<story><title>Prices and wages in Medieval England (2014)</title><url>https://medium.com/@zavidovych/what-we-can-learn-by-looking-at-prices-and-wages-in-medieval-england-8dc207cfd20a</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>etothepii</author><text>As I understand it the the strength of medieval beer was quite weak (barely intoxicating) and was trusted to be from clean water while regular water from the well might not be.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is a little like the way that many people who have ancestry &amp;#x2F; family that come from places without clean water will routinely order a &amp;quot;coke with no ice&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ch4s3</author><text>This sin&amp;#x27;t really true. First, there was decent drinking water in most towns and villages in medieval Europe. Most towns had &amp;quot;masters of conduit&amp;quot; and water carriers dedicated to the task. Second, we have brewers journals dating back some 500 years in England and further back in Germany. Beer is made by mashing or steeping grain in hot water and rinsing it out to produce wort, fermentable sugary&amp;#x2F;protein rich water. Historically this rinsing (sparging) would be done in 2 - 3 runnings with successively less sugar content in each. The 3rd running might produce small beer 1-3% ABV, but the first runnings could produce beer as strong as 10%, or more. sometimes the first and second runnings were combined and diluted. Much like today, beers of various strengths were available. Small beers were popular as a calorie rich energy drink for laborers, but they also had access to stronger drinks. One reason for making beer is the stable  storage of surplus grain, and small beer has a very short shelf life.&lt;p&gt;Before mechanization farm work was in many ways less dangerous, with a few notable exceptions. To list only one example, you can easily drive a horse cart with a fairly strong buzz as it&amp;#x27;s slow moving and the horse is largely self guided.</text></comment>
<story><title>Prices and wages in Medieval England (2014)</title><url>https://medium.com/@zavidovych/what-we-can-learn-by-looking-at-prices-and-wages-in-medieval-england-8dc207cfd20a</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>etothepii</author><text>As I understand it the the strength of medieval beer was quite weak (barely intoxicating) and was trusted to be from clean water while regular water from the well might not be.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is a little like the way that many people who have ancestry &amp;#x2F; family that come from places without clean water will routinely order a &amp;quot;coke with no ice&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>neaden</author><text>This is one of those things that has been really exaggerated. Medieval people were concerned with water quality and protecting wells, rivers, and other water sources from pollution&amp;#x2F;poisoning. Beer isn&amp;#x27;t really an efficient way to purify water either, the alcohol isn&amp;#x27;t strong enough to ensure it won&amp;#x27;t make you sick. Much like us though, medieval people didn&amp;#x27;t really like drinking plain water much, as well as beer barley water and various herbal teas were very popular.</text></comment>