“...there is a suggestion that brewing alcoholic beverages was in part a way to fight cholera and other water-born maladies.”
Yes, I thought of that once when I was reading a novel and realized that everyone was drinking “ale” all day, or tea, nobody drank water. Then I realized the water was probably pretty dirty, so you either had to boil it or ferment it to get rid of the germs.
I think once you get above about 4 percent alcohol level, almost all natural bacteria are killed.
The guys who made the barrels that held cider and scotch, etc, were not worried about keeping things totally squeaky clean!
Maybe my next project will be learning how to make barrels. I saw a show on PBS about it long ago. Very interesting, but how many barrels can you make before you had enough?
;-)