Viewing profile — larsga

> the claim is not against people drinking beer or water, it is against doing so out of some general fear of drinking water. Okay, if that's the claim I would say the state of rese…

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 othe…

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 ev…

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…

This was the part I was referring to: "Beer was safer than water because to make bear one must use sterile water." I agree I should have quoted that to be clearer.

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, t…

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.…

> Based on what? You certainly haven't given any indication of having read what historians have to say. I am a historian. This is based on 10 years of reading ethnographic archive …

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.

Sure. Hard to get all the details into a comment that's already too long. In general, however, strong beer keeps much longer than weak beer. However, even if it does sour, that doe…

> Just like now, you boil water if you are aware of risk. People didn't do that, though. As far as I can tell, water-drinking was not particularly common. People went to surprising…

Lots of Africans already do drink a gallon of beer a day. Farmhouse brewing is very widespread in Africa.

> 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 prope…

> "Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content. Beer has had a huge range of alcohol strengths, from Mesopotamia until today, so that statement is nonsensical. > Just enough to keep it wi…

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 (the…

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 condit…

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 b…

Beer does not cure scurvy. Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C, which is not in beer.

> 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 wou…

The thing is that water was not really safe to drink, no matter what these people may tell you. There's a reason there are huge aid campaigns all over the Third World to ensure peo…

It's not a choice of TBM vs cut-and-cover. You also have drill-and-blast. Which method is better depends on a number of factors, including depth and the state of the soil/rock you'…

That was interesting. I just casually clicked on the link and before I knew it I had read 20 pages.

It says very clearly on the title page it's for the Mark II, and in the text he says the advice is based on experience with the Mark I, so it's definitely for the Mark II.

That's a weird title. Hops very much do not define beer. Beer was brewed for 12,000 years before hops became common.

> Europe talks about ramping up production, not sure if that is actually happening. It is happening, all right. There are four large ammunitions companies in Europe -- all are expa…