My grandfather-in-law was born in England in the 1920s and fought in WW2. Somewhere along the line he acquired the habit of salting his beer before drinking it, which persisted for the rest of his life. I'm as curious about the cultural genesis of the practice as the food science of it – was there perhaps something about wartime beer that made it unpalatable without salt? I know there were other wartime food customs like bread and scrape so it doesn't seem implausible, but the "why" of this one isn't so obvious.
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I can think of several reasons why you might salt beer:
I've heard of it being done before, but never with good beer, only low quality swill. But then, since there were more quality problems with cheap brews at the time, this was probably a lot more common. |
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There are circumstances where working in a hot place will make people sweat so much that they need to take salt to avoid a deficiency. I first heard mention of this from a man who had been doing field work in the Blue Mountains of Queensland, then found out more when working in a metal foundry, after which I worked in a factory where salt tablets were made. Most people take their salt in tablet form, sometimes the tablets dissolve in water to give an effervescent drink. A salt deficiency can commonly cause very unpleasant muscular cramps, among other things that can happen is a state that resembles drunkenness (but without euphoria). I have seen foundry workers put a dash of salt in their coffee, if you go back in history you find that salting coffee happened in the 18th century coffeehouses. My guess is that the man in question had at some time in his life worked in a hot place, where it was necessary to take more salt because of sweating. That might have been, say, North Africa during WWII, or a metal foundry in a temperate place. Then he got the taste for salting his beer and carried on doing it, after he stopped working in that hot place. |
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As other answers have noted, salt enhances flavor and reduces perceived bitterness. It also increases the perceived body/mouthfeel of the beer. My grandfather always salted his cantaloupe and honeydew melons. I tried it, and was pleasantly surprised by how it intensified the melon flavor. Also of note is Gose, a style of beer brewed in Leipzig, Germany. It includes coriander and salt. |
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This reminds me of a story my grandfather told me: in the Netherlands, right after the war, there was a great deficiency of many kinds of grains, which made the beer taste bad. The bartenders of the more upscale cafes would put a slice of lemon in the beer to mask the bad taste. This habit stuck, and we still do it today. No idea how much truth there is to the story (my granddad being quite the storyteller), but perhaps it can shed some light on this question. |
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