“A Toast to Your Health”: Getting Drunk in Colonial America (2013)

> A big part of it is about sanitation--since pure water wasn't so safe to drink, people drank far more tea (boiling kills bacteria) and beer/wine (fermentation has a similar effect).

This is a massive myth.[1] It has historically been very rare to not have access to clean water. Beer and alcohol are nutritionally more dense than water, and for much of western europe's history they were watered down to the point of not working to sterilize. It was simply more of part of the meal than alcohol is today and may have tasted better.

In addition, alcohol is easier to preserve during the winter, especially when most of your heat is for keeping people alive. Cider was probably the staple drink for much of rural new england during early colonization, and could have ranged anywhere from highly sugary (like modern unpasteurized cider), highly alcoholic (like an ale or, as applejack, as a liqeur; George Washington was a fan), to something more fiber-oriented (not all apples would have been very sugary, and you end up with something like a sour beer that had lots of flavor but was not super alcoholic).

Finally, let's not forget that people love to drink. It's addictive, at least to some subset of people and situations. People have always drank alcohol because it's been easy to prepare (literally just leave sugar and water out in the air) and easy to drink. This doesn't mean they were drunk all the time (there are a ridiculous number of laws about being drunk in public), but it was through and through a part of the lifestyle in a way that it is difficult for modern, post-christianization western europe to grasp. It was only when real alternatives to alcohol in terms of nutrition and cost were cheap enough people could get away with moralizing about it when it became separated into a "drug".

Sauces:

[1] http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-wate...

Isn't alcohol a diuretic?

That's right; estimates of imports of alcoholic drinks are actually fairly accurate because 18th century governments had a very strong financial incentive to keep track of them due to tariffs and special taxes. (I've studied that a bit myself in the context of shipments of medicinal drugs between Portugal and colonial Brazil). I would guess that estimates for domestic production within colonial North America are much more impressionistic though.