[Sca-cooks] Binge drinking

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Nov 24, 2005, at 10:00 AM, Terry Decker wrote:

> No, in the Middle Ages beer (or small beer) constituted about one  
> third of the caloric intake in the beer drinking regions of Europe  
> according to some of the economic studies.  From a little more  
> modern study, in terms of vitamins and calories, a glass of beer is  
> roughly equivalent to a glass of milk except for the calcium.
>
> Bear

I can pretty much second the above. There's been some math done by  
people like Baron Tofi (I forget the rest of his name, but he is or  
was Baron of the Debatable Lands in the East, and a laurel for  
brewing), and Master Ateno of Annun Ridge, working with the numbers  
quoted from the various Assizes pertaining to ale. These show prices  
and profit margins, and by some extrapolation they were able to  
figure out how much malt goes into X amount of beer, and therefore  
either how alcoholic it was, or at least its starting specific  
gravity, even if the end result of the mash was dextrins rather than  
fermentable sugars. We can get to a reasonably close approximation of  
the caloric values of ordinary, strong, and small ales. Things might  
differ somewhat for German beers (they tended to be mashed a little  
differently, I believe), but then the quotes about "liquid bread" are  
German...

Adamantius

>
>> A program I saw while in England recently mentioned that the  
>> working poor
>> began to suffer vitamin deficiencies when the tee-totalers and tea  
>> drinkers
>> discouraged them drinking their normal ration of beer.  I've  
>> certainly seen
>> beer referred to as "liquid bread".
>>
>> Am I out in the fantasy dark ages?
>>
>> Regina
>
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"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04