I came across this picture of an old safety poster that was once displayed in pubs. It shows gear stick (something European cars have) and suggests if you're driving home then you should be OK with 4 pints. The other poster shows beer was cheaper then, so I was wondering if beer was weaker back then so you could drink more.
I know it's going to vary from brand to brand but was say a pint of guinness weaker back then or could men handle their beer better back then?
As those that know me well, I'm sort of a beer connoisseur.
First of all... I bet they drank piss beer. Shit like Coors, Bud Light, Modelo and the like. Another factor since I'm also a traveler of the world... beer is made weaker in America, and I may be old, but it might of been that way over the pond back in the day as well. All I know is our piss beer here in the states is around 4%-ish here and when I'm in Australia that same brand of beer is more like 6%-ish... and that's the piss beer I'm talking about.
I can imagine my current beer between my hands as I type this, as 9% would be overseas. Shit man, when I'm in Japan they have these Chu-hi "Strong" that is like 9.8%. In the states it doesn't make sense to drink unless you drink liquor most of the time. The beer I have right now is hard to find here, and you sort of have to seek it out.
My guess is you're right... it was weaker. I think the strategy in the states is having to make kids drink so much bullshit to feel a buzz, that it makes them sick and they end up not drinking later on in life. That's just a theory of mine though.
From what I have heard and read, until the early ~80s drunk driving was often seen from the "boys will be boys" perspective as a peccadillo. Cops often turned a blind eye to it as long as they could assume the driver was able to find his way home. So I would say that poster insinuated that you could be drunk but should not be too drunk to drive.
It was, until Mothers Against Drunk Driving began the campaign against drunk driving about 40 years ago. (Our beer is five percent alcohol to Americans' three or so percent).
Long before then I saw police being quite strict. I even got pulled over once and given a sobriety test because the cop had seen me leaving a tavern. (I passed the test.)
I learned from a restaurant that alcohol was invented by monks to purify dirty drinking water, not to entertain people by giving them new mental sensations. In historical times beer was mostly liquid with just tiny infusions of alcohol because all their liquid was mixed with alcohol and they needed to protect themselves from drunkenness.
Absolutely true. China went down the tea route to purify water while Europe took the alcohol route. Its why China never invented glass but became good at ceramics. I've been looking at old local beer recipes recently and they tend to be a sort of sweet tea of various leaves (mostly nettles) and ginger root fermented with bread yeast.
I have thought about this. In older printed books you hear everyone (even children) drank wine but it was always diluted down heavily with water (mentioned in several texts), so it seems it was for slight flavor. Curious if it was the same with ale. If men were getting drunk I assume it was not.
Actually the alcohol is already there when they brew a new batch of beer, breweries have to dilute it to make it weaker , by flushing it with water , . When people make jokes about someone drinking water down beer , they are actually telling them the truth , it’s watered down lol
The following typical line-up of draught beers for a London pub in the Edwardian period:
X Ale (Mild) at 5% ABV Porter, 5% PA (pale ale, AKA bitter) at 6% KK (Burton), 7% Stout, 7% Small beer (also known as small ale or table beer) is a lager or ale that contains a lower amount of alcohol by volume than most others, usually between 0.5% and 2.8%. These were served at meals instead of water of the time, because that water was contaminated with bacteria,
So in answer to your question it is both yes and no!
No. But it was less regulated. They dug up old beer kegs in Leeds a few years back. They tested the beer and found it to contain something like 10% lead and would not have passed safety standards of today!
So while alcohol was cheaper, back in the day, it was also more dangerous, and why boomers are so crazy these days.
As for the driving; they steadily started raising the units allowed as more and more drink driving was being caught out.
No in my life time there was a time with no driving under the influence laws. That probably so local bar just putting something up that doesn't hurt business to much. In a time before it was illegal to drink and drive.
Not weaker , just laws were different and stricter back then , some states only allowed beers to be a certain alcohol percentage for breweries to distribute, through the years they lifted the laws and that’s why we can buy stronger beers nowadays
I thought beer had always fallen into ranges of alcoholic concentration in order to be called beer in the first place. Above those levels woukd be a stout I think then beyond that something else.
A lot of it was, but more people were alcoholics and driving drunk didn't matter and was legal in many places. You used to be able to drink alcohol while driving if you could still drive straight.
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