Douglas interesting about the beer -I once heard about this back in the 70'
when I was doing an archaelogical dig at Battle -we were told there that the
beer was very weak and also they could only brew at certain times of the
year-and I wondered how it would keep
Must look this up thanks Patrick -still laying carpet tricky tricky got to
cut down doors to open yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
P the skilled carpeteer
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Douglas Clark
Sent: 22 May 2005 23:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Important information
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Clark" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2005 6:52 PM
Subject: Important information
>A couple of weeks ago I bought and read a book on drinking over the ages in
> Bath written by a couple of local historians. The facts were so remarkable
> that I checked them with one of the authors yesterday. The truth is
>
> that before machines came in beer was much stronger than it is nowadays
> (except for small beer mainly brewed for children) and because there was
> no
> tea, coffee or drinkable water every one of us peasants drank about ten
> pints a day. When the Industrial Revolution started up and machines came
> in
> the brewers were requested to damp the strength of their beer down and did
> so. Up till then everybody had spent most of the day in a very merry
> state.
> This was because clear heads were required to operate machines. So it
> really
> was Merry Olde England. Beer nowadays is about 4% so it must have been
> around 6%. As for gin it came in later.
>
I should have added that the Lowland Scots drank claret from Bordeaux hence
Robert Burns counted his bottles.
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