I think it’s important to point out that almost everyone drank beer and it wasn’t because the water was bad. It was because they liked drinking beer.
Our modern culture doesn’t like the idea of people drinking beer all day so there has to be
some scientific justification to make it acceptable to modern sensibilities.
The percentage of alcohol required to preserve beer for long periods is too high for sailors to be drinking a gallon of it per day.
> The percentage of alcohol required to preserve beer for long periods is too high for sailors to be drinking a gallon of it per day.
Reading this thread I think the best thing would be if people were forbidden from comment on the history of beer in online forums. Nobody knows anything, yet everyone is shouting their misunderstandings from the rooftops.
The Danish fleet, to take just one example, was completely dependent on a supply of "skibsøl", to the extent that the king started his own brewery to ensure his fleet had a supply. Later kings started a stupid brewing monopoly system in Copenhagen to ensure no breweries went bankrupt, again with the same aim. "Skibsøl" was a big thing in Norway and Sweden, too. The Royal Navy used to serve it, too, before switching to grog.
Yes, weak beer will turn sour, but it takes a lot to make it harmful.
> Yes, weak beer will turn sour, but it takes a lot to make it harmful.
While I agree in general with what you've said, this line is wrong. Strong beer will turn sour too. Acetobacter is good up to 10-15%, it's how we get malt vinegar and wine vinegar. All it needs is ethanol, oxygen, and time.
Ever gotten a bad case of gastroenteritis from a restaurant that made you swear never to go back and even turned you off an entire style of cuisine for, at least, a little while?
A few brushes with bad water might have given folk a strong preference for beer, just to be on the safe side, even if most water was safe.
Exactly. To my understanding any amount of alcohol is unhealthy, but societies have had festivals or other rituals since the beginning, and substances _like_ alcohol play an important role in those.
Water on ships wasn't that clean to begin with. And things were made worse by people maybe not observing good hygiene. Think sharing cups, dipping those in the water, not washing their hands, etc. Imagine that, stored in a poorly sealed barrel on a ship with rats and other pests. Water was pretty bad on ships. People would get sick and weak on longer journeys (malnutrition, contaminated water, rotting food, etc.). A lot of their diseases would spread via water.
Beer had a head start on water because part of the process of making it involves boiling the water and the alcohol slows the growth of most of the pathogens. And it has some nutritional value.
The alcohol wasnt what made beer safe. Beer was safer than water because to make bear one must use sterile water. So beer at least started out sterile/boiled before it went into the barrel.
This is complete and utter nonsense. The water used in beer often had bacteria (and other stuff) but to brew beer you must mash, at 65C for an hour or more, which pasteurizes the beer. Hops protect the beer against bacteria, and the yeast also makes it hard for other organisms to multiply in the fermented beer. Alcohol is one of those ways, but only one.
While yeast will consume most of the nutrients, there's still residual sugar in beer. Hops will inhibit microbial and bacterial growth, but they will not stop it completely.
A caveat being and mentioned in the article, that sailors didn't have access to the safe water of lakes and streams, thus beer. And as someone mentions below, it's safer to drink low alcohol beer than months old (untreated) water. I can see why people jump to the conclusion that beer was safer than water...and it makes for good cocktail hour small talk.
> sailors didn't have access to the safe water of lakes and streams
As if the water of lakes and streams was necessarily safe. Imagine drinking Thames water in the era before proper sewers. In 1858 (the Great Stink) the Thames stank so badly from feces that parts of Parliament became unusable.
Point of order, beer was stored in a higher alcohol percentage (which is where we get IPAs from) which does extend its shelf life significantly. The gallon was heavily watered down to serve.
Which is basically identical to lite beer we drink today. Hopefully with more flavor, but I don't actually know.
Beer staying fresh seems like a proxy for voyage duration. Longer trips means more likely to have run out of beer/vitamin C sources. No beer probably means no dock where sailors could have consumed anything other than highly preserved food.
Anyone downvoting this comment is not understanding how common this myth is, or not bothering to google to verify their own understanding. It's by far the most asked-about myth on /r/askhistorians. Someone asked this under 24 hours ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k5ji8i/how_...
But it comes up a good 2-5x a month. I really want to know where this understanding came from.
The thing is that water was not really safe to drink, no matter what these people may tell you. There's a reason there are huge aid campaigns all over the Third World to ensure people have access to safe water. Some water is relatively safe to drink, but even in the wild you can get giardasis and other problems from drinking it. The more human beings are nearby, the more of an issue it becomes.
In the time before cars transporting water was not easy, so people usually had to get water from the nearest source. Wells were not necessarily safe, especially because both humans and animals tended to shit pretty much everywhere. Even today well water is not necessarily safe.
But did people know that drinking water was unsafe? Evidence on that is contradictory. They were certainly aware that some kinds of water was safer than others.
And was this why people drank beer instead? Not clear at all. It's completely possible they did it simply because they wanted to, although it was seen as healthy. That was because of the calories, though.
In many places they did not drink beer, however. Scotland and Norway drank blaand (a whey drink), and Eastern Europe drank a lot of kvass. Fermented birch sap and a drink from juniper berries were common, too. Not to mention a weird drink known as rostdrikke/taar/etc depending on language (takes too long to explain).
What I find interesting about this is that nobody seems to care to really dive into the details and describe the situation as it actually was. I realize it's a lot of work, but still.
> "Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content. Just enough to keep it without bacteria.
You need closer to 40% alcohol.
> Nobody cared what they liked.
Not in the British Navy. Food was very important to morale and they got a lot of it with the best quality they could manage. Meat every day was luxury few people could afford.
Mutiny was a very real risk. That's why warships carried so many marines. Good food goes a long way to preventing this.
How is that enough? A highly nutritious liquid made from grain is a quite perfect environment for all kind of bacteria and other stuff to grow and spread. Relatively clean water? Not so much.
Some sailors were basically slaves, but like most slaves, they required a minimum to prevent revolt, especially at sea where they vastly outnumbered commanding officers and there was no reinforcement.
Beer has had a huge range of alcohol strengths, from Mesopotamia until today, so that statement is nonsensical.
> Just enough to keep it without bacteria.
1% is not enough to keep bacteria from growing in a beer. In general, more alcohol means it will keep longer, but to be truly safe you need to go quite high. This is a pretty complex issue, though.
As a general statement about Europe or the UK that's completely impossible. There wasn't enough cider for it to be more common than beer. We also know beer was the most common (then later grog, at least for the navy).
This might be true for some specific region or subset of ships, though.
I think it’s important to point out that almost everyone drank beer and it wasn’t because the water was bad. It was because they liked drinking beer.
Our modern culture doesn’t like the idea of people drinking beer all day so there has to be some scientific justification to make it acceptable to modern sensibilities.
The percentage of alcohol required to preserve beer for long periods is too high for sailors to be drinking a gallon of it per day.
> The percentage of alcohol required to preserve beer for long periods is too high for sailors to be drinking a gallon of it per day.
Reading this thread I think the best thing would be if people were forbidden from comment on the history of beer in online forums. Nobody knows anything, yet everyone is shouting their misunderstandings from the rooftops.
The Danish fleet, to take just one example, was completely dependent on a supply of "skibsøl", to the extent that the king started his own brewery to ensure his fleet had a supply. Later kings started a stupid brewing monopoly system in Copenhagen to ensure no breweries went bankrupt, again with the same aim. "Skibsøl" was a big thing in Norway and Sweden, too. The Royal Navy used to serve it, too, before switching to grog.
Yes, weak beer will turn sour, but it takes a lot to make it harmful.
> Yes, weak beer will turn sour, but it takes a lot to make it harmful.
While I agree in general with what you've said, this line is wrong. Strong beer will turn sour too. Acetobacter is good up to 10-15%, it's how we get malt vinegar and wine vinegar. All it needs is ethanol, oxygen, and time.
1 reply →
Ever gotten a bad case of gastroenteritis from a restaurant that made you swear never to go back and even turned you off an entire style of cuisine for, at least, a little while?
A few brushes with bad water might have given folk a strong preference for beer, just to be on the safe side, even if most water was safe.
Yet same wouldn’t apply to stale beer that went bad after a few days or weeks?
4 replies →
Often things that a lot of people do repeatedly for "pure enjoyment" actually has some hidden benefit.
Like for instance, drinking in general. People do it because it's fun, but it can play an important social bonding role.
Exactly. To my understanding any amount of alcohol is unhealthy, but societies have had festivals or other rituals since the beginning, and substances _like_ alcohol play an important role in those.
Water on ships wasn't that clean to begin with. And things were made worse by people maybe not observing good hygiene. Think sharing cups, dipping those in the water, not washing their hands, etc. Imagine that, stored in a poorly sealed barrel on a ship with rats and other pests. Water was pretty bad on ships. People would get sick and weak on longer journeys (malnutrition, contaminated water, rotting food, etc.). A lot of their diseases would spread via water.
Beer had a head start on water because part of the process of making it involves boiling the water and the alcohol slows the growth of most of the pathogens. And it has some nutritional value.
The alcohol wasnt what made beer safe. Beer was safer than water because to make bear one must use sterile water. So beer at least started out sterile/boiled before it went into the barrel.
This is complete and utter nonsense. The water used in beer often had bacteria (and other stuff) but to brew beer you must mash, at 65C for an hour or more, which pasteurizes the beer. Hops protect the beer against bacteria, and the yeast also makes it hard for other organisms to multiply in the fermented beer. Alcohol is one of those ways, but only one.
4 replies →
It is my understanding that the yeast in the beer will consume everything it can and that is what keeps the beer preserved, or safe to drink.
While yeast will consume most of the nutrients, there's still residual sugar in beer. Hops will inhibit microbial and bacterial growth, but they will not stop it completely.
1 reply →
A caveat being and mentioned in the article, that sailors didn't have access to the safe water of lakes and streams, thus beer. And as someone mentions below, it's safer to drink low alcohol beer than months old (untreated) water. I can see why people jump to the conclusion that beer was safer than water...and it makes for good cocktail hour small talk.
> sailors didn't have access to the safe water of lakes and streams
As if the water of lakes and streams was necessarily safe. Imagine drinking Thames water in the era before proper sewers. In 1858 (the Great Stink) the Thames stank so badly from feces that parts of Parliament became unusable.
1 reply →
Point of order, beer was stored in a higher alcohol percentage (which is where we get IPAs from) which does extend its shelf life significantly. The gallon was heavily watered down to serve.
Which is basically identical to lite beer we drink today. Hopefully with more flavor, but I don't actually know.
Beer was known to go bad on long voyages. So long as the beer held out though there was no scurvy.
Beer does not cure scurvy. Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C, which is not in beer.
3 replies →
Beer staying fresh seems like a proxy for voyage duration. Longer trips means more likely to have run out of beer/vitamin C sources. No beer probably means no dock where sailors could have consumed anything other than highly preserved food.
Anyone downvoting this comment is not understanding how common this myth is, or not bothering to google to verify their own understanding. It's by far the most asked-about myth on /r/askhistorians. Someone asked this under 24 hours ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k5ji8i/how_...
But it comes up a good 2-5x a month. I really want to know where this understanding came from.
The thing is that water was not really safe to drink, no matter what these people may tell you. There's a reason there are huge aid campaigns all over the Third World to ensure people have access to safe water. Some water is relatively safe to drink, but even in the wild you can get giardasis and other problems from drinking it. The more human beings are nearby, the more of an issue it becomes.
In the time before cars transporting water was not easy, so people usually had to get water from the nearest source. Wells were not necessarily safe, especially because both humans and animals tended to shit pretty much everywhere. Even today well water is not necessarily safe.
But did people know that drinking water was unsafe? Evidence on that is contradictory. They were certainly aware that some kinds of water was safer than others.
And was this why people drank beer instead? Not clear at all. It's completely possible they did it simply because they wanted to, although it was seen as healthy. That was because of the calories, though.
In many places they did not drink beer, however. Scotland and Norway drank blaand (a whey drink), and Eastern Europe drank a lot of kvass. Fermented birch sap and a drink from juniper berries were common, too. Not to mention a weird drink known as rostdrikke/taar/etc depending on language (takes too long to explain).
What I find interesting about this is that nobody seems to care to really dive into the details and describe the situation as it actually was. I realize it's a lot of work, but still.
9 replies →
Bit of both, but good grog keeps people happy.
"Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content. Just enough to keep it without bacteria.
Drinking 2 month old stale untreated water... good luck with that.
> they liked drinking beer
Sailors were basically slaves. Nobody cared what they liked. But if crew dies from diarrhia, that is a big problem!
> "Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content. Just enough to keep it without bacteria.
You need closer to 40% alcohol.
> Nobody cared what they liked.
Not in the British Navy. Food was very important to morale and they got a lot of it with the best quality they could manage. Meat every day was luxury few people could afford.
Mutiny was a very real risk. That's why warships carried so many marines. Good food goes a long way to preventing this.
> Just enough to keep it without bacteria.
Bacteria (and certainly viruses) can survive 80 proof liquor. 1% alcohol is going to have very little sterilization effect.
15 replies →
> Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content.
How is that enough? A highly nutritious liquid made from grain is a quite perfect environment for all kind of bacteria and other stuff to grow and spread. Relatively clean water? Not so much.
3 replies →
Some sailors were basically slaves, but like most slaves, they required a minimum to prevent revolt, especially at sea where they vastly outnumbered commanding officers and there was no reinforcement.
> "Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content.
Beer has had a huge range of alcohol strengths, from Mesopotamia until today, so that statement is nonsensical.
> Just enough to keep it without bacteria.
1% is not enough to keep bacteria from growing in a beer. In general, more alcohol means it will keep longer, but to be truly safe you need to go quite high. This is a pretty complex issue, though.
In the 17th and 18th centuries cider was far more prevalent on board - and massive amounts of it to boot.
Source: Cider Country (James Crowden)
As a general statement about Europe or the UK that's completely impossible. There wasn't enough cider for it to be more common than beer. We also know beer was the most common (then later grog, at least for the navy).
This might be true for some specific region or subset of ships, though.
No mention of sauerkraut ?