The vast majority of brews in ye olden days were likely weak and nasty by our standards. As in the cheapest Chateau de box wine that is made according to modern food standards would've been up there with the absolute best they had. By necessity most of it was drunk young.
This is something that I hear often, especially from US folks or documentaries, the idea that people in the Middle Ages, or in Ancient Roman times, would eat food that we find questionable or disgusting, putting up with molds and acids.
I don't think at all the ancients did not have the technology to produce fine food, to preserve it, to even sell it at long distances without damage to its quality.
The Ancient Romans would make some wines that would be aged for many years, even twenty years. They sold for very high prices. People, then as now, is rational and they wouldn't have gone into the pain and cost if they only obtained ordinary vinegar or defective wine. It is to be believed that they actually knew how to make wine on purpose for laying down, and they knew how to lay it down.
Honey was possibly the most expensive food for many centuries. The technique to raise bees is relatively modern. In the middle ages honey was produced by just ravaging a hive. Such an expensive and rare food would not have been used to produce a sour and unpleasant drink. Honey has no conservation problem so there was no need to actually transform it into something else, or to savage a rotten lot. If they used it for mead, it's because they were able to produce delicious mead.
Don't let me started into DOP food! Parmigiano Reggiano DOP can be traced back to the middle ages, it is quoted in the
Decamerone by Boccaccio, and is certainly older. It requires 14 litres of milk for 1 kg of cheese. You don't expect these kind of product to exist if they were not of superior quality and if people were not able to preserve them adequately.
Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale DOP is documented as existing in year 1046. This requires a long and elaborate seasoning, modern requirements asks for minimum 12 years, but you can find 25 or 50 years old.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aceto_Balsamico_Tradizionale
At the times of Shakespeare, Britons would either drink
Ale (non hopped beer, very sweet) or
Beer (hopped beer coming from Germany, similar to modern hopped ale). All
Ale was produced locally and
Beer was imported from abroad. One has to believe that that
Beer, even though having made a long journey by cart and ship, would retain its quality enough to actually end up displacing
Ale completely (the
Ale we drink now, Shakespeare would call
Beer).
In Rome there is an entire artificial hill, the
Monte Testaccio, which is composed by oil amphoras arriving by sea and then up to the Tiber river. This oil was certainly not rancid or degraded, as if that was the case Rome would have consumed the oil coming from modern day Latium, Umbria and Tuscany, and the artificial hill would have been formed north of Rome (near the
Ripetta river harbour) rather than South (near the
Ripa river harbour).
We have many clues that the ancients were able to produce, preserve and transport very fine food.