Glossary
Small beer
A very weak beer, historically brewed from the later runnings of a mash and drunk routinely by all ages as an everyday drink.
Historical. A former meaning. Present-day usage differs.
Small beer was ordinary household provision for centuries, at strengths that would now be classed as low-alcohol. The frequently-repeated claim that people drank it because water was unsafe is an oversimplification: people drank water too, and small beer was cheap, nutritious and produced as a by-product of brewing that was happening anyway.
The phrase survives in English to mean something of little importance.
Commonly misunderstood
"Everyone drank beer because water was dangerous" is a considerable overstatement. Small beer was cheap, calorific and produced alongside strong beer, and water was widely drunk.
Related
- Parti-gyle — The practice that produced it.
More vocabulary
Brewery tap · Brewpub · CAMRA · Contract brewing · Craft beer · Cru · Microbrewery · Real ale · Session beer
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
The claim that pre-modern people drank beer because water was unsafe is a considerable oversimplification of a more mundane picture.
— The popular account: water was dangerous, so everyone including children drank small beer instead.
— The qualified account: water was widely drunk, and clean sources were understood and valued. Small beer was cheap, calorific, palatable and produced as a by-product of brewing already happening — and boiling during brewing did incidentally reduce risk, though nobody understood why.
The story is repeated so widely that omitting it is less useful than addressing it. The boiling step genuinely did make beer safer than some water; that is not the same as it being the reason people drank it.
Genuinely contested Credible sources disagree, so both positions are given rather than one.
Sources: Beer: The Story of the Pint — print; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print