Food history has been so sanitized by the demonization of carbs. “Our ancestors only had fruits and veggies they didn’t have all these refined carbs” our ancestors drank beer 25/8 because the water was bad. Our ancestors drizzled honey on shit ever since we knew it existed. We’ve been making bread for our entire recorded history. It’s true that bleached sugars specifically are a new thing but high glycemic carbs are not new at all, we’ve been consuming them for thousands of years
Quick correction bc I see this myth everywhere.
People drank beer & fruit wine 25/8 because it was high in calories and also tasty and pretty cheap/easy to make in bulk.
IT WAS NOT USED TO REPLACE OR SANITIZE WATER! THEIR WATER WAS NOT BAD!
The alcohol content in beer/wine back then was too low to actually sanitize anything effectively, and beer/wine only lasts for 6 months (usually less) even while still sealed in a cask, due to oxidization. Oxidation turns fermented liquids into vinegar. Wine and beer wasn’t meant for long-term storage.
This is great, because vinegar is the great preserver! VINEGAR is what people used to store their foods long-term, along with SALT and DRYING and SMOKING.
“Pickling” can be done with pure vinegar if you don’t have any expensive salt around, and vinegar can be made by fermenting any fruit or grain with wild yeast! If you’re lucky, you can also get wine/beer treats out of it on the way.
Circling back around: beer/wine was NEVER a replacement for water. Humans have been drinking from ground springs, wells, rainwater, and clear running water since our ape ancestors got the instinct to avoid stagnant pools.
If you didn’t have immediate access to a source of clean water, you didn’t fucking build a town there!
That’s a big reason why, WORLDWIDE, settlements are ALL historically clustered around sources of water like springs, wells, and rivers. (Or utilized rainwater catchment & storage) And why “the town well is poisoned/dried up!” Is a huge and terrible thing that comes up in a ton of old stories. Losing your source of freshwater means everyone has to move somewhere else, or die.
Even in huge cities, you’d be surprised at how sophisticated freshwater delivery systems were in the middle-ages. London had the “great conduit.” - a man-made, underground channel that moved water directly from a freshwater spring to fill a water tank in the Cheapside marketplace, accessible to the public. This conduit was built in 1245.
Mesopotamians in the BRONZE AGE built clay pipes for sewage removal, and other pipes for rain water collection, and wells. In 4,000 BC.
Building Aqueducts to move spring water into towns was first attributed to the Minoans, who lived in 2,000 BC.
Sanskrit texts from 2,000 BC also detail how to purify water you’re not sure about: expose it to Sunlight, filter it through Charcoal, dip a piece of copper in it at least 7 times, and filter it again. (UV treatment kills bacteria, Charcoal catches many poisons and heavy metal, copper is also antibacterial) <- even if they didn’t know what germs were, prehistoric humans were great at recognizing patterns, and noticing when people DIDNT die.
Persians in 700 BC used ‘qanat’, or tunnels dug into hillsides to let gravity move (CLEAN!) groundwater to nearby towns + for agriculture irrigation. Qanats were still the main water supply for the entire Iranian capitol city until about 1933.
The Roman Empire (312 BC) also built aqueducts to move spring and groundwater across miles and miles.
The Incas (1450) built wondrous examples of hydraulic engineering. Their “stairway of fountains” supplied the entire city of Machu Picchu with fresh spring water from a pair of rain-fed springs atop the mountain. The fountain canals could carry about 80 gallons a minute.
Getting clean drinking water was just not an issue for normal people in MOST long-term settlements. They may not understand germ theory, but they knew clean water was important and would kick up a BIG fuss if those water sources were sabotaged.
In conclusion: people absolutely drank beer and wine with breakfast. They also drank water. It was not a replacement.
You boil the water as part of making beer. Ergo the beer was safer than the unboiled water they were drinking
You boil the water as part of making beer. Ergo the beer was safer than the unboiled water they were drinking
same reason peopple drink tea.
Nope, not how that works.
If you leave an open glass of clean water out, and an open glass of pasta water that was previously boiled… guess which glass will grow the largest thriving ecosystem of bacteria overnight! (Hint: not the water.)
The amount of sanitation and careful storage needed to keep water at a safe drinkable state is a MUCH lower hurdle compared to medieval beer. The weak beers we’re talking about (Europe from 1066 to 1485) would turn into vinegar from air exposure, and readily grows lush bacteria cultures. Storage in a cask was fine for some weeks, but again: not a drink you store long-term. It’s not very shelf stable! Nowhere near water. Not even in the same ballpark as water.
Boiling as part of beer making was historically a step used to change the flavor - not to sanitize.
Ale in 13th century England did not have any boiling step. Ale (no hops) is traditionally made without boiling, even today, throughout Northern Europe. Sahti, Berliner Weisse, and many farmhouse ales are made without boiling. You just start with clean water. Like from a spring. Or your well. Ale was served fresh (in 1446 Worcestershire, there were laws forbidding the sale of ale older than 4 days.)
In the Middle Ages in Europe, home brewers would boil some water with the Mash, but boiling the rest of the water was not seen as necessary. The heat was to pull sugars from the grain and change the flavor. You used drinkable water to make beer anyway.
A second boiling of beer after the fermentation is finished - that’s a very regional choice for brewers, not a universal step in the process.
Hops weren’t cultivated in England until the end of the 15th century, but many cultures used various bitter herbs (like burdock root, dandelion, marigold, etc.) to add similar flavors. Hops and some other bitter plants conveniently had mild antibacterial properties, so after that beer became easier to store in casks.
In the Old Kingdom of Egypt, beer was made by putting loaves of bread into water, capping the jar and letting it ferment in a warm place. Not boiled.
Additionally, boiling is NOT DONE with wine, because the yeast on the fruit was an important part of fermentation. Boiling it would stop the fermentation process. You start w drinkable water, put it in the mashed up fruit, and let the fungus yeast go wild.
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With tea, you boil the water right before drinking it.
With medieval european ale, beer and wine… even if you did boil the water first (which they usually didn’t) you’re then introducing fungus back into it, and creating a tasty nutrient slurry that bacteria (and yeast!) LOVE. Because that’s how you make fermented beverages.
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If your well went bad (because, for instance, you’re in 1865 London dumping raw sewage in the nearby river and germs can travel thru groundwater for short distances), yes - people would drink any stored + bottled liquids they could to survive. Stored water, stored ale, juice from fruits, milk from cows and goats, anything liquid to survive.
However, that was not the NORM.
Instances where that happened were emergency states, not regular everyday life. They’re the exception, not the rule.
Tradesmen in medieval times who were found to pollute nearby rivers (like tanners) were issued steep fines.
Freshwater cisterns were very common in European towns.
In London, there were even water-carriers who would transport and deliver water to households.
Cities where population density such that MIGHT create an issue of polluting nearby water bodies with sewage was an infinitesimally small representation of the overall population of people spread across country towns drinking perfectly good spring water.
