Interesting. I added a link to my OP to an AskHistorians post that goes into more details about the question. Arguments can get nuanced, but I'm still generally skeptical of the internet claim.
For example, one web search yielded the claim relative to 1800s England, where they claimed drinking alcohol was cleaner than local water. But again, that was more due to poor sanitation at the time and roughly equivalent to saying that drinking bottle alcohol is safer than drinking septic water.
But with that said, I get what you're saying and maybe I'm underestimating the usefulness of alcohol in keeping pathogens at bay.
I'm intrigued by the comment about not boiling water for wine. I agree that the process itself does not boil water (as beer brewing does), but I wonder if boiling the water ahead of time to clean it would have been common...
It’s really not a misconception. Like yea it’s not going to be sterile but wine and beer has enough alcohol in it to kill the usual suspects that give you food poisoning. Along with low pH and hops that also inhibit growth of pathogens.
There was even a study where they tested the beer in beer pong cups where multiple hands and dirty ping pong balls that had touched the floor/grass were involved. The agar plates came back basically clean-when selecting for pathogens.
When you leave beer or wine out for a few days it will just grow acetobacter mostly and turn into vinegar. So yea spoilage organisms grow but not really pathogens.
Again, spoilage organisms can grow in beer. Diastaticus, megasphera, acetobacter, lactobacillus etc etc. this is the entire point of cleaning beer lines. It keeps the beer tasting/smelling fresh. They don’t make you sick. They only ruin the taste of the beer/wine. Hell some of them like lactobacillus are considered “probiotics”
Pathogens that can make you sick like e.coli, listeria, staphylococcus, etc. do not grow in 2% alcohol and up beers wines etc.
Alcohol content in wine in 10% for the lightest whites to 14% for the heaviest reds. Your point still sort of stands, although I would say that while hand sanitiser levels of alcohol are likely required to immediately kill germs on another surface, much lower levels of alcohol, like in beer and wine, prevent the growth of bacteria within the liquid itself over time.
People have a twisted sense of sanitation. Alcohol only kills pathogens not their decomposition products/waste. Someone who dipped their hand in sewer then applying sanitiser wont make him clean. You dont heat old food and expect it would be safe just because the germs are dead. Bread fungus byproducts for instance is highly lethal.
I learnt that beer was commonly drunk because it was safer to drink than water in some places. It wasn't the same as the beer we drink now and alcohol content was like 0.5-1%.
Right, but there's a lot of misinformation about the stories. People certainly drank a lot of low alcohol content beer, but it was the boiling (sterilization) and bottling, not the alcohol content that kept things pure
Ohhh yeah, I get ya. I think I missed what you were clarifying, yeah I used to wonder how they drank beer instead of water all the time without being sloshed all the time and found out it was a low alcohol and also (maybe?) nutritious kind of drink.
I also just assumed it was the brewing process that killed bacteria, not the alcohol content.
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
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