Material Culture Of Breweries

From antique bottles to closely guarded recipes and treasured historic architecture, breweries have a special place in American history. This fascinating book brings the material culture of breweries in the United States to life, from many regions of the country and from early 16th century production to today’s industrial operations. Herman Ronnenberg traces the evolution of techniques, equipment, raw materials, and architecture over five centuries, discusses informal production outside of breweries, and offers detailed information on makers marks, patents, labels, and beer containers that allows readers to identify items in their own collections. Heavily illustrated with photographs and line drawings, this book will be popular with collectors and general readers, and a key reference in historical archaeology, local history, material culture, and related fields.

Contains essays on food and material culture presented at the 2013 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

Publisher description

Researching Craft Beer offers insights for aspiring and present owners of breweries, those looking to open a craft beer bar as well as other beer researchers. The volume offers a prescient assessment of historic, present, and likely future developments within the sector.

This book builds on the highly successful Geography of Beer: Regions, Environment, and Society (2014) and investigates the geography of beer from two expanded perspectives: culture and economics. The respective chapters provide case studies that illustrate various aspects of these themes. As the beer industry continues to reinvent itself and its economic and cultural geographies, this book showcases historical, current, and future trends at the local, regional, national, and international scales.

Beer and Brewing in Medieval Culture and Contemporary Medievalism is a cross-cultural analysis of the role that alcohol consumption played in literature, social and cultural history, and gender roles in the Middle Ages. The volume also seeks to correct or offer new insights into historical beer production. By drawing on the expertise of scholars of history, archaeology, Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Medieval and Early Modern literature, the book shows how historical medieval beer and brewing has influenced nostalgic post-medieval nationalism and romanticized visions of the medieval ale-house seen in beer marketing today. The essays describe alcohol consumption in the Middle Ages across much of Northern Europe, engage with the various myths employed in modern craft beer advertising and beer production, and examine how gender intersects with beer production and consumption. The editors also raise certain critical questions about medievalisms which need to be interrogated, particularly in light of the continued use of the Middle Ages for white supremacist and colonialist ideals. The volume contributes to the study of the popular and historical understandings of the Middle Ages as well the issues of race and gender.

InRe-Constructing Archaeology, Shanks and Tilley aim to challenge the disciplinary practices of both traditional and the `new' archaeology and to present a radical alternative - a critically self-consious archaeology aware of itself as pracitce in the present, and equally a social archaeology that appreciates artefacts not merely as ovjects of analysis but as part of a social world of past and present that is charged with meaning. It is a fresh and invigorating contribution to the emergence of a philosophically and politically informed archaeology.

Beer culture has grown exponentially in the United States, from the days of Prohibition to the signing of HR 1337 by then-President Jimmy Carter, which legalized homebrewing for personal and household use, to the potential hop shortage that all brewers are facing today. This expansion of the culture, both socially and commercially, has created a linguistic and cultural turn that is just now starting to be fully recognized. The contributors of Beer Culture in Theory and Practice: Understanding Craft Beer Culture in the United States examine varying facets of beer culture in the United States, from becoming a home brewer, to connecting it to the community, to what a beer brand means, to the social realities and shortcomings that exist within the beer and brewing communities. The book aims to move beer away from the cooler and taproom, and into the dynamic conversation of Popular and American cultural studies that is happening right now, both within and outside of the classroom.