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‘Tantalising, enlightening and the best reason to raise another glass of beer’ Olly Smith

‘This is one of the most important books ever written about beer’ Mark Dredge

What’s the oldest and most consumed alcoholic beverage on earth? BEER, of course. And it might just be our most important invention.

Since its creation 13,000 years ago, our love of beer has shaped everything from religious ceremonies to advertising, and architecture to bioengineering. The people who built the pyramids were paid in ale, the first fridge was built for beer not food, bacteria was discovered while investigating sour beer, Germany’s beer halls hosted Hitler’s rise to power, and brewer’s yeast may yet be the answer to climate change.

In The Meaning of Beer, award-winning beer writer Jonny Garrett tells the stories of these incredible human moments and inventions, taking readers to some of the best-known beer destinations in the world – Munich and Oktoberfest, Carlsberg Brewery’s historic laboratory, St Louis and the home of Budweiser – as well as those lesser-known, from a 5,000 year old brewery in the Egyptian desert to Arctic Svalbard, home to the world’s most northerly pub.

Ultimately, this is not a book about how we made beer, but how beer made us.

Garrett shares his huge knowledge about beer and its history with joyful enthusiasm and wit. This book will make you laugh, it will make you smarter and it will make you want to drink more beer. ― Ned Palmer, bestselling author of A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles

Annoyingly good. Jonny Garrett succeeds in doing what all good beer writers should: taking a subject that can seem geeky at times and making it compelling to the general reader. ― Pete Brown, bestselling author of Man Walks into a Pub

As fascinating as it is funny, The Meaning of Beer is full of revelations about beer’s vital role in the world. ― Robbie Knox, presenter of JaackMaate Podcast & Soccer AM

Jonny Garrett takes us on a historical, cultural and blissfully hoppy romp through the story of beer. Both sobering and intoxicating, it is far more than a paean to the pie-eyed and is broad enough to travel from Temple Bar to the Thirty Years War. Glass half full. ― Rick Broadbent, bestselling author of That Near-Death Thing and Now Then: The Story of Yorkshire and its People

This is one of the most important books ever written about beer ― Mark Dredge, TV presenter and author of A Brief History of Lager

Tantalising, enlightening and the best reason to raise another glass of beer. ― Olly Smith, award winning wine expert, columnist and author

About The Author

Jonny Garrett

Jonny is a London-based beer writer, author, and filmmaker. As well as writing regularly for Good Beer Hunting, he is the founder of YouTube‘s Craft Beer Channel. He has won several writing and broadcasting awards, including U.K. Beer Writer of the Year in 2019.

Be sure to check out the awesome range of beers that we stock, which would be the perfect way to fully enjoy this great book, you could even drink it from one of the great Craft Beer Channel glasses that we stock.