book í Ancient Brews È Patrick E. McGovern
In Ancient Brews Patrick E McGovern takes us on a fascinating journey through time back to the beginning when our ancestors were likely already experimenting with high sugar fruits honey roots and cereals herbs and tree resins to concoct the perfect drinkEarly beverage makers must have marveled at the magical process of fermentation Their amazement would have grown as they drank the mind altering liuids whi For someone who knows very little about alcoholic beverages I found this book to be very interesting and easy to read The author a bit of an archeologistscientistexperimenter joins forces with a craft brewer to discover and possibly recreate ancient beverages 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
Patrick E. McGovern È Ancient Brews kindle
Ancient BrewsCh were to become the medicines religious symbols and social lubricants of later culturesInterweaving archaeology and science McGovern leads us on his adventures to China Turkey Egypt Italy Scandinavia Honduras Peru and Mexico We share in his laboratory discoveries including an early Neolithic “cocktail” from China made of wild grapes hawthorn fruit rice and honey; an elite New World cacao beverage that It’s a rare academic who can write a book that will engage the public 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 Unfortunately author Patrick McGovern of the Penn Museum Biomolecular Archaeology Project fits this stereotype perfectly Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Recreated could have been edited in theory into a series of informative stories about ancient alcoholic beverages Instead it rambles on about the author’s search for such information then circles back to the same historical information repeatedly The book’s premise that McGovern and brewmaster Sam Calagione are recreating ancient brews is dubious since the author repeatedly expounds on how the recipes that they create deviate from the historical findingsSo not true to its premise of recreating ancient beverages the book seems rather pointless It appears to be mostly an advertisement for Sam’s “ancient” Dogfish Head beers which are also personal than historical And the personal history of these two guys is simply not that interesting The book is probably most valuable to home brewers who will skip the text entirely and go straight to the recipes even though they also have little to do with history