The history of beer is a surprisingly long and interesting one. First brewed by the ancient Babylonians, it is in fact the oldest known alcoholic beverage in the world. Early writings contained in the Code of Hammurabi even deal with laws about beer and its distribution. Must have been a pretty important part of Babylonian society to be in their core legal document along with stuff about theft, murder and the like.

Since this relatively early introduction to the cuisine of the human race, beer has managed to sustain and endear itself to countless generations. However, it’s important to reaslise that one of the many reasons for this is the antimicrobial qualities of alcohol itself. We’ve all seen those World Vision and Tear fund ads talking about how millions of people lack clean drinking water, but once upon a time this was a universal problem for pretty much everyone, not just those living in third world countries. As a result it was safer and healthier to drink beer than to drink water, as counterintuitive as that may seem in todays society.

This has given creedence to the various monastic brewing traditions around Europe. Monks brewed beer not just to make a tasty and delicious drink that made you happy, but to make the water safe to drink. In their minds they were purifying the water, which whilst untrue in the pure scientific sense it definitely held a grain of truth (see what I did there). And the benefits were undoubted. I remember being told by a lecturer back in first year that beer was instrumental in figuring out that cholera was a water born disease. In this specific area, where everyone got their water from one (infected) pump, the only people who weren’t sick were the brewers who were only drinking beer, not water. Ahhh, the beutiful ironies of life.

Now in this day and age of sanitation and clean water systems, beer and other alcoholic beverages now must rely on their other atributes rather than simply making water safe. I suppose we could recommend thirld world countries to turn all their unsafe water to beer, but I’m sure most people can see several reasons why that’s not practical. That leaves three potential reasons to drink beer – the flavour and satisfaction of the drink (my personal reasoning), the neurological effects of alcohol (if this is your only aim, switch to spirits and accelerate that cihrosis of the liver) and the various medical studies that come out from time to time saying that beer is good for your health. However, while it’s no longer necessary to use alcohol to make water safe, I know I’ll always enjoy thinking of beer as purified water. Tasty, tasty purified water.