[MR] wow.... just wow

[Bambi TBNL]

Um water showed up boiled into soup. Even the pilgrems to plymouthrock drank beer
-----Original Message-----
Date: Sunday, January 30, 2011 2:56:12 pm
To: "Merry Rose" <atlantia at atlantia.sca.org>
From: "Alexandria Stratton" <kyrilex at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [MR] wow....  just wow

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. 
Water is required to make beer and wine. If the water is bad, then so will be 
what you make of it. Boiling water was certainly a practice, as we've seen from 
various recipe sources. Fresh water was abundant in many places, and the Roman 
aqueducts were still in use for quite a while after the Empire fell. Folks did 
know how to dig wells, after all, and ground water was not nearly as commonly 
contaminated as it is today...(no nuclear waste dumps upriver)
Besides, one needs water to survive. The alcohol content would have had to equal 
that of distilled spirits to kill the alleged bacteria, which is a level 
unattainable for beer & wine. In short, if the water was bad, then the beer was 
bad, they'd both make you sick & die. Besides, alchohol dehydrates the body...

So my personal opinion is that the theory "they drank beer because the water was 
bad" is right up there with my opinion about the theory "they used spices 
because they ate rotted meat & needed t