Visit a medieval fete and you ’ll witness all way of time period - friendly visual modality : maidens in flowing gowns , knights brandishing weapons and , often , a celebratory feast – pure with goblets ofbeerand replenish at the ready .
Of course there ’s beer – it ’s a re - creation of medieval times , after all , a period not know for clean water supply and disease control . And it ’s a time when people imbibed brewed concoctions out of necessity as much as delectation , right ? Water in the Middle Ages was polluted , full of bacteria and , candidly , not fit to imbibe . This force everyone – from commoners to royalty – to hydrate by manner of beer . Except that they did n’t .
The mind that people primarily drank beer throughout the Middle Ages is widespread – and also wrong . A number of records from medieval time describe that water supply was plenteous and plebeian . One account by Gallo - popish historian Saint Gregory of Tours mentions a boy so religious that he primarily pledge pee , ( like many devout at the metre ) . Gregory also mention a traveller in the sixth 100 who asked a villager for weewee . In another story , there were revealing marks where a hermit had knelt to drink from a river . Sometimes pee was mixed with wine or sweeteners like dear , and a 14th century Thelonious Sphere Monk once listed water as a beverage preferred over beer . piss , it seems , was on everyone ’s rim [ source : Chevallier ] .
Water also was liberal and white . Whether from a well or fresh stream , it was the centerpiece of villages . In larger Town there were even infrastructures to supply water to citizens . In 1236 , construction of a system of organ pipe began in London . It was project to move water from a reinvigorated spring to a pumping house that would , in number , make impertinent weewee usable at water tank throughout the city . knightly people were n’t stupid ; they did n’t drink water that looked or smell tough , and storekeeper that used water – such as tanning – faced hefty fines if they polluted the Ithiel Town ’s drinking supplying [ author : O’Neill ] .
Beer may not have been a substitution for piddle , but it was viewed as a more nutrient choice than water . Even though it was weakly brewed from barley , at the prison term beer was a calorie - laden beverage that pulled double - tariff with prole and farmers who were athirst and in pauperization of vigor . In the end , it would still have been more high-priced to wassail than water . Unless menage - brew , beer had to be purchase , and like vino , there often were revenue enhancement and transit fees involve [ source : O’Neill ] .
