[Sca-cooks] Beer from unsafe water?

[Stefan li Rous]

Irmele asked:
> Question: I've heard many times that people in Europe drank small
> beer because the water was unfit to drink. But beer is made from
> water. Were they boiling the water as part of the brewing
> process? Surely there wasn't enough alcohol in small beer to kill
> the pathogens!

As was posted, even small beer is boiled for awhile.

Perhaps another reason that small beer might have been preferred over
straight water is that the beer was not the clear, filtered beer that
we are often used to seeing. It would have been difficult to see
through and may have had quite a taste to it. I would think that this
would do a lot of cover up the smell or taste of not-so-pure water.
Not water that was contaminated, but water that simply wasn't as
clear as the "Rocky Mountain Spring Water" or the "Spring water from
the land of a eleven hundred springs" that the beer commercials used to
talk about.

Also, beer was often a liquid bread and was drunk for its nourishment
as well as its refreshment factor. None of which plain water would
have had.

The water in medieval Europe was not always bad. Like many other
things it varied from place to place. However, even when there was
safe drinking water available, it looks like beer or other beverages
were still preferred to plain water.

--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****