You can always look at Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers about the magic of brewing.
Agree with most of the comments above, though I do recall reading somewhere that Henry VIII made some form of decree about women not drinking more than 8 pints of beer at court. This information is from the datrkest recesses of my brain and the names and values may be entirely wrong; but there is somethinhg in it I am sure.
Drinking beer was oerfectly normal practice for everyone, including children, because it was generally safer than the untreated water. As has been suggested this beer tended to be considerably weaker than we would drink today and of course, people drank it more routinely so were perhaps less interested in it as an excess.
Even today in Bavaria the typical Bayern Frühstück is Weissbier, Weisswurst and a pretzel. I see the occasional tech in the lab having it.
As mentioned earlier beer (or Ale which was slightly more common in england I believe) was drunk in place of water (which was often not the healthiest thing to drink given the lack of santitation) to the tune of several liters a day. Soldiers drank about a 4 liters a day if memory serves based on some surviving QM documents.
Ale was brewed by the local village women who paid a small fee to the lord for the privilge of setting up a table outside to serve it, at least in villages. I am not sure what was done in towns likely it was under guild control there. Small beer, which is the results of the 3rd brewing from a set of hops was drunk by children and old people (its basically non-alcholic).
Also the alcohol content of the beer/ale was probably low...on the order of a few percent and that on the first brewing (of three). This did not apply to things like sherry or winter wine or the like. Those were made by double distilling and freezing out the water, I suspect this was right potent.
I suspect most of us would find wine from the time (and the method of drinking it) unpalatable. It was usually watered down and mixed with spices. Its also worth noting that the reciepes for things in the middle ages could be very odd from our point of view. Fairly "peculiar" things were added to food on a regular basis. Arsenic springs to mind...not my idea of something I want in my food.
One thing no one mentionned so far:
Middle ages beer only had half as much alcohol as beer has nowadays (and it wasn't carbonated).
The microorganisms involved couldn't stand the alcohol they had produced...
Brewing is a lot different today.
any house rules on drunkeness? 
I have always represented drunkenness by loss of Fatigue levels.
Bring enough for everyone.
It is discouraged for Role Playing, but generally accepted and tolerated as a possible outcome of drinking and gaming.
new skill?(not sure)-brewing
this is the skill of brewing alcohlic beveragese.
tell me what you think of it.(peach)
It's already there. It's a Craft. So it's not new.
What's with the peaches...? 
peach means basically that I want your onnist opinions on the subject, that's all.
also I didn't know that brewwing was a craft skill(don't have the book,so I couldn't know)
new item-cup of boozing
basically you put any type of grain into the cup & over the course of a hour it turns the grain into beer!
tell me what you think of this item.
A lot of work for a little result.
Ahh - that again. Why then the interest in asking about Ars Magica interpretations...? Having people spending their time when you still don't support the game or invest the time in getting to know the RAW?
I am trying to learn the rules,I just don't have all of them down yet!
I gotta back Abe up here. The list of different Craft abilities doesn't appear in the Core book. It may be in some supplement, but even I don't have that yet.
Craft is a catchall category. As long as it is a profession in the modern word, it would be Profession (XXX) or Craft (YYY) according to the main rulebook. AFAIK there is not a comprehensive list of all the craft anywere in the supplements either. There are sopme examples here and there, but not total list 
Xavi
A total list would be nice. Does anyone out there in fan land have such a list 
?
It is a called an encyclopedia 
I have one at home with a 100k-ish words. Making a comprehensive list with all the professions of the world would be quite a job in itself (Craft: list compiler?) 
It is a catchall category as said, so making a complete list seems a little bit pointless, don't you think?
Xavi
No list is ever complete 
!
I mean more like the 20 or 30 most common and appropriate for the setting. Some base line to refer to so I can see if I am aiming right.
Here are a few - never get tired of posting this link
Many of these are more "Professions" - the "Crafts" would have to be spun off of them. For instance, a bookbinder might inspire/subsume: parchment making, twine making, skinning, leather curing, and leather carving, among others.
While we're on that subject, here's another that went TU some time ago, but it friggin' rocked! Anyone bu chance know where it went???
"Medieval List of Occupations" (dead link)
cpcug.org/user/jlacombe/terms.html