What did medieval people drink? - Sarah Woodbury

What did medieval people drink?



All over the internet, sources say that water was not drunk in the Middle Ages due to impurities. Certain sources question that, in large part because people didn’t know where disease came from, so how would they have pinpointed water as the source of the problem?  Maybe because it didn’t taste good? Other sources indicate that water might not have been drunk often, but that it may have been more of a class thing, rather than a health issue. Poor people drank water, since they couldn’t afford wine or beer. Medieval people did have access to well water, which was a relatively clean source of water.

Regardless, while water was readily available, even if a person might choose wine, beer, or mead over water if he could. This is a list of possible water-based and non-alcoholic drinks that medieval people might have drunk:  http://mbhp.forgottensea.org/noalcohol.html

Milk–among the Celts and later the Welsh and English, milk was drunk as well as eaten in great quantity as cheese, butter, cream, etc. The Welsh in particular were herders of sheep, goats, and cattle, so milk was a widely available cheap (if not free) food for all classes of people, and an important source of protein. http://www.medieval-recipes.com/medieval-food/milk/

Wine–Wine was drunk all over France and the Mediterranean  where grapes were grown. It was less common in Britain where it would have had to have been imported. The wealthy did import it, however, and particularly as the centuries progressed, lords and kings would have drunk wine as a matter of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wine

Mead–a common beverage in Wales made from fermented honey. Essentially, it is honey wine. The Welsh were herders, not farmers, so they didn’t grow grains in the same quantity as the English. I talk about what mead is here:  http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/what-is-mead/

Cider–a less common beverage, but derived from the fermentation of fruits, usually apples.  http://www.archiveofciderpomology.co.uk/origins_of_cider.htm

Beer— an alcoholic drink made from grain, water, and fermented with yeast. It is a generic term that includes other fermented beverages such as ale. Nowadays, beer includes hops, which weren’t added to beer until the 16th century. “Beer was the first alcoholic beverage known to civilization, however, who drank the first beer is unknown. Historians theorize that humankind’s fondness for beer and other alcoholic beverages was a factor in our evolution away from a society of nomadic hunters and gathers into an agrarian society that would settle down to grow crops (and apparently drink). The first product humans made from grain & water before learning to make bread was beer.” http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventions/a/beer.htm

“As the cultivation of barley spread north and west, brewing went with it. As time passed, the production of beer came under the watchful eye of the Roman Church. Christian abbeys, as centers of agriculture, knowledge and science, refined the methods of brewing. Initially in the making of beer for the brothers and for visiting pilgrims, later as a means of financing their communities. However, there was still very little known about the role of yeast in completing fermentationBeer brewing played an important role in daily lives. Beer was clearly so desired that it led nomadic groups into village life. Beer was considered a valuable (potable) foodstuff  and workers were often paid with jugs of beer.

By the fifteenth century, there was a record of hops used in Flemish beer imported into England, and by the sixteenth century hops had gained widespread use as a preservative in beer, replacing the previously used bark or leaves. Perhaps the most widely known event in brewing history was the establishment of German standards for brewers. The first of these regulations was the inspiration for the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 – the most famous beer purity law. This pledge of purity states that only four ingredients can be used in the production of beer: water, malted barley, malted wheat and hops. Yeast, though not included in this list, was acceptable, as it was taken for granted to be a key ingredient in the brewing process. The “Reinheitsgebot” was the assurance to the consumer that German beers would be of the highest quality in the world and acknowledges the European disdain for adding adjuncts such as corn, rice, other grains and sugars.”  http://www.alabev.com/history.htm

Ale–an alcoholic drink made from grain, water, and fermented with yeast. Certain web pages claim that what English people really drank in the Middle Ages wasn’t beer, but Ale, which is a drink without hops.

“Historically the terms beer and ale respectively referred to drinks brewed with and without hops. It has often now come to mean a bitter-tasting barley beverage fermented at room temperature. In some British usage, however, in homage to the original distinction, it is not now used except in compounds (such as “pale ale” (see below)) or as “real ale“, a term adopted in opposition to the pressurised beers developed by industrial brewers in the 1960s, and used of a warm-fermented unpasteurised beer served from the cask (though not stout or porter).

Ale typically has bittering agent(s) to balance the sweetness of the malt and to act as a preservative. Ale was originally bittered with gruit, a mixture of herbs (sometimes spices) which was boiled in the wort prior to fermentation. Later, hops replaced the gruit blend in common usage as the sole bittering agent.

Ale, along with bread, was an important source of nutrition in the medieval world, particularly small beer, also known as table beer or mild beer, which was highly nutritious, contained just enough alcohol to act as a preservative, and provided hydration without intoxicating effects. Small beer would have been consumed daily by almost everyone in the medieval world, with higher-alcohol ales served for recreational purposes. The lower cost for proprietors combined with the lower taxes levied on small beer led to the selling of beer labeled “strong beer” that had actually been diluted with small beer. For many medieval people, ale was healthier than the local drinking water, which was often contaminated by bacteria, whereas the ethanol in ale kills bacteria. In some places even children drank it.

Brewing ale in the Middle Ages was a local industry primarily pursued by women. “Brewsters,” as they were called, would brew in the homestead for both domestic consumption and small scale commercial sale. Brewsters provided a substantial supplemental income for families; however, only in select few cases, as was the case for widows, was brewing considered the primary income of the household. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ale




3 Replies to “What did medieval people drink?”

  1. Hi there! We love this era. Love your posts and all the information you give. We have added your After Cilmeri series to our ever growing lists and will be ‘spotlighting’ Daughter of Time’ in our Time Travel Thursday feature on our site this Thursday February 28th!

    We wish you much success!

    Paranormal Romance Reads

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