> 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.

Ever gotten a bad case of gastroenteritis from a restaurant that made you swear never to go back and even turned you off an entire style of cuisine for, at least, a little while?

A few brushes with bad water might have given folk a strong preference for beer, just to be on the safe side, even if most water was safe.

Often things that a lot of people do repeatedly for "pure enjoyment" actually has some hidden benefit.

Like for instance, drinking in general. People do it because it's fun, but it can play an important social bonding role.

Water on ships wasn't that clean to begin with. And things were made worse by people maybe not observing good hygiene. Think sharing cups, dipping those in the water, not washing their hands, etc. Imagine that, stored in a poorly sealed barrel on a ship with rats and other pests. Water was pretty bad on ships. People would get sick and weak on longer journeys (malnutrition, contaminated water, rotting food, etc.). A lot of their diseases would spread via water.

Beer had a head start on water because part of the process of making it involves boiling the water and the alcohol slows the growth of most of the pathogens. And it has some nutritional value.

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.

It is my understanding that the yeast in the beer will consume everything it can and that is what keeps the beer preserved, or safe to drink.

A caveat being and mentioned in the article, that sailors didn't have access to the safe water of lakes and streams, thus beer. And as someone mentions below, it's safer to drink low alcohol beer than months old (untreated) water. I can see why people jump to the conclusion that beer was safer than water...and it makes for good cocktail hour small talk.

Point of order, beer was stored in a higher alcohol percentage (which is where we get IPAs from) which does extend its shelf life significantly. The gallon was heavily watered down to serve.

Which is basically identical to lite beer we drink today. Hopefully with more flavor, but I don't actually know.

Beer was known to go bad on long voyages. So long as the beer held out though there was no scurvy.

Anyone downvoting this comment is not understanding how common this myth is, or not bothering to google to verify their own understanding. It's by far the most asked-about myth on /r/askhistorians. Someone asked this under 24 hours ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k5ji8i/how_...

But it comes up a good 2-5x a month. I really want to know where this understanding came from.

Bit of both, but good grog keeps people happy.

"Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content. Just enough to keep it without bacteria.

Drinking 2 month old stale untreated water... good luck with that.

> they liked drinking beer

Sailors were basically slaves. Nobody cared what they liked. But if crew dies from diarrhia, that is a big problem!