[MirrorField]

As an aside, beer was drunk so heavily by our ancestors because the water supply often made us sick, literally to death. The alcohol in beer killed off many or all of the germs in the water it was fermented with.

Actually, more important is the fact that nearly all beer recipes start with boiling the water...

[Amberdawn]

NOW, yes. But was that so in the 1700’s? People then thought tomatos would kill you, never realizing that it was the pewter in the plates they ate them off of that was the problem.