[1][2] Sometimes unfiltered and porridge-like, it was a favoured drink in Medieval Europe and colonial North America compared with more expensive beer containing higher levels of alcohol.

It was common for workers who engaged in laborious tasks to drink more than ten imperial pints (5.7 litres) of small beer a day to quench their thirst.

[4] In his A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools published 1797, writer Erasmus Darwin agreed that "For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer ...".

[5] Ruthin School's charter, signed by Elizabeth I, stipulates that small beer should be provided to all scholars, and larger educational establishments like Eton, Winchester, and Oxford University even ran their own breweries.

[6] To a large extent, the role of small beer as an everyday drink was gradually overtaken in the British Isles by tea, as that became cheaper from the later 18th century.