this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Anon is not thinking enough about beer
Counterpoint: sake.
I don't think sake could serve the role beer did, historically. Certainly in medieval Europe, they made what today would be considered a weak beer to drink for basic hydration. That was by far the easiest way for them to ensure the water was safe to drink.
I'm pretty sure if you tried that with sake, you'd die
Actually, the alcohol in beer isn't concentrated enough to kill off most microbes. Even yeast doesn't die off until you start getting >13%, and there's varieties of yeast that can tolerate twice that concentration.
The reason why beer was safer to drink than water is because the brewing process requires it to be boiled. Beer was preferrable to boiled water due to taste and because it provided an extra source of calories
Sake is basically the same thing as beer (grain(starch)-based alcohol), I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be possible to brew a weaker sake.
But the thing is, they never really needed something to serve the role of beer (i.e. an alcoholic drink for safe hydration), because east asians figured out that boiling makes water safe quite a bit earlier that europeans (or they just drank boiled drinks despite not knowing that that's one of the effects).
Tea tried to replace beer in Europe and everybody almost died of malnourishment.
Then I guess east asians also figured out food earlier than europeans. Also, [citation needed].
Beer has a pretty big caloric value. No citation provided as I'm quoting my memory of a thing i studied for a project 15 years ago. I could be totally full of shit.
Bigger than porridge or other non-alcoholic food made from the same amount of grain?
Bro, probably not, Jesus Christ man I said I was probably full of shit. What do you want from me? If you're so interested in it all of a sudden then you go study it.