Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Cookery / food & drink etc

THE BREWER'S TALE

William Bostwick

A History of the World According to Beer

This book will bring some warmth to your winter weekend, William Bostwick’s The Brewer’s Tale. Taste 5,000 years of brewing history as a time-traveling homebrewer rediscovers and re-creates the great beers of the past.

Part travelogue, part history, part culinary adventure, beer critic William Bostwick uncovers the stories behind the brewers who have practiced their craft since the dawn of civilization: farmers, priests, revolutionaries, and more. Beer by beer—from Babylonian date-and-honey ale to shamanistic Viking grog—Bostwick tells a history of the world through the (often female, as we learn) brewer’s eyes, unearthing recipes from poems and potsherds to re-create these beers and their long-lost flavors. Jumping through time as he weaves ancient lore with today’s craft scene, Bostwick meets adventurous brewers—some celebrated, others eccentric unknowns—who share his path, trading insight, recipes, and ingredients like homegrown hops and wild, Nile-Delta yeast. This is history told in the glass, from tongue-numbing mead to sour pediococcus-laced lambic. The Brewer’s Tale celebrates the beers of ages past, some forgotten until now. William Bostwick is the author of Beer Craft and writes about beer for the Wall Street Journal, GQ, and other publications. He is an avid homebrewer, former distiller’s apprentice, beekeeper, baker, and sometime bartender. He lives in San Francisco.

Available products
Book Published 2014-10-01 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

A cultural history that reads like the collaborative work of a garrulous raconteur, pith-helmeted anthropologist, experimental chef, white-coated scientist, and your favorite drunk uncle. Witty, carefully observed, and deeply reported, The Brewer’s Tale is as much about social rituals and the ordering of our worlds as it is about the pint or six we all like to down on occasion.

An amiable writer and the very best sort of literary drinking buddy. Bostwick will explain why you like Cascade hops (it’s the “spritzy grapefruit blossom nose”) and why you should never pass up an opportunity to sample a beer made with Maris Otter barley. We can’t all go drinking with the beer critic for the Wall Street Journal, but reading The Brewer’s Tale is the next best thing. Amy Stewart

The Brewer’s Tale is a well-written and well-researched papyrus-based time-travel machine that takes readers through the history of mankind’s most impressive creation: BEER!

The Brewer’s Tale will teach you more about beer than you ever thought possible, but it is much more than that. Erudite, curious, and witty, Bostwick ranges effortlessly back and forth across the centuries, spinning an epic that stretches from the temples of Mesopotamia to the beer halls of St. Louis, from cattle cults to Dogfish cults, with countless fascinating detours, digressions, and illuminations in between. By the end, he’ll have you convinced that raising a bottle, can, or pint may be the most deeply human thing you have ever done.