Beer was drunk copiously, even at breakfast and even by the pleasure-wary Puritans (the ship that took the Puritan leader John Winthrop to New England carried him, ten thousand gallons of beer and not much else). A gallon a day was the traditional ration for monks, and we may assume that most others drank no less. For foreigners English ale was an acquired taste even then. As one Continental visitor noted uneasily, it was ‘cloudy like horse’s urine’. The better-off drank wine, generally by the pint.- P54
