu/fr/efsajournal/pub/1459 https://www.efsa.europa.eu/fr/efsajournal/pub/1459 "Adequate Intakes (AI) have been defined derived from a combination of observed intakes in population groups with desirable osmolarity values of urine and desirable water volumes per energy unit consumed. The reference values for total water intake include water from drinking water, beverages of all kind, and from food moisture and only apply to conditions of moderate environmental temperature and moderate physical activity levels (PAL 1.6). [...] Available data for adults permit the definition of AIs as 2.0 L/day (P 95 3.1 L) for females and 2.5 L/day (P95 4.0 L) for males." https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43403 https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43403 "The minimum water requirement for fluid replacement for a 70kg human in a temperate zone equates to 3L per day, or 42.9mL/kg [according to the Tropical Agriculture Association]. Minimum requirements for an individual the same size but in a tropical zone equates to 4.1 to 6L/day" "Age and gender specific Adequate Intakes (AI) for water were established in 2004 by the [United States] Food and Nutrition Board (5). The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) for water are [for ages 19 and older] Men 3.7 L/day Women 2.7 L/day"
  - gcoakes 3y ago
    I usually do. I have a 2 liter water bottle that I fill up at least twice a day. Though ironically with the heat this summer, I've been exercising and drinking less.
  - darkclouds 3y ago
    Anyone trying to keep parts of their immune system down.
  - Modified3019 3y ago
    Obviously they need something to wash down their 40 potatoes a day. I also find the amount questionable, as I suspect that our modern expectations of what that means and the details of what they meant when they recorded personal consumption means there's something lost in translation here. Even when I was outside scouting crops 10-12 hours a day on foot in southwest kansas with peak 110F temps, I'd still not need to drink more than 4 liters of water a day. I could push it up another liter, but it wasn't needed and could actually be harmful if one overhydrates. And that's the extreme of the year, way more what I'd reach for most of the year. Whereas the daily motto of the fuckers was apparently "I am a machine that turns beer into piss"
  - ChoGGi 3y ago
    It's pretty easy to drink four gallons (+extras) on a hot day roofing.
- bsmithers 3y ago
  4.5L of 0.5% ABV beer would not make you drunk. For comparison, this is equivalent to less than a pint of a typical mainstream beer. Indeed a 0.5% ABV drink can be branded alcohol free (at least in the UK). Would 4.5L of 2% ABV make you drunk? Depends how quickly you can drink it. It's 9 units of alcohol. We commonly assume the body can process 1 unit/hour so if this quantity was consumed over an entire day, I don't think you'd get merry. I'm not saying it's a good idea to drink like this, just highlighting the impact of ABV on the outcome.
  - junofan 3y ago
    It’s 8 pints of 13% ABV if you look at the table in the article. Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking.
    - luc4sdreyer 3y ago
      Which table? The referenced table (9) only says "strong" (relative to what?) and gives a calorie count, which for beer is not very useful as an ABV estimate.
    - SCdF 3y ago
      For sailors, in one estimate, and sailors are a special case as the article mentions, because strong beer is the only thing that doesn't go off at sea. Everyone else is the much lower estimate discussed up thread. > Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking. Maybe I'm a lightweight, I would be absolutely trollied if I had to drink eight 13% pints over the course of a day. I have never been anywhere where they'd even sell you an entire pint of 13%, you are in 2/3rd or maybe even 1/3rd territory.
      - brewdad 3y ago
        I have a favorite speciality beer that comes in around 13%. They used to sell it only in 22oz bottles and that was it for the night. If I decided to open one, I knew that was my one drink for the evening. They recently started selling it in 12oz bottles, so it’s no longer a commitment but rather a choice.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zhte415 3y ago
  The article also mentioned the beer ration could be passed to families. Which had me thinking of various pecuniary benefits armies pass and why. Salt -> salary is well documented, on the opposite side slightly less so but still somewhat known was for conquering armies to compensate farmers for essentially pillage as the monetary compensation can't buy much grain nor meat when the army's eaten the village's as well as that of surrounding villages. It also wasn't unusual for state coffers to run dry also, delaying soldiers' salaries, plus graft - several banks still around were founded on the basis of lending to a liquidity starved crown, a modern placation and guarantee of support in the classical baronesque sense perhaps. And I became curious about all the other money-like tokens, like these beer rations, backed by the promise of a commodity, that floated around in those time, and in ours today. Meandering thoughts, the best kind.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    > Salt -> salary is well documented Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Doesn't make sense either, as you can't do much with salt except use it on food as seasoning or as a preservative, which are both useless as salary since you still need to pay for your actual food and other expenses. It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
      - NeoTar 3y ago
        > It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with. The Roman Empire towards its end in the west had suffered from a lot of inflation, so coinage was either too expensive for everyday use (i.e. gold-coins, each of which would be a year's salary for a soldier), or worthless (basically just lumps of base-metal). I think at a certain point taxes were required to be paid in goods rather than coin which really does show that your currency is worthless (when even the state refuses to accept it!)
- ErikCorry 3y ago
  I don't think the yeasts they had at the time could get anywhere near 10%, so is he saying the beer was fortified with spirits? I know that Churchill said "The traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash" so perhaps it was.
  - WangComputers 3y ago
    How could they make wine if they couldn't get close to 10% ?
    - ErikCorry 3y ago
      Wine uses completely different yeasts, and probably wasn't as strong either as it is today.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
wahnfrieden 3y ago
Relatedly I learned the other day how Washington kept some men in captivity who he forcibly took teeth from to cobble together from different men’s oral wounds his famous dentures. Interesting
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  If you share such a weird story, maybe also provide a link so others can judge whether there is some substance?
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    I won't be expected to exhaustively cite well-known history you can google in an instant, sorry. You find it weird to learn that Washington had slaves and used their teeth? Don't know what to say - it's what he was. I'm sorry if you got a Florida education :P
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      There seems to be dispute about it: "As such, it remains unknown whether Washington personally used any teeth purchased from slaves or others" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_teeth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_teeth So the usual expectation is indeed, if you share uncommon facts, you share the link to those facts, so others can judge more easily, if your facts are facts at all.
      - wahnfrieden 3y ago
        There’s no dispute of him having healthy teeth extracted from slaves and having slaves, only on the detail of whether the dentures made from them were used in his own mouth or for someone else. It is also fact that his dentures included human teeth, but maybe not the specific 9 teeth we know he had taken from slaves > Records at Mount Vernon show that Washington bought teeth from slaves is what I said, had slaves and took their teeth, except that maybe he didn’t put the extracted teeth into his own mouth and used the slave teeth for some other purpose or a different person’s dentures, you’re correct on that and I thank you for sharing that detail.
dmurray 3y ago
This was my understanding too, but the article in the first footnote uses some much larger values for alcohol content. It generally seems well sourced but these numbers are all over the place as if the author first got the numbers and then randomly placed the decimal point and termed some of them 'percentages'. > Wine is taken to be 0.12 alcohol, the same number is used in modern estimates of alcohol consumption. 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,
- SCdF 3y ago
  This is the first article that has implied that this historical beer consumption was this high % wise, so I am suspicious of the phrasing "taken to be" that is used all over the place. IDK if this means something specific in the context of scientific papers, but in conversational English it can be interpreted as "a number I made up".
xattt 3y ago
Almost sounds like kvas. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass
gniv 3y ago
> very low ABV between 0.5 and 2.0% How did they brew such small beers? Nowadays the non-alcoholic beers (basically 0.5%) are mostly made by removing alcohol after brewing, which greatly affects the taste. I think it's a highly desirable skill to be able to brew good small beers. (Or maybe those beers were just not very good by today's standards.)
- pazimzadeh 3y ago
  Wouldn't you just interrupt the fermentation process before it gets that high? Or add less nutrients for fermentation?
  - Sander_Marechal 3y ago
    Yes. Also, the yeast strains are much less pure and will probably die sooner.
  - gniv 3y ago
    I'm not sure you get a full enough taste though. I've made low-alcohol beers with fewer grains and lots of hops and it was unbalanced, the base was not there.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      I think this is the key point. We want something that tastes like a 21st century beer but otherwise with the properties of an 18th century beer.
      - pazimzadeh 3y ago
        That reminds me of Belgian beers which have double the alcohol of your regular beer but tastes like there is barely any alcohol.
- aftoprokrustes 3y ago
  Actually, my impression is that the main driver of that "alcohol free beer taste" is the absence of the taste of alcohol. I kind of want to test this hypthesis by adding pure alcohol to an alcohol free beer, but pure alcohol is not really something you find in the supermarket. Germany has a non-alcoholic drink called "Malzbier" (malt beer), which is basically the liquid you would ferment to make beer. It is _insanely_ sweet. So I would expect that a lightly fermented beer would be much closer to a sweet drink than to what we expect under the name "beer".
BellsOnSunday 3y ago
I've just finished Pamuk's novel A Strangeness in my Mind, where the protagonist is a street vendor of the traditional Turkish beverage boza. Boza is a mildly alcoholic fermented barley drink considered ok for Muslims to drink. The gradual disappearance of boza sellers in the street is an index of the changes in Istanbul and Turkish society in the late 20th century, really enjoyable book. From what I've read I can imagine it's an acquired taste.

User23 3y ago

Franklin warns against “dram drinking” in his excellent autobiography.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago

It was 4.5L per day though. Enough to stupefy any man or keep them drunk all day. "For sailors the beer supplied was of the strong kind (10%-15% alcohol) since this was the only kind that preserved itself well in the sea, hence drunk as a sailor."

crooked-v 3y ago
Though historical sailors in various navies were punished if they were visibly intoxicated while on duty (off-shift was fine, of course), so either they were incredibly functional alcoholics, they were great at pacing themselves, or that booze was heavily watered down.
robga 3y ago
Who drinks 4.5L of anything a day? That’s 18 x 250ml glasses.
- hanche 3y ago
  If you’re doing hard physical labour all day on a hot day, maybe you need about that much? It does match advice I have seen for desert hiking.
- yetihehe 3y ago
  It's much easier to drink beer than water. When you are working physically in hot weather, it's pretty easy to drink 5L and perspirate most of that.
  - gcanyon 3y ago
    One time I bicycled something over 40 miles in the hills outside Las Vegas on a 105-degree day. I: 1. Drank a gallon of liquid (could have been water or sports drink, I don't remember) on that ~3 hour ride. 2. Didn't pee until I got home -- and not much then. 3. Came home with dry clothes, despite (obviously) sweating something like a gallon of liquid. There was no evidence of sweat, ever -- it all evaporated.
    - yetihehe 3y ago
      One time I was helping build a house in summer. I drank 5L of watery low-sugar tea apart from about 1,5L other liquids and peed maybe three times that day. I had dry clothes but very visible traces of salt on them. Other time I drank 7L of beer in a night, but peed like every 20min.
      - gcanyon 3y ago
        When I was a kid my mom stocked Minute Maid frozen orange juice and powdered vitamin c. When I was sick I would stay home (maybe 11 or 12, different times) and watch TV and drink orange juice. I would fall into a pattern of drinking a 10-12 oz glass of juice during a show segment (maybe 7 minutes) and during the commercial break I’d go pee and refill my juice. On the half hour break i’d make another pitcher. So that works out to something like 3 quarts of heavily-vitamin-c-dosed orange juice per hour for at least several hours out of the day. I have no idea how my kidneys kept up with that.
    - brewdad 3y ago
      Ok, but that’s an extreme example and you only consumed 3.8L. 4.5L is a LOT. Even the 8 glasses a day of water suggestion is considered on the high side and that’s only 1.9L.
      - kgwgk 3y ago
        > Even the 8 glasses a day of water suggestion is considered on the high side and that’s only 1.9L. The recommended amount depends on who does the recommendation but 1.9L doesn't seem high. https://www.efsa.europa.eu/fr/efsajournal/pub/1459 https://www.efsa.europa.eu/fr/efsajournal/pub/1459 "Adequate Intakes (AI) have been defined derived from a combination of observed intakes in population groups with desirable osmolarity values of urine and desirable water volumes per energy unit consumed. The reference values for total water intake include water from drinking water, beverages of all kind, and from food moisture and only apply to conditions of moderate environmental temperature and moderate physical activity levels (PAL 1.6). [...] Available data for adults permit the definition of AIs as 2.0 L/day (P 95 3.1 L) for females and 2.5 L/day (P95 4.0 L) for males." https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43403 https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43403 "The minimum water requirement for fluid replacement for a 70kg human in a temperate zone equates to 3L per day, or 42.9mL/kg [according to the Tropical Agriculture Association]. Minimum requirements for an individual the same size but in a tropical zone equates to 4.1 to 6L/day" "Age and gender specific Adequate Intakes (AI) for water were established in 2004 by the [United States] Food and Nutrition Board (5). The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) for water are [for ages 19 and older] Men 3.7 L/day Women 2.7 L/day"
- gcoakes 3y ago
  I usually do. I have a 2 liter water bottle that I fill up at least twice a day. Though ironically with the heat this summer, I've been exercising and drinking less.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  Anyone trying to keep parts of their immune system down.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  Obviously they need something to wash down their 40 potatoes a day. I also find the amount questionable, as I suspect that our modern expectations of what that means and the details of what they meant when they recorded personal consumption means there's something lost in translation here. Even when I was outside scouting crops 10-12 hours a day on foot in southwest kansas with peak 110F temps, I'd still not need to drink more than 4 liters of water a day. I could push it up another liter, but it wasn't needed and could actually be harmful if one overhydrates. And that's the extreme of the year, way more what I'd reach for most of the year. Whereas the daily motto of the fuckers was apparently "I am a machine that turns beer into piss"
- ChoGGi 3y ago
  It's pretty easy to drink four gallons (+extras) on a hot day roofing.
bsmithers 3y ago
4.5L of 0.5% ABV beer would not make you drunk. For comparison, this is equivalent to less than a pint of a typical mainstream beer. Indeed a 0.5% ABV drink can be branded alcohol free (at least in the UK). Would 4.5L of 2% ABV make you drunk? Depends how quickly you can drink it. It's 9 units of alcohol. We commonly assume the body can process 1 unit/hour so if this quantity was consumed over an entire day, I don't think you'd get merry. I'm not saying it's a good idea to drink like this, just highlighting the impact of ABV on the outcome.
- junofan 3y ago
  It’s 8 pints of 13% ABV if you look at the table in the article. Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking.
  - luc4sdreyer 3y ago
    Which table? The referenced table (9) only says "strong" (relative to what?) and gives a calorie count, which for beer is not very useful as an ABV estimate.
  - SCdF 3y ago
    For sailors, in one estimate, and sailors are a special case as the article mentions, because strong beer is the only thing that doesn't go off at sea. Everyone else is the much lower estimate discussed up thread. > Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking. Maybe I'm a lightweight, I would be absolutely trollied if I had to drink eight 13% pints over the course of a day. I have never been anywhere where they'd even sell you an entire pint of 13%, you are in 2/3rd or maybe even 1/3rd territory.
    - brewdad 3y ago
      I have a favorite speciality beer that comes in around 13%. They used to sell it only in 22oz bottles and that was it for the night. If I decided to open one, I knew that was my one drink for the evening. They recently started selling it in 12oz bottles, so it’s no longer a commitment but rather a choice.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zhte415 3y ago
The article also mentioned the beer ration could be passed to families. Which had me thinking of various pecuniary benefits armies pass and why. Salt -> salary is well documented, on the opposite side slightly less so but still somewhat known was for conquering armies to compensate farmers for essentially pillage as the monetary compensation can't buy much grain nor meat when the army's eaten the village's as well as that of surrounding villages. It also wasn't unusual for state coffers to run dry also, delaying soldiers' salaries, plus graft - several banks still around were founded on the basis of lending to a liquidity starved crown, a modern placation and guarantee of support in the classical baronesque sense perhaps. And I became curious about all the other money-like tokens, like these beer rations, backed by the promise of a commodity, that floated around in those time, and in ours today. Meandering thoughts, the best kind.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  > Salt -> salary is well documented Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Doesn't make sense either, as you can't do much with salt except use it on food as seasoning or as a preservative, which are both useless as salary since you still need to pay for your actual food and other expenses. It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
    - NeoTar 3y ago
      > It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with. The Roman Empire towards its end in the west had suffered from a lot of inflation, so coinage was either too expensive for everyday use (i.e. gold-coins, each of which would be a year's salary for a soldier), or worthless (basically just lumps of base-metal). I think at a certain point taxes were required to be paid in goods rather than coin which really does show that your currency is worthless (when even the state refuses to accept it!)
ErikCorry 3y ago
I don't think the yeasts they had at the time could get anywhere near 10%, so is he saying the beer was fortified with spirits? I know that Churchill said "The traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash" so perhaps it was.
- WangComputers 3y ago
  How could they make wine if they couldn't get close to 10% ?
  - ErikCorry 3y ago
    Wine uses completely different yeasts, and probably wasn't as strong either as it is today.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

wahnfrieden 3y ago

Relatedly I learned the other day how Washington kept some men in captivity who he forcibly took teeth from to cobble together from different men’s oral wounds his famous dentures. Interesting

hutzlibu 3y ago
If you share such a weird story, maybe also provide a link so others can judge whether there is some substance?
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  I won't be expected to exhaustively cite well-known history you can google in an instant, sorry. You find it weird to learn that Washington had slaves and used their teeth? Don't know what to say - it's what he was. I'm sorry if you got a Florida education :P
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    There seems to be dispute about it: "As such, it remains unknown whether Washington personally used any teeth purchased from slaves or others" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_teeth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_teeth So the usual expectation is indeed, if you share uncommon facts, you share the link to those facts, so others can judge more easily, if your facts are facts at all.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      There’s no dispute of him having healthy teeth extracted from slaves and having slaves, only on the detail of whether the dentures made from them were used in his own mouth or for someone else. It is also fact that his dentures included human teeth, but maybe not the specific 9 teeth we know he had taken from slaves > Records at Mount Vernon show that Washington bought teeth from slaves is what I said, had slaves and took their teeth, except that maybe he didn’t put the extracted teeth into his own mouth and used the slave teeth for some other purpose or a different person’s dentures, you’re correct on that and I thank you for sharing that detail.

dmurray 3y ago

This was my understanding too, but the article in the first footnote uses some much larger values for alcohol content. It generally seems well sourced but these numbers are all over the place as if the author first got the numbers and then randomly placed the decimal point and termed some of them 'percentages'. > Wine is taken to be 0.12 alcohol, the same number is used in modern estimates of alcohol consumption. 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,

SCdF 3y ago
This is the first article that has implied that this historical beer consumption was this high % wise, so I am suspicious of the phrasing "taken to be" that is used all over the place. IDK if this means something specific in the context of scientific papers, but in conversational English it can be interpreted as "a number I made up".

xattt 3y ago

Almost sounds like kvas. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass

gniv 3y ago

> very low ABV between 0.5 and 2.0% How did they brew such small beers? Nowadays the non-alcoholic beers (basically 0.5%) are mostly made by removing alcohol after brewing, which greatly affects the taste. I think it's a highly desirable skill to be able to brew good small beers. (Or maybe those beers were just not very good by today's standards.)

pazimzadeh 3y ago
Wouldn't you just interrupt the fermentation process before it gets that high? Or add less nutrients for fermentation?
- Sander_Marechal 3y ago
  Yes. Also, the yeast strains are much less pure and will probably die sooner.
- gniv 3y ago
  I'm not sure you get a full enough taste though. I've made low-alcohol beers with fewer grains and lots of hops and it was unbalanced, the base was not there.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    I think this is the key point. We want something that tastes like a 21st century beer but otherwise with the properties of an 18th century beer.
    - pazimzadeh 3y ago
      That reminds me of Belgian beers which have double the alcohol of your regular beer but tastes like there is barely any alcohol.
aftoprokrustes 3y ago
Actually, my impression is that the main driver of that "alcohol free beer taste" is the absence of the taste of alcohol. I kind of want to test this hypthesis by adding pure alcohol to an alcohol free beer, but pure alcohol is not really something you find in the supermarket. Germany has a non-alcoholic drink called "Malzbier" (malt beer), which is basically the liquid you would ferment to make beer. It is _insanely_ sweet. So I would expect that a lightly fermented beer would be much closer to a sweet drink than to what we expect under the name "beer".

BellsOnSunday 3y ago

I've just finished Pamuk's novel A Strangeness in my Mind, where the protagonist is a street vendor of the traditional Turkish beverage boza. Boza is a mildly alcoholic fermented barley drink considered ok for Muslims to drink. The gradual disappearance of boza sellers in the street is an index of the changes in Istanbul and Turkish society in the late 20th century, really enjoyable book. From what I've read I can imagine it's an acquired taste.