You always hear about a lot of alcohol because of a lack of clean drinking water, but if this was the case, wouldn't a substantial portion of the population have been alcoholics? I've only read about this as part of culinary history but wouldn't it shape pretty much everything that went on if everyone who could afford it was drunk all the time?
This is a myth of medieval Europe: peoples did not have to consume beer because water was unsafe. I write on water quality in the medieval period here.
You may be interested in the 'Drinking water' section of the Popular Questions pages - as found in the sidebar.
I've seen the discussion below about the debate over the real purity of the beer and whether it was really the safer option than water. I'm not going to wade into that. I just want to add this: "table beer" would have been about 3% ABV or less. With the amount of fermentable material in limited quantity, plus likely a desire to avoid intoxication, beer was not made strong.
I don't know about all the time, but from the periods of history I know about (In Britain anyway), there were usually concerns about the lower orders and alcohol. I don't know how much of this was simply class prejudice; but it does seem that when people in Early Modern England drank, they drank rather a lot.
An example would be the conflicts between certain Puritan townsmen and the Church about a practice known as Whitsun ales, the practice dated from Medieval times but had gradually been limited to the Whitsun (or Easter) period. Essentially the churchmen sold ale for a Sunday festival, and this brought the community together and made money for the church.
Unfortunately by the early 17th Century certain stronger sorts of Protestant thought the drinking and merrymaking were a great abomination, all the more so for being on a Sunday. They complained that people would be much public drunkenness, damage and foul behaviour. There's quite a lot of writing from the time observing/condemning the behaviour (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l6gEJlWLTxAC&pg=PA90&dq=Whitsun+ales+drunkenness&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2fHjUsGNL4SR7AaxooHwBw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Whitsun%20ales%20drunkenness&f=false).
It was one of the sorts of religious conflict that were common at the time as people clashed about what Protestantism meant for England. It was Merrie England vs. the ancestors of the Prohibitionists!