Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity

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Jeffrey M. Pilcher (Professor of History and Food Studies, Professor of History and Food Studies, University of Toronto)

Hopped Up

How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity

Jeffrey M. Pilcher (Professor of History and Food Studies, Professor of History and Food Studies, University of Toronto)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
03 April 2025

General & world history; Social & cultural history; Economic history; Beers

A lively history of beer and brewing traditions as globally connected commodities created through borrowing and exchange from precapitalist times to the present.

Virtually every country has a bestselling or iconic national beer brand: from Budweiser in the United States and Corona in Mexico, to Tsingtao in China and Heineken in Holland. Yet, with the sole exception of Ireland's Guinness, every label represents the same style: light, crisp, clear, Pilsner lager. The global spread of lager can be told as a story of Western cultural imperialism: a European product travels through merchants, migrants, and imperialists to upend local patterns and transform faraway consumers' tastes. But this modern beer is just as much a product of globalization, invented and reinvented around the world.

While distinctive craft beers such as London Porter, India Pale Ale, and Belgian sour ales have been revived by aficionados over the past half-century, they too have globalized through the same circuits of trade, migration, and knowledge that carried lager.

Here eminent food historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher narrates the brewing traditions and contemporary production of beer across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America--from the fermented beverages of precapitalist societies to the present. Over the centuries, he shows, the exchange of technological advances in brewing contributed to regional divergences and convergences in beer varieties, but always in tandem with other social and cultural developments. Unique local products, often homebrewed by women, were transformed into homogenous global commodities as giant brewing factories exported their beers using new refrigeration technology, railroads, and steamships. Industrial food processing helped to recast strong flavors as a source of potential contamination, turning lager, with its clean, fresh taste, into a symbol of hygiene and civilization. Local elites demonstrated their modernity and sophistication by opting for chilled lagers over traditional beverages. These beers became so standardized that most consumers could not tell the difference between them, leading to cutthroat competition that bankrupted countless firms. Over the past half-century, the global concentration of the brewing industry has spawned a reaction among those seeking to return brewing to the local, artisanal, and communitarian roots of the premodern alehouse, but microbrewers have often been driven by the same capitalist quest for profit and expansion. Based on a wealth of multinational archives and industry publications, Hopped Up explores not only how humans have made beer but also how consumers--from nobility and clergy in the past to those raising a pint today--have used beer to make meaning in their lives.

By: Jeffrey M. Pilcher (Professor of History and Food Studies Professor of History and Food Studies University of Toronto)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 147mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 635g
ISBN: 9780197676042
ISBN 10: 0197676049
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 03 April 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Chapter 1 Before Hops Chapter 2 Brewing Capitalism Chapter 3 Inventing Pilsner Chapter 4 Imperial Hops Chapter 5 National Beers Chapter 6 Global Lager Chapter 7 Peak Hops Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Jeffrey M. Pilcher is Professor of History and Food Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Planet Taco: The Global History of Mexican Food (OUP 2012), The Oxford Handbook of Food History (OUP 2012), and Food in World History.

Reviews for Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity

Alcohol-and especially beer-has been at the center of human civilization from its very beginning. This entertaining, informative book uses beer as a powerful lens through which to view various historical trends over recent centuries, especially globalization and the backlash against it. Highly recommended. * Edward Slingerland, Author of Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization * Jeffrey Pilcher takes readers on an encyclopedic beer crawl around the globe and across many centuries. Even if you think you 'know' beer, you will likely find a surprise on every page. A tour de force. * Maureen Ogle, Author of Ambitious Brew: A History of American Beer * There are few products whose history can be traced hand-in-hand with that of civilization on this planet. Beer, then, is quite unique. And there are few authors who have been able to convincingly and authoritatively detail the evolution of beer and brewing from the ancient Fertile Crescent to the complexities of the brewing business in these times of dramatic change. Pilcherâs book is a triumph. * Charlie Bamforth, Senior Quality Advisor, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and University of California, Davis * A much-needed, wide-ranging, and occasionally polemical counterpunch to received wisdom on everything from the rise of pale lager to the spread of craft beer, and the movements, social, economic, political, and technological, that drove developments in beer and brewing over the centuries. Hopped Up will be essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the contemporary global beer scene and how we arrived where we are today. * Martyn Cornell, Author of Around the World in 80 Beers * Hopped Up is packed full of fascinating facts, from the origins of brewing to the rivalries that shaped British industrial beer brewing to the meaning behind the label 'Pilsner.' The stories in Hopped Up illustrate how, time and again, these kinds of interactions between brewers, regulators, and consumers have helped to create new beer cultures. * Foreign Policy * Because Hopped Up covers so much historical territory, I occasionally wished for a bit more depth. Nevertheless, it is a marvelous journey through the story of one of the world's most iconic beverages written by one of the world's most prominent scholars of food and drink. And it is a story that continues. * Susan Gauss, Revista *