> because water used to be much harder to sanitize
They actually addressed this in the article, but sanitizing water is as simple as boiling it which is much less involved than the process of making beer.
They actually addressed this in the article, but sanitizing water is as simple as boiling it which is much less involved than the process of making beer.
Beyond that, in an ancient context you can’t indefinitely store your boiled water and expect it to stay uncontaminated. If you are on a construction site, boiling all of your drinking water every day before use sounds a lot less convenient than just storing beer. Moreover, if laborers were all drinking water they would still need to eat something.