Did everyone drink beer in the middle ages? I've heard that in the middle ages the water was so bad that everyone drank beer or wine. Is that true? Did pregnant women and small children also drink beer?
Beer was commonly drunk in the middle ages (and renaissance), but what they drank is different from the beer we're used to today.

Beer and ale, being grain-based, were important dietary staples -- it's said that beer is liquid bread, and that's not far off.  For the common man (not nobility), in particular, grain made up a substantial part of the diet, with meat being fairly rare.  (Will try to update later with a friend's research on amount of grain/household consumed in medieval England, but it's substantial.)

Common beer was not aged for months or years like some beers today; rather, a batch might be produced in as little as half a week.  These are "small beers" (or "small ales", for the unhopped variety), which are mildly alcoholic but drinkable in volume without unfortunate effects.  These small beers/ales were produced in the home/manor; it was just one more task for the cooks.  (See, for example, Markham's The English Housewife, 1615 -- so that's rnnaissance not medieval, but is consistent with earlier cooking sources I've seen.)

I'm not aware of exceptions being made for pregnant women and small children.  Arguing from absence of evidence is risky, but I've worked with a variety of medieval and renaissance cookbooks and the occasional medicinal source, and I haven't seen anything along the lines of "drinks for the pregnant and young".

You may find the following helpful:


discussion of Elizabethan homebrewing
Wikipedia article on ale and Wikipedia article on small beers
research/recreation notes on 13th/14th C beer, which also cites Judith Bennett's book Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England