The Meaning of Beer

How Our Pursuit of the Perfect Pint Built the World

By: Jonny Garrett

Narrated by: Jonny Garrett

Jonny Garrett, cofounder of the YouTube sensation Craft Beer Channel, travels in search of the deeper cultural impact of brewing—how it has become one of the world’s most important inventions and shaped our lives for millennia.

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

Since its creation thirteen thousand 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 five-thousand-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.

A book I couldn't put down

My one complaint is that the book ended to soon. I was so much enjoying the stories, details about beer and brewing that I didn't want it to be over. It is an amazing story of how brewing beer has affected other aspects of our world. Truly amazing. Jonny Garrett bring the history to life.

Fun and knowledgeable

Great book about the origins of beer and it's use in ancient and current cultures.

How beer made us

Best book so far about how the role beer has played in the development of civilization.

I thought it would be just about beer

I really wanted to like this book. I found the author's YouTube channel about a year or so ago and have really enjoyed many of the videos. Unfortunately, the book isn’t just about beer.

To cut to the chase, the anti-Christian/anti-religion tone popped up early and often. At first I thought it might just be poorly worded. However, then the author felt the need to declare to his audience that he was is an atheist, that he was forced by his parents to go to church as a kid, and that beer has had a bigger influence on history than Jesus (not once but twice) all before halfway through the third chapter. At that point I came to the conclusion that I was wasting minutes of my life to continue listening. All this in a book about BEER!!!

The history of beer, especially in western civilization, has many nexuses with the Christian Church. Apparently the author is very uncomfortable with that fact.