A lot of the beer they drank throughout the day was ’small beer”—made from a second run of water through the mash… it was about as alcoholic as modern-day ginger beer. So—yeah, they did spend a lot of their time more intoxicated than us… but not totally smashed all the time.
Small beer goes down quite nicely (even for somebody that doesn’t like beer like me). It’s kind of like cordial—but without being sickly sweet.
I also made “small currant wine”once- which was also nice, but not as good as straight currant wine… but does let you drink a whole lot more of it during a hot day.
This leads to one inescapable conclusion: for the vast proportion of human history, everyone in the world was completely hammered pretty much all the time. When you think about it in that light, most of history suddenly makes a great deal more sense.
A lot of the beer they drank throughout the day was ’small beer”—made from a second run of water through the mash… it was about as alcoholic as modern-day ginger beer. So—yeah, they did spend a lot of their time more intoxicated than us… but not totally smashed all the time.
I’ve taken lately to the sort of pub that has 2% mild, so I can sop up extravagant quantities of it without getting plastered.
Small beer goes down quite nicely (even for somebody that doesn’t like beer like me). It’s kind of like cordial—but without being sickly sweet.
I also made “small currant wine”once- which was also nice, but not as good as straight currant wine… but does let you drink a whole lot more of it during a hot day.
Relevant.