

“A Toast to Your Health”: Getting Drunk in Colonial America (2013) - benbreen
https://theappendix.net/blog/2013/2/getting-drunk-in-colonial-america

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nimos
| 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.

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nhebb
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/](http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/watch-video/)

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

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abtinf
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.

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JoeAltmaier
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.

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tsotha
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.

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eastbayjake
Previous thread about this post on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8857969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8857969)

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schrodinger
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.

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alan57
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.

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

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

