You ’re on board the Mayflower , kicking back with your fellow Separatists . Over pints ofbeer , you and the other gang phallus marvel at the bad destiny that ’s befallen your voyage thus far : One of your ship take form a leak not long after you left England and by the fourth dimension everyone had moved to the rest boat , the tough ol' Mayflower , it was well into storm season . Rough seas delayed your journeying even more , and some two month afterwards — just as you catch your first glimpse of a new continent — you find out that November is the worst time to arrive and set out planting young crops . To make subject worse , your ship actually needs to keep sailing south because the bit of land you ’ve spied is n’t even the tract your group is authorized to colonize .
It has not been a good twelvemonth , 1620 . And it ’s about to get worse .
You becharm wind of news so horrendous it makes you shudder in your breeches . The ship ’s stores of beer have dwindle away . You , sir , are running out of the good stuff . Shortly thereafter , the captain makes a quick decision : parallel be damned ! It ’s time to tail this ship and canvass new Din Land . The passengers and servants can seek out new water ( hopefully to make more beer ) . Meanwhile , the gang will continue on the moored vas , reserving the remaining beer for themselves .
It may fathom hard to believe , but this fractured history lesson — prompted by those aboard the Mayflower who recorded their experience — is rooted in truth . With the beer supplying running low , the Mayflower master adjudicate to land at Plymouth Rock ( rather than navigate further south ) and winter there . That would tailor off the supply to the passengers and leave more for the crew . Beer , it seems , is America ’s founding beverage . So much so that one rider , William Bradford , sound off that he and other passengers " were hastened ashore and made to salute piddle , that the seamen might have the more beer . " And even though the pilgrims discovered clean current ashore , they were wary of the New World liquidity and not altogether fond of its taste . As one colonist was quick to spell , " I make bold not prefere it before good beere " [ germ : Chapelle ] . It seems the long voyage that made beer expenditure a essential would have a long - term impression , one that would give Pilgrim quite a preference for dear brewage .
rick out , to those aboard the Mayflower , beer had become an essential part of daily life . Even the children drank beer , although it was probably a weaker adaptation of what we experience as beer today . " Ship ’s beer " as it was love , did not have high intoxicant mental object . Neither did the even weaker " small beer , " of which passengers drank a quart per mean solar day .
The brew were n’t of necessity crafted with an eye toward imbibingalcohol ; they were really a workaround to storing water on add-in the ship . Stored for long period of prison term , a ship ’s water would become a contaminate , germy affair . Beer , on the other deal , could be stored and ingested for weeks and months without ill outcome , make it the idealistic beverage for a lengthy journe — as long as there was enough to go around [ informant : Jakob Grimm ] .
