> 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" this is not a good expecta

> 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" this is not a good expectation. Yeast will consume all available sugar till the alcohol %age gets too high for them (depends on the yeast but even the hardiest cultured strains poop out at around 16%. But they can only consume what sugar is in there, so if you ferment starting with something with little sugar, it will not arrive at a high alcohol level. Our ancestors did not have access to lots of sugar, even their fruits (therefore juices) were less sweet. to your point about insanely sweet starter, wine grapes are also insanely sweet, so sweet we don't want to eat them. Table grapes like you buy at the grocery, sweet as they are, are much less sweet than wine grapes. So, starting from the ultra sweet grapejuice, average wine gets to 12% alcohol.