Wooden barrels were sealed and could handle high pressure. The trouble is that (long story) it was very difficult to get a precise amount of pressure, so people generally didn't even try. There are videos online of cases where people have failed and end up battling a beer barrel spraying beer like a firehose.
Yes, there is residual sugar, but it's complex sugars that not even yeast that specializes in fermenting sugar can consume. Plus there is alpha acids from hops, as you point out, there is alcohol, pH is low, oxygen is gone, there's a CO2 blanket, etc. So it's a very, very difficult environment for microorganisms. Pretty close to none that cause disease can grow in this environment.
Is it more than 99.99999999999999% safe? No. Is it vastly safer that water? Yes.
No, it wouldn't. It's very difficult to produce beer where harmful organisms can multiply. Post-fermentation it's an extremely difficult environment for most organisms.
Yes, it can. But infections by harmful organisms is very difficult to achieve. The common spoilage organisms in beer are all harmless to humans. Here's a good overview http://mmbr.asm.org/content/77/2/157.long
Just the hops alone stop pretty much all gram-positive bacteria except Lactobacillus and a few other harmless ones.
> sailors didn't have access to the safe water of lakes and streams
As if the water of lakes and streams was necessarily safe. Imagine drinking Thames water in the era before proper sewers. In 1858 (the Great Stink) the Thames stank so badly from feces that parts of Parliament became unusable.
Beer has had a huge range of alcohol strengths, from Mesopotamia until today, so that statement is nonsensical.
> Just enough to keep it without bacteria.
1% is not enough to keep bacteria from growing in a beer. In general, more alcohol means it will keep longer, but to be truly safe you need to go quite high. This is a pretty complex issue, though.
As a general statement about Europe or the UK that's completely impossible. There wasn't enough cider for it to be more common than beer. We also know beer was the most common (then later grog, at least for the navy).
This might be true for some specific region or subset of ships, though.
First of all, many types of beer were historically not boiled. Quite a few still aren't. The mash, however, pasteurizes the beer.
That, however, doesn't last forever. In the conditions of the 18th century or whatever, microorganisms will get into the beer after mashing/boiling, so the heat treatment only helps for a while. The fermentation really does protect the beer afterwards, but it's a combination of low pH, alcohol, low oxygen, little nutrients, CO2, etc. Hops also help against gram-positive bacteria.
You're broadly right, but they were popular for most of the period we're discussing.
In continental Europe they were popular from roughly ~1000 onwards (see Behre 1999), in England from roughly 1500 onwards. In African and South American farmhouse brewing they're still not used. So it's a pretty complicated picture.
As the comment made clear, hops are only one component of what makes beer safe, though. Storable, safe beer for travel is documented already in Ancient Egypt.
This is complete and utter nonsense. The water used in beer often had bacteria (and other stuff) but to brew beer you must mash, at 65C for an hour or more, which pasteurizes the beer. Hops protect the beer against bacteria, and the yeast also makes it hard for other organisms to multiply in the fermented beer. Alcohol is one of those ways, but only one.
That is modern beer, the stuff made by people who know about bacteria. Prior to modern knowledge, beer recipies were based on trial and error. Boiling the water first avoided many spoilation problems that, today, we know how to prevent through other means.
Again this is stuff you're just inventing because you don't know better.
> Boiling the water first avoided many spoilation problems that, today, we know how to prevent through other means.
You have this backwards. Boiling or near-boiling the water is what's nearly universal now. It was much less common in the past.
> Prior to modern knowledge, beer recipies were based on trial and error.
Correct. However, all beer is mashed. You don't get beer without it. That's a one-hour 65C pasteurization at the very least. As far as we know, all European beer from the stone age until now was made this way. So you can take this part as ordained by the gods of chemistry. So no matter what you do about the water initially, the whole thing will be pasteurized afterwards.
There are still people today brewing traditional beer from recipes based on trial and error, with zero input from modern science. Some of them start with a mix of cold water and malts that they then heat in the kettle. Here's an example of me visiting and brewing with a guy who does exactly that https://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/409.html
If you want I can make you a map of where in Scandinavia and the Baltics people used this method the last 100-200 years. Before that people often didn't have kettles, and so (as far as we know) the water was not heated before brewing (long story exactly why we think so).
I think you misread the comment you're replying to.
> The alcohol wasnt what made beer safe. Beer was safer than water because to make bear one must use sterile water. So beer at least started out sterile/boiled before it went into the barrel.
AFAICS you're agreeing with this, so "complete and utter nonsense" seems a bit harsh
The article makes the clear claim that while there was beer on board there was no Scurvy.
Is the article wrong? Does beer have vitamin C? Does beer have something else that also cures Scurvy? Does beer running out also coincide with someone else running out that cures scurvy? Does beer running out also coincide with the body's natural ability to coast on no vitamin C? Is there something else in play that I can't think of?
I'm not qualified to answer that. I do know enough history to believe that the article was written be an expert in the age of sail and so I am inclined to believe claims that I didn't already know are facts.
You comment reads like someone took the simplified 4th grade history and repeating a fact out of context - and so I'm inclined to believe you are wrong in some way, but that is only my guess. If you (or someone else) can cite better evidence I will change my mind, for now I'm sticking with my comment as correct.
Yes. Or more to the point, it is uncritically repeating the medical theories of its eighteenth-century sources, which were wrong. See also [0], [1]. People had a really hard time figuring out how to stop scurvy, and the use of citrus as a remedy was not generally accepted until well into the nineteenth century.
> Does beer have vitamin C?
No.
> Does beer have something else that also cures Scurvy
Thanks for real links. I fall back to what I finished with: when someone shows me real science I will change my mind. Leaving the original comment for context only.
> The percentage of alcohol required to preserve beer for long periods is too high for sailors to be drinking a gallon of it per day.
Reading this thread I think the best thing would be if people were forbidden from comment on the history of beer in online forums. Nobody knows anything, yet everyone is shouting their misunderstandings from the rooftops.
The Danish fleet, to take just one example, was completely dependent on a supply of "skibsøl", to the extent that the king started his own brewery to ensure his fleet had a supply. Later kings started a stupid brewing monopoly system in Copenhagen to ensure no breweries went bankrupt, again with the same aim. "Skibsøl" was a big thing in Norway and Sweden, too. The Royal Navy used to serve it, too, before switching to grog.
Yes, weak beer will turn sour, but it takes a lot to make it harmful.
> Yes, weak beer will turn sour, but it takes a lot to make it harmful.
While I agree in general with what you've said, this line is wrong. Strong beer will turn sour too. Acetobacter is good up to 10-15%, it's how we get malt vinegar and wine vinegar. All it needs is ethanol, oxygen, and time.
