Yankee Brew News Archive

Book Review: Secret Life of Beer:

Originally Published: 04/96

By: Brett Peruzzi

Book Review: Secret Life of Beer:

Legends, Lore, & Little-Known Facts

By Alan D. Eames

Storey Publishing, 1995

Pownal, Vermont

$9.95, 203 pages

There he is--staring out from the cover photo/collage, a crown hovering above his fact-filled head--Alan Eames, Brattleboro, Vermont, resident, writer, former publican, beer museum director, self-described beer anthropologist, not to mention what appears to be another self-proclaimed title--The Beer King.

Eames, a prolific writer for a number of beer publications, has long toiled as a tireless promoter of beer and traveled around the globe to research its cultural heritage. Owner of a virtual library of thousands of books about beer published over the centuries, Eames possesses nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the long relationship between mankind and beer. In Secret Life of Beer, he distills this vast amount of anecdotes, quotations, and factoids down into a compelling little collection that provides some historical and cultural perspective on our beverage of choice.

Including some of the material from his 1986 A Beer Drinker's Companion, Eames includes chapters on beer legends and lore, poetry and song, movies, books, and popular culture, and a variety of other categories. Alternately amusing and chilling is the section on temperance and prohibition, where beer is portrayed as the downfall of thousands, a malevolent force capable of destroying a man with a single glass. It's all very funny and quaint until you realize that the neo-prohibitionists are now using similar tactics, by comparing beer, wine, and other legal alcoholic beverages to illegal drugs like cocaine.

For those of you weary of technical brewing manuals and trendy brewpub guides, Secret Life of Beer

provides a welcome alternative for reading about the ancient and wondrous world of beer.