Lager Lament

While WW II wasn't the happiest time for British beer drinkers, the situation in Germany was much worse.

Beer production ground to a virtual halt after 1943 and even after the end of hostilities the situation didn't improve much. Some of the occupying powers forbad any brewing for the local population. A situation which lasted for years. When brewing did resume, the beer was far below its pre-war strength.

"Lager Lament
BEER stocks are nearly exhausted Bavaria. This is the closest thing to tragedy for a nation whose chief beverage is beer and main belief was "Beer is best — the best is Bavarian."

Military Government clamped down on brewing last autumn, forbidding entirely the use of malt and hops, to ease the food situation by saving 17,000 tons of barley annually, says Christopher Phillips, of Munich.

Since the war Bavarian beer available the civil population was not worthy the name.

With an alleged alcoholic content of 1.5 per cent. in the cities and less in the country, it was closely related to American near-beer of prohibition days.

The satisfaction in consumption was more psychological than stimulating; just a reflection of a pre-war habit.

Bavarians regard beer as food; its former vitamin values confirmed this view. To deny them beer is more bitter than to abolish tea Britain.

British visitors to Munich were amazed to gee children in arms consume beer from their milk bottles in beer balls and restaurants, and more surprised to learn that local doctors endorsed the practice.

Representations by the civic head Munich have failed to raise the ban, and it is difficult to visualise how the respective points view can be reconciled."
Aberdeen Journal - Monday 12 April 1948, page 2.

You can't really call a drink of 1.5% ABV beer. At least not in my book. As the article says, its effect could only be psychological.

I can remember seeing kids who looked no older than 8 or 9 drinking a glass of Pils in Belgium 20 years back. I wonder if that still happens? I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The odd sip of beer isn't going to kill a child. Lexie quite often took fairly big gulps out of my La Chouffe glass when he was a toddler. It hasn't done him any harm.