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

https://theappendix.net/blog/2013/2/getting-drunk-in-colonial-america

by benbreen • 11 years ago

32 20 11 years ago

nimos• 11 years ago

| Modern estimates place the annual amount consumed by the colonists somewhere in the range of five to six gallons of pure alcohol (by comparison, per capita consumption in the United States in 2007 came in around 2.3 gallons).

It would be interesting to know the distribution of this. I wonder how much of it is individual people drinking more vs more people drinking. Take away video games and TV and I bet a lot more people would end up at the bar.

WaxProlix• 11 years ago

And methodology; how to know how much of what was drank when, and what contents it had? Seems like a tough estimation.

scott_s• 11 years ago

My guess would be estimates of the size of the adult population, and the amount of alcoholic drinks produced and imported.

mcdougle• 11 years ago

Also consider DUIs (now that we have motor vehicles), office work (where drinking during the day - at least heavily - is typically forbidden), and to some extent possibly the suburban lifestyle (most people don't live a few steps from a bar) and I can see why the amount would be higher back then.

msrpotus• 11 years ago

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).

nhebb• 11 years ago

According to the Ken Burns documentary Prohibition [1], it was both - especially if you replace "people" with "men". I don't remember all the facts and details leading up to Prohibition, but the documentary did make me more sympathetic to the temperance movement.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/watch-video/

walshemj• 11 years ago

Does it cover the sectarian, nativist element to the temperance movement?

eastbayjake• 11 years ago

Previous thread about this post on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8857969

eblume• 11 years ago

On an unrelated note, I love the font on this page - "ff-quadraat-web". Very natural and easy to read.

abtinf• 11 years ago

I wonder how much of this had to do with using alcohol as a primary source of nutrition and method of food preservation.

Perhaps the best way to preserve all the new world crops (including corn, potatoes, and numerous fruits and vegatables) was to ferment them? Old world wheat is very dry to start with, making it easy to store for long periods. But new world staples are much harder to preserve - what else could you do if you haven't discovered bacteria or pasteurization, invented refrigeration or canning, and need to feed everyone year round?

With farm output preserved through fermentation, alcohol would have been extremely cheap as well - I would guess significant cheaper than fresh foods during winter months.

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

Also transportation: fermentation reduced bulky corn crops to a few litres of alcohol with a corresponding increase in value density. Concentrated the wealth, which you could carry on your back to market.

tsotha• 11 years ago

I think this is a big issue. You would have wanted to ship alcohol instead of grain for the same reason you want to ship pig iron instead of ore. Transportation costs can eat up all your profit.

schrodinger2• 11 years ago

I might be doing the math wrong, but it doesn't really seem that much:

6 gallons = 768 oz

768 oz 100%abv = 1920 oz 40% abv

1920 oz is approx 192 drinks a year, or 3.7 drinks a week.

alan57• 11 years ago

At 40% abv, isn't a drink 1.5 oz?

In which case it's 1280 drinks per year which is 3.5 per day.

schrodinger2• 11 years ago

Ah you're right. Don't know how I got from 1920 oz to 192 drinks—unless you consider 10oz of vodka a drink!

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

Related Stories