Makes me wonder a bit about just how much of that stuff I drank as a kid, because I certainly don't remember moderating myself then, either.

Iirc it was in earlier times marketed to ladies and also pregnant women because it is high in Vitamin B12(?) or something. Legend had it you wouldn't get rickets (bendy legs) if you drank sweet stout.

In Scandinavia lett øl (low alcohol beer) is in all the supermarkets, this is 2.5% alcohol pilsner.

Would explain a lot :D

Isn't that what a session beer is supposed to be?

Not sure there is anything commercially marketed that is under 3% ABV, really.

In Norway and Sweden beer under 2.8% is is exempt from most licencing and excise regulations. So there is large market for that sort of beer.

The ancester of carbonated soda, called «limonade» in France and given to kids cannot be naturally obtained without alchohol.

As an experience I did make some (water, citrus, a little exposition to air (thus yeast)) and anaeroby fermentation will give you the expected result: - an acid, sugarish refreshing drink - with bubbles, - and ~2-3% alcohol

My experiments confirm what is said on a chemistry forum. http://forums.futura-sciences.com/chimie/410527-limonade-art...

Kids, were given alcohol in the old days, no wonder why they were calmer, lol.

My look at older german polish recipies makes me suspicious that a common drink of the old ages their the «brotbier» (you put old bread in a jar of water and let it ferment in anaerobic conditions) should also have been alcoholized.

And yes without Chaptal (17g/l of sugar = 1% alcohol, how to dope your alcohol fast) (not Gay Lussac) obtaning strong alcohol is tough.

Root beer and Ginger ale are named as such for the obvious reason.

My small disappointment in the current fad of "hard" sodas is that they are often malt beverages/"distilled" beer at ~5% alcohol rather than, say, traditional recipes in the ~2-3% range.

It's common in England for pubs to have at least one bitter that is below 4%.

I live in Zürich now. The local lager's okay, but it's all lager, and it's all 5%, which is the upper limit of what I like. I miss good old fashioned ale.

Although honestly I don't think I'd want a session IPA at 4 or below. Most (though not all) session IPAs are pretty terrible at ~4.5. They'd probably taste like watery trash at 3.5.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_Australia#Market_chara...