Posted on 07/17/2014 4:58:01 AM PDT by NYer
Wine and beer effectively kill off bacteria and have always been common as everyday drink.
In the colonies people, including children, drank apple cider with about 5% alcohol content. This was the rule until the Germans came in with their lagers which were much better and they became the drink of choice.
Which gives a new meaning to Johnny Appleseed’s quest to plant more apple trees.
As a boy I attended a small Pentecostal church, and that question came up in Sunday school. We were told that since drunkenness is a sin we could easily avoid that kind of sinning by never imbibing alcohol. Some projected that to extremes and became the teetotalers.
For Communion they served us grape juice, children and adults alike.
Wine in the Bible was wine; alcohol was the preservative before the days of refrigeration.
That was a discussion at our family Thanksgiving Dinner last year. How drinking wine was not a sin. The bible talks about everything in MODERATION. Also how in Europe even children start drinking wine but in a very small glass but you don’t see the whole population getting drunk. Wine has it health benefits. Christians from different cultures view alcohol differently.
One of the oddities in the prepper universe is that they buy all kinds of high tech water filters but don’t seem to know how to go about making wine and beer.
What NO TWINKIES? I think the Wookie would approve, I think.
Yes, like killing Infidels for the glory of Allah.
There was almost no teetotal movement in America until about the 1840s. After that it came mostly in reaction to Irish immigrants.
Absolutely. Remember, it was religious fanatics that killed Jesus.
We had a preacher who preached from the pulpit that at the marriage at Cana,
“And that is where Jesus changed the water into pure unfermented grape juice!”. We just quietly grinned to ourselves.
I believe it was the excess of drinking in the 1800s that lead to the Carry Nation attitude on alcohol.
I wonder if that story is taught to today's children as part of American history? John Chapman was an itinerant preacher who traveled about holding services, and carrying a bag of dried apple cores with which to plant apple trees wherever he went. There was a Disney movie about him back in the '50s that will NEVER be shown on TV today, probably because of this song:
The Lord is good to me
And so I thank the Lord
For giving me the things I need,
The sun, the rain and the apple seed,
The Lord is good to me.
By the way, some of the more common presses used for making apple cider are the ones from Harbor Freight. The six ton is about 70 bucks and the 12 ton goes for 130.
I own a 12 ton and they work. A lot of businesses use them.
When I was young we wrte told the Johnny Appleseed story but I remember it as being taught as a simple story, not as history. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that Mr. Chapman was a real person and that he did plant apple seeds
Considering how apples were turned into clean drink, it appears that Mr. Chapman was a great benefactor to the people of America. Amazing what you can do with a simple shovel and a bag of seeds.
ping
My argument to any and all was: How was it possible, before the days of chemical preservatives and especially refrigeration, for things like apple and grape juice NOT to ferment?
Yeast spores are always floating in the air, and as soon as the spores would land on some sugary substance, such as fruit juice, they would be “born” from the spores. Then the yeast would do precisely what God had made them for; feast on the sugars an produce carbon dioxide and alcohol as waste products. It is as natural as when God commanded in Genesis Chapter 1:
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
I do think that the complete prohibition on alcohol as a religious tenant (and not a personal one) is anti-God. He just never commanded that, nor would He want to. Those Christians who say it is so are sinning as much as any other sin, and never realize nor question it. And I don't mean that they HAVE to drink alcohol, but those who profess that other people who do are sinning. Frankly, that is just wrong.
I remember going to some in-laws home for Thanksgiving in Tampa, Florida several years ago. I brought some very good and expensive German beer with me as a gift (we had just returned from Overseas--Germany and Italy--after 7 years). Well, my in-laws were appalled! They made me put the beer back in the car, and exclaimed they did not allow a single drop in their home due to it being sinful and of the Devil!!!
They were QUITE judgmental of my behavior after that. They never called me by my name after that, but to my wife only referred to me as "Your husband" (probably thinking, "The Lush"). However, I never get drunk.
Thanks for the ping to this very informative article.
I like good lean bacon, and used to like ham but can not stand pig roast, many people get boils from eating pig meat.
The Puritans in New England drank beer for the same reason. It was common for their water to be polluted.
...neither the ancients nor the Puritans knew anything whatsoever about bacteria...
The food was more scarce and less convenient than today. >>
that’s a super understatement for sure.
beans and lentils came first on the list. >>
didn’t esau give up his inheritance over a big bowl of lentils??? that would have been me, I love them.
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