What's the oldest and most consumed alcoholic beverage on earth? Beer of course. And it might
just be our more important invention. Since its invention 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.
