Maggie's Farm

One of the things we really do not understand is the amount of alcohol consumption that has gone on in the US since the founding... there are a few good sites which have tried to tease out the data from historical records (census, shipping, and such) and one of the amazing conclusions is: our ancestors were sloshed most of the time.

This site ( http://www.roizen.com/ron/how-good.htm and YMMV) does cite the hard trend from early on of the movement away from hard liquor ethanol consumption to that of beer in the US. As this derives amount of ethanol and utilizes that, and we remember that hard liquor having 40-50% alcohol not being uncommon, while beer at 4-9% is also not uncommon for the era, puts absolute amounts consumed, in gallons, pretty high up. If you consume 4 gallons of ethanol from hard liquor, that is about 8-9 gallons/year of actual beverage consumed. While beer may only account for 2.7 gallons early on, multiply that by 11 or 12 to get the actual amount of beverage and you get the astounding 25 gallons/year. Mind you that is added ON to the hard liquor as this is per capita consumption.

On the societal factor also remember that women were not high users of beer or hard liquor and even wine had its moderate use... thus all those figures need a 2x multiplier as women are non-consumers (by and large) moving the amount men drank, per person, per year to 16-20 gallons of hard liquor and 50 gallons of beer. That circa 1850, and other folks have similar numbers going back to the 18th century.

The steady, decreasing trend and shift from hard liquor to wine and beer is a multi-decade event that was happening before prohibition, and the trend picks right up after prohibition, with only a very moderate decrease in the decade after it. From there on out the shift to beer and wine continues apace, but overall ethanol consumption is way, way down from the 1850's.

Remember, now, the great canals, cities, iron works, rail roads, and such all got initially built in the 19th century with those same, relatively high, amounts of liquor going down. Apparently Americans could not only hold their liquor, ask for more, but also work very hard while consuming same. Just a bunch of wussies today! All that beer and such... can't even knock back a fifth of borboun with two or three flagons of decent beer before they go under the table... and then go to the steel mill for 5 hours before repeating same....