For anyone that's not much of an alcoholic, there isn't anything to drink in Skyrim! Every time I eat I'm forced to sit down with a glass of wine or a bottle of mead. I have a hard time believing there's no water anywhere, or milk, or juices.

Can we have some non-alcoholic beverages please? Just a simple request.

In an environment like Skyrim, you wouldn't drink anything that didn't have some alcohol in it... it would kill you. It's actually only been about the last 200 years or so that people have started drinking 'pure' water again. Milk would kill you back in those times... it simply wasn't a beverage that was available. Alcohol is a good way to remove all the nasty bugs from the beverage.

It would be nice to be able to drink from rivers and other water sources you find. And maybe it could give you a bonus to stamina for a little while or something like that.

Very good point. Life was so much more fun back before pasteurization.

The irony that rotting plants would keep one healthy.

Yeah, parasites aren't going to boost your stamina...quite the opposite.

Better living through chemistry!!

Yeast is our friend.

Magic.
Stop with the reality checks guys, this is a game.

Here, have a mead.... it'll put hair on yer chest!

(Heh, milk-drinkers!)

^ love the broscience, absolutely love it.

Raw milk is by far the most healthiest milk, google raw milk benefits. Pasturized stuff is poison. Before industrialisation, people drank water from natural sources ie streams/rivers. Water was pure and clean back in the day.

Or you could just drink the water and then chase it down with a cure poison/disease potion.

Beer is proof there is a god and he wants us to be happy... And not die of some horrible microbial disease.

Some of it was, in the more rural areas where it came fresh off a hillside stream and didn't have a herd of goats or sheep pooping in it upstream, or a dead elk rotting somewhere in a back-pool. I've drunk from a lot of mountain streams in my day, without much worry... but once you get down into any agricultural or livestock areas, you'd best be boiling it from the river. And cities and towns in olden times? Heh, unpurified drinking water was one of the biggest spreaders of disease and parasites in them, up until modern water treatment technology came along. So, drinking from a clear mountain stream in the hills? Probby pretty safe, then or now. Some slight chance of giardia or the like, but I wouldn't worry. But drinking straight out of the stream that wound through miles of farms and sheep and oxen doing their business in it before it flowed through town, where everyone then tossed their honey-buckets into it to flush.... erm, not so much. It's one of the biggest contributors to the fact that living to 40 was quite an accomplishment, back in the day.

Milk drinker.

Yeah, didn't really think about the fact that most of the water probably isn't going to be very clean...

I have thought about this so many times, especially going back and forth playing Fallout and Skyrim, I wouldn't mind having a purified water bottle from time to time ;0 << lol what is this oops [EDIT]

Meh, if two bullets to the gourd didn't kill ya, I don't think a few paramecia are going to finish ya off Some o' them microbes is good eatin', son.

Alcoholic beverages are sterile and free of most (if not all) bacteria.

Water, especially in times associated with Skyrim, was mixed with animal/human fecal matter and milk had a lot of bacteria in it as well.
Needless to say there was no soda or Kool-Aid

What's a milk drinker like you doing in Skyrim?

al·co·hol (lk-h?l, -hl)
n.
1. A colorless volatile flammable liquid, C2H5OH, synthesized or obtained by fermentation of sugars and starches and widely used, either pure or denatured, as a solvent and in drugs, cleaning solutions, explosives, and intoxicating beverages. Also called ethanol, ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol.

It kills bacterias, you see. THAT's why alcoholic beverages were popular back in the days.
Also, the 'rotting plants' aka yeast, is a very rich source of vitamin B and glutamic acid. Very healthy indeed.


Well, people used to take water from its very source, and not simply from the river. Spring water is clean, river water can be very poisonous. Otherwise, you can use the old philter method by using stones, sand and clay to rid the water from visible dirt, and cook it afterwards. I doubt people were only able to cook water since 200 years ago ... They probably mixed it with the food too, so that would get disinfected at the same time. Soup being a prime example of such dishes.

About milk: milk is very nutritious, also for bacteria. But these bacteria break it down to acid, which gives milk the sour taste when it 'spoils'. Which means a sour environment, which equals a very unsuitable environment for bacteria. In other words: milk will almost always be pretty safe to drink, as the bacteria themselves change it into an environment they cannot live in. It'll only taste bad.

BLACK BRIAR RESERVE ALL DAY LONG.

i'm with you completely earthlinger.

raw milk is just another conspiracy between the fda and usda.

don't even get me started with those corrupt organizations.

You sir have made a Breakthrough to me and just pointed this out for me

Role-playing my guy, I actually do consider him a Milk Drinker and tries to stay away from Alcohol, now realizing he hasn't drank a dang thing since he got to Skyrim o.o
discluding Potions, those things would taste like crap and not satisfy my thirst ._.
Milk would be a nice thing to add, so would Water and Fruit juice or something.

Vampire. Got blood?