FREE ANCIENT BREWS REDISCOVERED AND RE- CREATED 1ST EDITION PDF Patrick E McGovern | 9780393253801 | | | | | Patrick Edward McGovern - Wikipedia Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Ancient Brews by Patrick E. McGovern. Sam Calagione Foreword. Interweaving archaeology and science, Patrick E. Humans invented heady concoctions, experimenting with fruits, honey, cereals, tree resins, botanicals, and more. McGovern describes nine extreme fermented beverages of our ancestors, including the Midas Touch from Turkey and the year-old Chateau Jiahu from Neolithic China, the earliest chemically identified alcoholic drink yet discovered. For the adventuresome, homebrew interpretations of the ancient drinks are provided, with matching meal recipes. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published October 2nd by W. Norton Company first published More Details Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition Editions 5. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Ancient Brewsplease sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-created. May 24, Darcey rated it it was ok Shelves: books-i-ownhistorycookbooks-and-food-history. This was a book about the history and archaeology of alcoholic beverages. In theory, this should have been really interesting, but in practice, the book was really poorly written. The author, Pat McGovern, is a chemical archaeologist; he studies the history of alcoholic beverages by analyzing the chemical residues in ancient pottery. In addition to studying ancient beverages, he's also Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition to recreate them, working with Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head breweries. Together, they've made a line of This was a book about the history and archaeology of alcoholic beverages. Together, they've made a line of "Ancient Ales", which you can buy at certain liquor stores. The book was organized around these Ancient Ales; each chapter corresponded to one of them. The general format of these chapters was that McGovern would explain the archaeological discoveries that had led to the recreation often including the story of his own archaeological workand then he would talk about the process that he and Calagione went through to adapt these archaeological findings into a new beer. Some of the chapters seemed decently well-written, but others just utterly failed to cohere. In general, the writing didn't seem to follow any clear line of discussion, and I had trouble figuring out what point McGovern was trying to make. He threw in miscellaneous archaeological and autobiographical facts, seemingly at random, in a way that felt more like it was about padding the word count than providing useful information to the reader. Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition felt like one of those books that happens when the publisher calls up the author and says "Hey, can you write a book on this topic by this deadline? Alternatively, maybe McGovern was just drunk the entire time he wrote it. The chapters at the end seemed least coherent. They Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition about Theobroma, a chocolate- based drink, and Chicha, a corn-based one. The random facts seemed to be hiding the fact that actually, they didn't have much archaeological info to go on for these drinks. It sounded like we really don't have that much archaeological evidence for Chicha. And although there's lots of archaeological evidence of chocolate use, the book didn't make it clear Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition any of those chocolate-based drinks had been alcoholic and it Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition like maybe the writing was trying to cover up the fact that they weren't. So anyway, this book was probably not worth reading, and I wish I'd gotten this same info out of online articles instead. But I did learn a few bits of actual factual content: - Up until recently, the Reinheitsgebot a German beer purity law which says that beer can only be made from barley malt, hops, and Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition has held sway. Craft breweries, with their adventurous beers, didn't really become a thing until around the year I hadn't realized this, since I wasn't anywhere near 21 at that time. But McGovern hypothesizes that humans have known about and deliberately consumed alcohol since early in our evolutionary history. To support this, he argues that all sorts of animals deliberately seek out alcoholically fermented fruit. Anyway, it's definitely just a hypothesis, and a somewhat romantic and fanciful one at that. But it's one I'd never considered before. But according to McGovern, the ancients wanted beverages with a high alcohol content, because they like us appreciated alcohol's psychoactive properties. Rather than making wine, mead, or beer, they'd throw grapes, honey, and grain all together in one fermenting vessel. For whatever reason probably just to make them Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition coolMcGovern calls these hybrid beverages "extreme fermented beverages". But there Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition one, Midas Touch, which did seem to be a faithful recreation. It was based on residues found in an ancient Phrygian tomb, which either belonged to the historical King Midas, or, more likely, to his father King Gordias who is said to have tied the Gordian knot. Apparently, this king was buried with a huge amount of food and drink, and it ended up being very well-preserved, so archaeologists were able to study the residues in depth. It was a combined wine-mead-beer. Prior to them, everyone was making these "extreme fermented beverages" out of anything they could find. But the Canaanites and Phoenicians made wine, and traded it to their neighbors in the Mediterranean; it became a very high-prestige item. They would get other cultures interested in the wine via trade, and then they would come and help those cultures develop their own vineyards and wineries. In doing so they spread both their grapevines and their wine culture around the Mediterranean, thus displacing earlier beverages. The book talks about the traditional beer of the Egyptians, and the traditional drink of the Etruscans, which were two of the beverages that got displaced. Interestingly, the Phoenician wines were made with tree resins possibly as a preservative. The book made two mistakes which I consider unforgivable, and which contribute to the low rating. The first was that it described the Etruscans as a Celtic people which spoke a non-Indo- European language, which is a contradiction. The second is that it used the word "quixotic" as if it meant a combination of quirky and exotic. I do not recommend reading this book. Logging the last of my reads today so that they'll count towards this year's Reading Challenge totals. Full review coming in early For someone who knows very little about alcoholic beverages, I found this book to be very interesting and easy to read. They travel all over the world, examine ancient artifacts, checking local lore and history, analyze anything and everything ancient that might help them discover what the ancients drank, what their brews were made of and how they made For someone who knows very little about alcoholic beverages, I found this book to be very interesting and easy to read. They travel all over the world, examine ancient artifacts, checking local lore and history, analyze anything and everything ancient that might help them discover what the ancients drank, what their brews were made of and how they made them. Much is conjecture, extrapolation and informed guesswork. Each recreated beverage is presented with accompanying foods. A bit of history is thrown in to humanize their brews and support their choices. I found the great variety of ingredients and brewing methods, aging vessels and serving containers especially fascinating. I think it was likely the narrator of Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition audio book that made the material seem so very dry. I mean, this is fascinating stuff, how ancient peoples made booze and how Dogfish Head recreated them. But, it just seemed to lumber on and my motivation to even continue listening to it waned. I mean, he couldn't even pronounce things correctly and had this Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition and Certified Cicerone genuinely confused about some of the information. So, ima blame the narrator and not the material for the rating I think it was likely the narrator of Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created 1st edition audio book that made the material seem so very dry. So, ima blame the narrator and not the material for the rating ; Most academics have no sense of drama, of slowly revealing a story. Instead, most rely upon rote statements and repetition, as if teaching to a particularly dull class. The worst tell endless stories that star none other than themselves to prove their points. Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Recreated could have been edited, in theory, into a series of informative stories about ancient alcoholic beverages. NPR Choice page The lowest-priced brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging where packaging is applicable. Packaging should be the same as what is found in a retail store, unless the item is handmade or was packaged by the manufacturer in non-retail packaging, such as an unprinted box or plastic bag.