It was 4.5L per day though. Enough to stupefy any man or keep them drunk all day.
"For sailors the beer supplied was of the strong kind (10%-15% alcohol) since this was the only kind that preserved itself well in the sea, hence drunk as a sailor."
"For sailors the beer supplied was of the strong kind (10%-15% alcohol) since this was the only kind that preserved itself well in the sea, hence drunk as a sailor."
Would 4.5L of 2% ABV make you drunk? Depends how quickly you can drink it. It's 9 units of alcohol. We commonly assume the body can process 1 unit/hour so if this quantity was consumed over an entire day, I don't think you'd get merry.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to drink like this, just highlighting the impact of ABV on the outcome.
Everyone else is the much lower estimate discussed up thread.
> Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking.
Maybe I'm a lightweight, I would be absolutely trollied if I had to drink eight 13% pints over the course of a day. I have never been anywhere where they'd even sell you an entire pint of 13%, you are in 2/3rd or maybe even 1/3rd territory.
They recently started selling it in 12oz bottles, so it’s no longer a commitment but rather a choice.
Er, no! Perhaps in Ireland? In the UK the term "alcohol-free" can only be used if the drink has no more than 0.05% alcohol. However apparently it's allowed to use the term "alkoholfrei": take a look at the bottles of "Erdinger alkoholfrei" in UK supermarkets with tiny smallprint explaining that it's not alcohol-free (it's 0.5% and tastes quite good).
The rules may have changed fairly recently. They always used to sell "shandy" with 0.5% alcohol as a soft drink to children but I'm not sure if they still do that.
There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.
(I think I read somewhere that they had to create a special exception for soy sauce in Australia because soy sauce can have up to 2% alcohol but obviously nobody's going to quaff it and if they did the 2% alcohol would probably not be their biggest problem.)
From a quick tesco search Punk AF (https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304722896) and Lucky Saint (https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/311448058) both contain the terms "alcohol free" prominently on the front but are 0.5%.
There are also a bunch of 0.0% beers, and their fine print is how you say, no more than 0.05%, but at least Brewdog and Lucky Saint are getting away with using the term for 0.5%, and I am sure I've seen more of that kind of thing.
The sources and numbers are getting mixed up here but on the topic of the Founders, the small beer George Washington was brewing was probably in the vicinity of 1%. I think it's pretty safe to say that a guy sipping 1% all day might get a bit of a buzz and not much more, especially considering the tolerance he'd build up.
As with anything the dose makes the poison. I've consumed a lot of alcohol over my life, but as I get older my friends and I have mostly lost our interest in experiencing anything beyond a mild buzz. At a bar we frequently order a lemonade/Sprite along with our beers and make DIY shandies [2] which brings the alcohol content down to like 2.5%. It's pretty hard to get drunk at that level even if you go at it for hours. Throw in a water here and there and it's even lower. I only wish society and the industry was more supportive of this manner of drinking, but the bars undoubtedly make less money off of us than the guy who goes full bore and ends up behind the wheel plastered...
[1] https://goodstuffdrinks.com/blogs/the-good-stuff/how-much-al...
> Er, no! Perhaps in Ireland? In the UK the term "alcohol-free" can only be used if the drink has no more than 0.05% alcohol.
The government says the threshold is 1.2%.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/low-alcohol-descr...
"Low alcohol" -> 1.2% ABV (the threshold at which beer duty has to be paid)
"De-alcoholised" -> 0.5% ABV
"Alcohol free" -> 0.05% ABV
"Non-alcoholic" -> "should not be used in conjunction with a name commonly associated with an alcoholic drink" except communion wine.
Advertising Standards Authority:
> The alcohol section of the Codes applies to ‘alcoholic drinks’, which are those above 0.5% ABV. Drinks at or below 0.5% are, for the purposes of the Codes, considered to be non-alcoholic.
https://www.asa.org.uk/news/advertising-zero-alcohol-product...
You're right about this though:
> There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.
and it's 'worse' - you can't buy 'no-secco' or 'apple fizz' or whatever they're marketed as, even though they're absolutely nil alcohol, not removed, it was never there. But obviously other cordials and carbonated soft drinks like San Pelligrino, Shloer etc. are fine, just because they're not made to look like a sparkling wine bottle.
"Alcohol free – this should only be applied to a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% abv"
But: "the decision was made to replace the legislation with guidance setting out the four existing descriptors that industry will be expected to follow"
So (1) it's not clear that Brewdog and Lucky Saint (mentioned by SCdF elsewhere in this thread) are breaking an actual law by failing to follow the guidance which Erdinger apparently does claim to follow, and (2) perhaps that rule really does apply only to "a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted", so perhaps it wouldn't apply to a shandy made by diluting alcoholic beer?
which is basically just rules about how you can market (it's fun and cool to drink alcohol kids!) 'alcoholic drinks', i.e. anything under 0.5% can be marketed in ways that says you can't for alcoholic drinks.
But a slightly different page than the one I quoted above goes on to say the same as yours:
> In terms of the official guidance, the descriptor ‘alcohol free’ should only be used on drinks from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% ABV. Where a product has had the alcohol extracted but it remains above 0.05% ABV but at or below 0.5% ABV, the descriptor would be ‘de-alcoholised’.
https://www.asa.org.uk/news/low-and-no-alcohol-drinks.html
So yes, either it tells you something about how they're making it, or they're wrong to be using that 'descriptor'. (Surely the former? Brewdog make 'Punk AF', they'd have to rebrand it completely if they're not allowed to call it 'AF', surely they'd have been on top of that?)
Oh wait though - the page I originally quoted goes on:
> CAP is aware that official government guidance exists on how alcohol content at or below 0.5% should be described, but understands that this guidance is not legally binding. Therefore, the Codes do not require compliance with this guidance.
which explains why I couldn't find anything enacted on legislation.gov.uk. So it is just a matter for them as the regulator, but these two pages on their own site seem to be in contradiction about whether they care about use of the 'descriptor' or not?
Why make this call out?
0.5% is an EU regulation than Ireland specific. And apparently the same level in the US from my (just done now) googling.
Before Austria joined the EU (in 1995) there used to be significant differences in the rules on food labelling between Austria and Germany, to the extent that sometimes a product would have two separate lists of ingredients, one for Austria and one for Germany. The same may now happen with Ireland and the UK, and perhaps the term "alcohol-free" is already being used differently. See https://www.ibec.ie/drinksireland/-/media/documents/drinks-i...
I have this pet theory that alcohol is not linear. Like, 5% beer get you way more drunk than the same amount of alcohol in 4.4% beer.
If you're drinking 30-50 units of water for every unit of alcohol, all that alcohol is going to be very diluted and have little effect on your BAC. There's probably a threshold beyond which you'll just piss it all out before the your BAC ever reaches a meaningful number.
Meanwhile, your liver can remove about 10g/12ml of alcohol per hour. In order for you to reach a meaningful BAC, you will need to absorb significantly more than that.
For example, drinking 1 liter of 1% alcohol solution per hour will not result in any significant BAC, because you can remove alcohol from your bloodstream faster than alcohol enters your bloodstream. You've got a well-optimized queue there.
5 liters of 1% alcohol is the same as above, just repeated 5 times. Your queue is still working fine.
1 liter of 5% alcohol, on the other hand, will dump 50ml of alcohol into your bloodstream within an hour. Now you have a backlog, and this backlog is what increases your BAC.
So dilution does matter, even if the absolute amount of alcohol is the same. You're basically diluting alcohol consumption over time.
Which had me thinking of various pecuniary benefits armies pass and why. Salt -> salary is well documented, on the opposite side slightly less so but still somewhat known was for conquering armies to compensate farmers for essentially pillage as the monetary compensation can't buy much grain nor meat when the army's eaten the village's as well as that of surrounding villages. It also wasn't unusual for state coffers to run dry also, delaying soldiers' salaries, plus graft - several banks still around were founded on the basis of lending to a liquidity starved crown, a modern placation and guarantee of support in the classical baronesque sense perhaps.
And I became curious about all the other money-like tokens, like these beer rations, backed by the promise of a commodity, that floated around in those time, and in ours today. Meandering thoughts, the best kind.
Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
The Roman Empire towards its end in the west had suffered from a lot of inflation, so coinage was either too expensive for everyday use (i.e. gold-coins, each of which would be a year's salary for a soldier), or worthless (basically just lumps of base-metal).
I think at a certain point taxes were required to be paid in goods rather than coin which really does show that your currency is worthless (when even the state refuses to accept it!)
Paying out salaries in cash (well, coins) so soldiers can buy trade goods like salt certainly makes more sense than handing them sacks of NaCl.
It’s not unlikely that the connection between these were was already merely etymological by that time and made barely any more sense to the Romans as it does to us.
https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.h...
tl;dr: There is a genuine linguistic connection between "salt" and "salary", but there is no evidence soldiers were ever paid in salt, or given an allowance specifically for buying salt. Possibly "salary" meant "money for salt" with "salt" used metonymically to mean any trade goods, similar to how "fish" was used in Ancient Greek, but even this is pure speculation.
It is somewhat documented, well documented perhaps.
Correctly documented?
I never finished the recent popular book 'Salt'. After a few chapters it became tedious, repetitive, plus the book consistently omitted tying text to sources. A frustrating read.
As I didn't in fact tie Salt to Roman soldiers' salaries, that was your reading, simply salt -> salary, I'm curious what references you could provide for different etymology? I'm genuinely interested, I rarely reply to replies.
Seem like a reasonable analysis:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/jfkkmk/when_...
Like a lot of historical things, there's a certain amount of guesswork involved, but it hangs together pretty well. It's unlikely that we'll find the Noah Webster of 100 BC who puts it down on a clay tablet.
1. Drank a gallon of liquid (could have been water or sports drink, I don't remember) on that ~3 hour ride.
2. Didn't pee until I got home -- and not much then.
3. Came home with dry clothes, despite (obviously) sweating something like a gallon of liquid. There was no evidence of sweat, ever -- it all evaporated.The recommended amount depends on who does the recommendation but 1.9L doesn't seem high.
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/fr/efsajournal/pub/1459
"Adequate Intakes (AI) have been defined derived from a combination of observed intakes in population groups with desirable osmolarity values of urine and desirable water volumes per energy unit consumed. The reference values for total water intake include water from drinking water, beverages of all kind, and from food moisture and only apply to conditions of moderate environmental temperature and moderate physical activity levels (PAL 1.6). [...] Available data for adults permit the definition of AIs as 2.0 L/day (P 95 3.1 L) for females and 2.5 L/day (P95 4.0 L) for males."
https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43403
"The minimum water requirement for fluid replacement for a 70kg human in a temperate zone equates to 3L per day, or 42.9mL/kg [according to the Tropical Agriculture Association]. Minimum requirements for an individual the same size but in a tropical zone equates to 4.1 to 6L/day"
"Age and gender specific Adequate Intakes (AI) for water were established in 2004 by the [United States] Food and Nutrition Board (5). The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) for water are [for ages 19 and older] Men 3.7 L/day Women 2.7 L/day"
One stop every 2 hours to chuck 500ml of beer (Bia Hanoi, pretty nice light blond), so about 4 stops a day. It worked fine ! Pee was ok color, enough tipsy to keep my sense but numb the pain of cycling. My clothes had aureola of salt and urea.
I also find the amount questionable, as I suspect that our modern expectations of what that means and the details of what they meant when they recorded personal consumption means there's something lost in translation here.
Even when I was outside scouting crops 10-12 hours a day on foot in southwest kansas with peak 110F temps, I'd still not need to drink more than 4 liters of water a day. I could push it up another liter, but it wasn't needed and could actually be harmful if one overhydrates. And that's the extreme of the year, way more what I'd reach for most of the year.
Whereas the daily motto of the fuckers was apparently "I am a machine that turns beer into piss"