It was 4.5L per day though. Enough to stupefy any man or keep them drunk all day.
"For sailors the beer supplied was of the strong kind (10%-15% alcohol) since this was the only kind that preserved itself well in the sea, hence drunk as a sailor."
4.5L of 0.5% ABV beer would not make you drunk. For comparison, this is equivalent to less than a pint of a typical mainstream beer. Indeed a 0.5% ABV drink can be branded alcohol free (at least in the UK).
Would 4.5L of 2% ABV make you drunk? Depends how quickly you can drink it. It's 9 units of alcohol. We commonly assume the body can process 1 unit/hour so if this quantity was consumed over an entire day, I don't think you'd get merry.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to drink like this, just highlighting the impact of ABV on the outcome.
> Indeed a 0.5% ABV drink can be branded alcohol free (at least in the UK).
Er, no! Perhaps in Ireland? In the UK the term "alcohol-free" can only be used if the drink has no more than 0.05% alcohol. However apparently it's allowed to use the term "alkoholfrei": take a look at the bottles of "Erdinger alkoholfrei" in UK supermarkets with tiny smallprint explaining that it's not alcohol-free (it's 0.5% and tastes quite good).
The rules may have changed fairly recently. They always used to sell "shandy" with 0.5% alcohol as a soft drink to children but I'm not sure if they still do that.
There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.
(I think I read somewhere that they had to create a special exception for soy sauce in Australia because soy sauce can have up to 2% alcohol but obviously nobody's going to quaff it and if they did the 2% alcohol would probably not be their biggest problem.)
> The alcohol section of the Codes applies to ‘alcoholic drinks’, which are those above 0.5% ABV. Drinks at or below 0.5% are, for the purposes of the Codes, considered to be non-alcoholic.
> There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.
and it's 'worse' - you can't buy 'no-secco' or 'apple fizz' or whatever they're marketed as, even though they're absolutely nil alcohol, not removed, it was never there. But obviously other cordials and carbonated soft drinks like San Pelligrino, Shloer etc. are fine, just because they're not made to look like a sparkling wine bottle.
"Alcohol free – this should only be applied to a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% abv"
But: "the decision was made to replace the legislation with guidance setting out the four existing descriptors that industry will be expected to follow"
So (1) it's not clear that Brewdog and Lucky Saint (mentioned by SCdF elsewhere in this thread) are breaking an actual law by failing to follow the guidance which Erdinger apparently does claim to follow, and (2) perhaps that rule really does apply only to "a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted", so perhaps it wouldn't apply to a shandy made by diluting alcoholic beer?
which is basically just rules about how you can market (it's fun and cool to drink alcohol kids!) 'alcoholic drinks', i.e. anything under 0.5% can be marketed in ways that says you can't for alcoholic drinks.
But a slightly different page than the one I quoted above goes on to say the same as yours:
> In terms of the official guidance, the descriptor ‘alcohol free’ should only be used on drinks from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% ABV. Where a product has had the alcohol extracted but it remains above 0.05% ABV but at or below 0.5% ABV, the descriptor would be ‘de-alcoholised’.
So yes, either it tells you something about how they're making it, or they're wrong to be using that 'descriptor'. (Surely the former? Brewdog make 'Punk AF', they'd have to rebrand it completely if they're not allowed to call it 'AF', surely they'd have been on top of that?)
Oh wait though - the page I originally quoted goes on:
> CAP is aware that official government guidance exists on how alcohol content at or below 0.5% should be described, but understands that this guidance is not legally binding. Therefore, the Codes do not require compliance with this guidance.
which explains why I couldn't find anything enacted on legislation.gov.uk. So it is just a matter for them as the regulator, but these two pages on their own site seem to be in contradiction about whether they care about use of the 'descriptor' or not?
I have recently been trying alcohol free / low alcohol beers as the market is picking up for them, and people definitely advertise 0.5% as alcohol free.
There are also a bunch of 0.0% beers, and their fine print is how you say, no more than 0.05%, but at least Brewdog and Lucky Saint are getting away with using the term for 0.5%, and I am sure I've seen more of that kind of thing.
You will find this level of alcohol (0.1% - 0.5%) in all kinds of foods and beverages. A study found orange juice that was 0.73% alcohol and hamburger buns that were 1.28%. [1]
The sources and numbers are getting mixed up here but on the topic of the Founders, the small beer George Washington was brewing was probably in the vicinity of 1%. I think it's pretty safe to say that a guy sipping 1% all day might get a bit of a buzz and not much more, especially considering the tolerance he'd build up.
As with anything the dose makes the poison. I've consumed a lot of alcohol over my life, but as I get older my friends and I have mostly lost our interest in experiencing anything beyond a mild buzz. At a bar we frequently order a lemonade/Sprite along with our beers and make DIY shandies [2] which brings the alcohol content down to like 2.5%. It's pretty hard to get drunk at that level even if you go at it for hours. Throw in a water here and there and it's even lower. I only wish society and the industry was more supportive of this manner of drinking, but the bars undoubtedly make less money off of us than the guy who goes full bore and ends up behind the wheel plastered...
What’s Ireland got to do with the UK’s alcohol laws? If it’s a racist trope you’re trying to make, you might be happy to know that Ireland consumes virtually the same quantity of alcohol per capita as the UK.
I mentioned Ireland because Ireland is in the EU and uses English officially so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the use of "alcohol-free" in Ireland corresponds to the use of "alkoholfrei" in Germany rather than to the use of "alcohol-free" in the UK, those two apparently being different. It honestly hadn't occurred to me that someone might suspect a racist trope!
It’s an EU wide definition that exists in 27 countries not specific to Ireland. Your comment was unfortunately worded if thats the case as at least two other people picked up on the same remark. Apologies if so.
Only because it's a different country using English!
Before Austria joined the EU (in 1995) there used to be significant differences in the rules on food labelling between Austria and Germany, to the extent that sometimes a product would have two separate lists of ingredients, one for Austria and one for Germany. The same may now happen with Ireland and the UK, and perhaps the term "alcohol-free" is already being used differently. See https://www.ibec.ie/drinksireland/-/media/documents/drinks-i...
There is no way 2% makes you drunk in practice. When I was 14 drinking 3.5% worked like one or two times before I got used to it. And I drank it really fast.
Really? Have you tried it? I don't think it is possible for an adult. When I was in China vising a friend we tried to get abit drunk on local beer that was like 3.6% at most and it was like drinking soda. The locals seemed to drink spirits together with low alcoholic beer for some reason so there was no strong beer in stores, except some place that had Heiniken.
I have this pet theory that alcohol is not linear. Like, 5% beer get you way more drunk than the same amount of alcohol in 4.4% beer.
It's the percentage of alcohol in your system (Blood Alcohol Content) that makes you drunk, not the raw amount.
If you're drinking 30-50 units of water for every unit of alcohol, all that alcohol is going to be very diluted and have little effect on your BAC. There's probably a threshold beyond which you'll just piss it all out before the your BAC ever reaches a meaningful number.
You are limited by how much liquid your digestive system can absorb in any given hour. I've heard that it's somewhere around 1 liter per hour. Any excess liquid is going to slosh around in your intestines instead of entering your bloodstream.
Meanwhile, your liver can remove about 10g/12ml of alcohol per hour. In order for you to reach a meaningful BAC, you will need to absorb significantly more than that.
For example, drinking 1 liter of 1% alcohol solution per hour will not result in any significant BAC, because you can remove alcohol from your bloodstream faster than alcohol enters your bloodstream. You've got a well-optimized queue there.
5 liters of 1% alcohol is the same as above, just repeated 5 times. Your queue is still working fine.
1 liter of 5% alcohol, on the other hand, will dump 50ml of alcohol into your bloodstream within an hour. Now you have a backlog, and this backlog is what increases your BAC.
So dilution does matter, even if the absolute amount of alcohol is the same. You're basically diluting alcohol consumption over time.
I regularly drink 4% beer, and it's not difficult to get quite a bit tipsy on it, you just need to drink more. I regularly see men in pubs who drink 5 liters of such beer in an evening and that does get them drunk.
For sailors, in one estimate, and sailors are a special case as the article mentions, because strong beer is the only thing that doesn't go off at sea.
Everyone else is the much lower estimate discussed up thread.
> Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking.
Maybe I'm a lightweight, I would be absolutely trollied if I had to drink eight 13% pints over the course of a day. I have never been anywhere where they'd even sell you an entire pint of 13%, you are in 2/3rd or maybe even 1/3rd territory.
I have a favorite speciality beer that comes in around 13%. They used to sell it only in 22oz bottles and that was it for the night. If I decided to open one, I knew that was my one drink for the evening.
They recently started selling it in 12oz bottles, so it’s no longer a commitment but rather a choice.
Its basically a bottle of wine (lighter one but still). Careful there, the road to alcoholism is smooth and often you realize you're there only way after actually reaching the point.
Which table? The referenced table (9) only says "strong" (relative to what?) and gives a calorie count, which for beer is not very useful as an ABV estimate.
The article also mentioned the beer ration could be passed to families.
Which had me thinking of various pecuniary benefits armies pass and why. Salt -> salary is well documented, on the opposite side slightly less so but still somewhat known was for conquering armies to compensate farmers for essentially pillage as the monetary compensation can't buy much grain nor meat when the army's eaten the village's as well as that of surrounding villages. It also wasn't unusual for state coffers to run dry also, delaying soldiers' salaries, plus graft - several banks still around were founded on the basis of lending to a liquidity starved crown, a modern placation and guarantee of support in the classical baronesque sense perhaps.
And I became curious about all the other money-like tokens, like these beer rations, backed by the promise of a commodity, that floated around in those time, and in ours today. Meandering thoughts, the best kind.
Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
It is somewhat documented, well documented perhaps.
Correctly documented?
I never finished the recent popular book 'Salt'. After a few chapters it became tedious, repetitive, plus the book consistently omitted tying text to sources. A frustrating read.
As I didn't in fact tie Salt to Roman soldiers' salaries, that was your reading, simply salt -> salary, I'm curious what references you could provide for different etymology? I'm genuinely interested, I rarely reply to replies.
tl;dr: There is a genuine linguistic connection between "salt" and "salary", but there is no evidence soldiers were ever paid in salt, or given an allowance specifically for buying salt. Possibly "salary" meant "money for salt" with "salt" used metonymically to mean any trade goods, similar to how "fish" was used in Ancient Greek, but even this is pure speculation.
Salt, and salt-derived commodities (salt-cured fish, vegetables, meat) were major sources of income for societies and governments for quite a long time, so the etymology correlation probably has some legs.
Like a lot of historical things, there's a certain amount of guesswork involved, but it hangs together pretty well. It's unlikely that we'll find the Noah Webster of 100 BC who puts it down on a clay tablet.
Doesn't make sense either, as you can't do much with salt except use it on food as seasoning or as a preservative, which are both useless as salary since you still need to pay for your actual food and other expenses.
It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
> It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
The Roman Empire towards its end in the west had suffered from a lot of inflation, so coinage was either too expensive for everyday use (i.e. gold-coins, each of which would be a year's salary for a soldier), or worthless (basically just lumps of base-metal).
I think at a certain point taxes were required to be paid in goods rather than coin which really does show that your currency is worthless (when even the state refuses to accept it!)
> It's well documented that the word salarius is derived from salt, it's just very unclear why.
It’s not unlikely that the connection between these were was already merely etymological by that time and made barely any more sense to the Romans as it does to us.
Though historical sailors in various navies were punished if they were visibly intoxicated while on duty (off-shift was fine, of course), so either they were incredibly functional alcoholics, they were great at pacing themselves, or that booze was heavily watered down.
I don't think the yeasts they had at the time could get anywhere near 10%, so is he saying the beer was fortified with spirits? I know that Churchill said "The traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash" so perhaps it was.
One time I bicycled something over 40 miles in the hills outside Las Vegas on a 105-degree day. I:
1. Drank a gallon of liquid (could have been water or sports drink, I don't remember) on that ~3 hour ride.
2. Didn't pee until I got home -- and not much then.
3. Came home with dry clothes, despite (obviously) sweating something like a gallon of liquid. There was no evidence of sweat, ever -- it all evaporated.
Reminds me of days of cycling across North Vietnam during the summer : 40c, tropical levels of humidity, very steep hills. I was young, stupid and stubborn.
One stop every 2 hours to chuck 500ml of beer (Bia Hanoi, pretty nice light blond), so about 4 stops a day. It worked fine ! Pee was ok color, enough tipsy to keep my sense but numb the pain of cycling. My clothes had aureola of salt and urea.
One time I was helping build a house in summer. I drank 5L of watery low-sugar tea apart from about 1,5L other liquids and peed maybe three times that day. I had dry clothes but very visible traces of salt on them. Other time I drank 7L of beer in a night, but peed like every 20min.
When I was a kid my mom stocked Minute Maid frozen orange juice and powdered vitamin c. When I was sick I would stay home (maybe 11 or 12, different times) and watch TV and drink orange juice. I would fall into a pattern of drinking a 10-12 oz glass of juice during a show segment (maybe 7 minutes) and during the commercial break I’d go pee and refill my juice. On the half hour break i’d make another pitcher. So that works out to something like 3 quarts of heavily-vitamin-c-dosed orange juice per hour for at least several hours out of the day. I have no idea how my kidneys kept up with that.
Ok, but that’s an extreme example and you only consumed 3.8L. 4.5L is a LOT. Even the 8 glasses a day of water suggestion is considered on the high side and that’s only 1.9L.
"Adequate Intakes (AI) have been defined derived from a combination of observed intakes in population groups with desirable osmolarity values of urine and desirable water volumes per energy unit consumed. The reference values for total water intake include water from drinking water, beverages of all kind, and from food moisture and only apply to conditions of moderate environmental temperature and moderate physical activity levels (PAL 1.6). [...] Available data for adults permit the definition of AIs as 2.0 L/day (P 95 3.1 L) for females and 2.5 L/day (P95 4.0 L) for males."
"The minimum water requirement for fluid replacement for a 70kg human in a temperate zone equates to 3L per day, or 42.9mL/kg [according to the Tropical Agriculture Association]. Minimum requirements for an individual the same size but in a tropical zone equates to 4.1 to 6L/day"
"Age and gender specific Adequate Intakes (AI) for water were established in 2004 by the [United States] Food and Nutrition Board (5). The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) for water are [for ages 19 and older] Men 3.7 L/day Women 2.7 L/day"
Obviously they need something to wash down their 40 potatoes a day.
I also find the amount questionable, as I suspect that our modern expectations of what that means and the details of what they meant when they recorded personal consumption means there's something lost in translation here.
Even when I was outside scouting crops 10-12 hours a day on foot in southwest kansas with peak 110F temps, I'd still not need to drink more than 4 liters of water a day. I could push it up another liter, but it wasn't needed and could actually be harmful if one overhydrates. And that's the extreme of the year, way more what I'd reach for most of the year.
Whereas the daily motto of the fuckers was apparently "I am a machine that turns beer into piss"
I usually do. I have a 2 liter water bottle that I fill up at least twice a day. Though ironically with the heat this summer, I've been exercising and drinking less.
"For sailors the beer supplied was of the strong kind (10%-15% alcohol) since this was the only kind that preserved itself well in the sea, hence drunk as a sailor."