Beer Is Proof God Loves Us

Charles W. Bamforth has been in the brewing industry for 32 years, including 13 years in research, 11 in academia, and 8 with the famed brewing company Bass. After an international search, he was selected as UC Davis’ first Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences. His Web site gives fuller details of his career and much interesting information about beer and brewing, besides: http://www-foodsci.ucdavis.edu/bamforth/.   Throughout his diverse career, he has embraced every dimension of beer, from raw materials and processing, through quality, to beer’s impact on the body. This makes him unique among “beer people” worldwide. He has published many research papers in the peer-reviewed domain, but also those targeted at the layperson, seeking to engage awareness and debate about beer as a product and as part of social fabric. This is his ninth book on beer (one of his earlier ones is in its third edition), and he is generally considered to be one of the world’s leading writers and speakers on beer, from an authoritative, but also humorous and engaging, perspective. In recent years his major research thrust has been on the wholesomeness and public perception of beer.  

Preface     xiii

Introduction     xv

Chapter 1: Global Concerns     1

Chapter 2: The Not-So-Slow Death of a Beer Culture     23

Chapter 3: Barbican, Balls, and Beyond     39

Chapter 4: On The Other Hand: The Re-Birth of a Beer Ethos     49

Chapter 5: So What Is Quality?     65

Chapter 6: Despite the Odds: Anti-Alcohol Forces     79

Chapter 7: Societal Issues     93

Chapter 8: Looks Good, Tastes Good, and…     101

Chapter 9: Whither Brewing?     115

Chapter 10: God in a Glass     123

Conclusion     129

Endnotes     133

Appendix A: The Basics of Malting and Brewing     213

Appendix B: Types of Beer     219

About the Author     223

Index     225