Does drinking hot beer prevent the common cold? After graduating from school, I served my two years of mandatory alternative civilian service with a hospital gardener in Swabia. In Winter, every morning we used to come in one hour early to drink hot beer.

Warming beer – "stauchen" in German –, by placing the bottle in hot water, was common in the southwest of Germany, and althought the practice has fallen out of use in recent years you can still order your beer "gestaucht", i.e. warmed to about 50 to 60°C (122 to 140°F), in traditional restaurants (at no extra price, of course).

Here is an image of one restaurant that uses old hot-water bottles to warm their beer as a gimmick (source):



The old gardener and his younger colleague claimed that drinking warm beer would keep away any cold that working in the wet and cold outside would otherwise bring on them. We were certainly all very healthy those two winters (and got a lot of snow shovelled), so my question is:

Does drinking hot beer prevent the common cold?
No, drinking warm beer will not prevent the common cold.

There was at least one study conducted revealing that humulone, an chemical found in hops, could help to fight a cold. This study seems to be both biased and exaggerated, as it was conducted by a beer company and the concentration in beer is so low that getting a therapeutic dose would create more problems than it would solve.
Got a Cold? Have a Beer!

I imagine that the rumor was based on either the above misleading story or a similar one based on a historical view of beer through "rose colored glasses".
This coupled with the commonly known (and scientifically supported) method of drinking hot fluids to treat cold symptoms creates a believable enough tale to increase sales.
Study finds hot drinks help colds.