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In England they flipped to tea because of cost. Workers often couldn’t find clean water in the field - just like today. Near beer also has some properties of s

• orwin 2y ago
  They could, and water was free and did not need heat unlike table beer. In 1300 europe was 45Million strong, i guarantee you you had enough clean, fresh water for everybody as long as you did not live in a city. I'm pretty sure cities created pipe system around that time too. The issue with spirits and table beer was it needed heating, and that was costly. It probably was still one of the cheapest way to ingest grain, so from late autumn to early spring, people drank a lot of "beer porridge" for lack of a better term, but hydration was done with clean water. Real, filtered table beers didn't really exist until the first industrial revolution (coal did help make it cheaper).
  • derefr 2y ago
    > Real, filtered table beers Who said anything about "filtered"? We're talking about watered-down beer here (or rather, to put a fine point on it, beered-up water.) In other words, grog, but with [whatever spirit is commonly produced locally] instead of rum. > The issue with spirits and table beer was it needed heating, and that was costly. Let's walk through the lifecycle of a small beer here, because I think you're conflating a decentralized economic logistical workflow as if it was all the responsibility of one dude. A local brewer/distiller makes high-proof beer/spirits. Which does require heating, sure, but just once, when making the batch. Then pub/tavern-keepers buy those high-proof spirits, by the caskful. They can let them sit around forever until they use them up, despite the casks not being particularly sanitary, because these wholesale spirits' high alcohol content and low water content prevents spoilage indefinitely. So they're good investments, something they're willing to put money up front for. (And these large infusions of revenue — perhaps even on a predictable contractual basis, for something like a tavern — are how the brewer stays in business, despite the expense of burning wood/coal to brew.) Each day, any given tavern-keeper might fetch a barrel of fresh-ish creek/well/lake water. Might be infectious, might not. Even fresh creek water can have Giardia. When a tavern keeper wants to serve someone small beer, they take a mug of the creek water, measure out a jigger of the high-proof spirit, and stir it in. The alcohol content kills whatever might be in the water, and if it's something like beer, probably maybe makes it taste better, too. The creek water will spoil in a tavern-kitchen environment, but that's fine: it's just water. Treat it as grey water at the end of the night — use it for dishes or whatever. Maybe take some for boiling puddings in. Dump the rest on your garden. This is basically the same logic as fountain drinks. A central provider spends a bunch of ahead-of-time effort to make a bunch of concentrated syrup that's too high-sugar and low-water-content to ever spoil. Then restaurant owners buy this, and combine it just-in-time with water to produce drinks.
• 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  I agree the world is complex and there isn't one way people did everything. That said, 1) the English mass-adopted tea for reasons other than cost (cost just enabled it), 2) for water in the field, canteens had been around for thousands of years (horns, animal skins, wooden cups, buckets, pots, kettles, etc) and there is tons of writing of farm hands being brought water in the field by womenfolk, 3) nobody understood the concept of hydration or electrolytes, but they did think beer makes you grow stronger and more invigorated, just like they thought of wine... farmers in the American colonies would have drank switchel rather than low beer. Another similar drink in ancient times was posca, mostly drank as a cheap alternative to wine, because water is so boring even flavored vinegar is more enjoyable. And then you break off into the medicinal cordials which were a product of wanting to improve your health, as opposed to the common myth "they couldn't figure out how to get clean water so they had to drink X". We're the same today, with our flavored vitamin waters and kombuchas. We don't actually need to drink these things, and our health will be fine without them, but we enjoy making up stories for ourselves, "health remedies", etc, and we enjoy different flavors.
  • Suppafly 2y ago
    >"they couldn't figure out how to get clean water so they had to drink X" Anything sound absurd when you misrepresent what's actually said. No one is saying that "they couldn't figure out how to get clean water" just that the water was dirty and beer was healthier because boiling the water was part of the brewing process and being beer meant it stayed clean for a while, whereas just boiled water reverts to being unclean pretty quickly.
    • 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      > the water was dirty This is made up. Most people had access to clean water, and water that we might today consider dirty, they didn't. (municipal water today is often "dirtier" than some fresh water sources were back then. even today, when natural habitats are restored to their pristine forms, many rivers and streams become clean enough to drink from) > beer was healthier because boiling the water was part of the brewing process and being beer meant it stayed clean for a while I'll grant you they knew that boiling water made it healthier, but if they just needed to drink a healthier version of their water source they could have drank boiled water. They drank beer because beer is tasty (and because it was basically liquid bread) > whereas just boiled water reverts to being unclean pretty quickly This is made up. Boiled water put into a clean vessel with a lid stays clean. Anybody with a kettle (any person for 3,000+ yrs...) can tell you that. Until the 19th/20th century, nobody thought this way about water or beer. All of these things were made up after people finally realized that water could have pathogens. The whole idea is an anachronism.