Hopped Up

How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity

Jeffrey M Pilcher author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Publishing:9th Jan '25

£26.99

This title is due to be published on 9th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Hopped Up cover

A lively history of beer and brewing traditions as globally connected commodities created through borrowing and exchange from precapitalist times to the present. Virtually every country has a bestselling or iconic national beer brand: from Budweiser in the United States and Corona in Mexico, to Tsingtao in China and Heineken in Holland. Yet, with the sole exception of Ireland's Guinness, every label represents the same style: light, crisp, clear, Pilsner lager. The global spread of lager can be told as a story of Western cultural imperialism: a European product travels through merchants, migrants, and imperialists to upend local patterns and transform faraway consumers' tastes. But this modern beer is just as much a product of globalization, invented and reinvented around the world. While distinctive craft beers such as London Porter, India Pale Ale, and Belgian sour ales have been revived by aficionados over the past half-century, they too have globalized through the same circuits of trade, migration, and knowledge that carried lager. Here eminent food historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher narrates the brewing traditions and contemporary production of beer across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America-from the fermented beverages of precapitalist societies to the present. Over the centuries, he shows, the exchange of technological advances in brewing contributed to regional divergences and convergences in beer varieties, but always in tandem with other social and cultural developments. Unique local products, often homebrewed by women, were transformed into homogenous global commodities as giant brewing factories exported their beers using new refrigeration technology, railroads, and steamships. Industrial food processing helped to recast strong flavors as a source of potential contamination, turning lager, with its clean, fresh taste, into a symbol of hygiene and civilization. Local elites demonstrated their modernity and sophistication by opting for chilled lagers over traditional beverages. These beers became so standardized that most consumers could not tell the difference between them, leading to cutthroat competition that bankrupted countless firms. Over the past half-century, the global concentration of the brewing industry has spawned a reaction among those seeking to return brewing to the local, artisanal, and communitarian roots of the premodern alehouse, but microbrewers have often been driven by the same capitalist quest for profit and expansion. Based on a wealth of multinational archives and...

Alcohol-and especially beer-has been at the center of human civilization from its very beginning. This entertaining, informative book uses beer as a powerful lens through which to view various historical trends over recent centuries, especially globalization and the backlash against it. Highly recommended. * Edward Slingerland, Author of Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization *
Jeffrey Pilcher takes readers on an encyclopedic beer crawl around the globe and across many centuries. Even if you think you 'know' beer, you will likely find a surprise on every page. A tour de force. * Maureen Ogle, Author of Ambitious Brew: A History of American Beer *
There are few products whose history can be traced hand-in-hand with that of civilization on this planet. Beer, then, is quite unique. And there are few authors who have been able to convincingly and authoritatively detail the evolution of beer and brewing from the ancient Fertile Crescent to the complexities of the brewing business in these times of dramatic change. Pilcherâs book is a triumph. * Charlie Bamforth, Senior Quality Advisor, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and University of California, Davis *
A much-needed, wide-ranging, and occasionally polemical counterpunch to received wisdom on everything from the rise of pale lager to the spread of craft beer, and the movements, social, economic, political, and technological, that drove developments in beer and brewing over the centuries. Hopped Up will be essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the contemporary global beer scene and how we arrived where we are today. * Martyn Cornell, Author of Around the World in 80 Beers *

ISBN: 9780197676042

Dimensions: 147mm x 152mm x 33mm

Weight: 635g

352 pages