Medieval Beer

People must have such a low opinion of the Middle Ages. You can't open an internet community encyclopedia these days without coming across the most popular fact in the world. They all want you to believe that beer was the medieval drink of choice, because European water tended to be contaminated. Beer was usually safe.

This is pretty dumb on somebody's part, either the medieval brewers or the present day cranks. The idea is that the beer is safer than the ambient water, because the water to make beer is either pure to begin with, or has been boiled. If the water wasn't pure, the beer would have gone bad, or died or something. So of course beer is less bacterial than water, but only because most people don't boil their drinking water beforehand (or have it imported from artesian springs). It is no easier to get drinkable beer than it is to get drinkable water.

You hear this about tea sometimes, too. Honestly? I think people drank those things because they liked them. Next, we are going to hear that people made mustard seeds into sauce because it was too dangerous to leave them like they were.