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23+ Werken 391 Leden 7 Besprekingen Favoriet van 1 leden

Over de Auteur

Dr. Charles Bamforth has been active within the brewing industry for 25 years. He is the first Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Previously he was Deputy Director-General of Brewing Research International in Surrey, England, and toon meer Visiting Professor of Brewing at the International Center for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. He also enjoyed almost eight years as Research Manager for Bass, the famed brewing company from Burton-on-Trent, England, and as Quality Assurance Manager at one of its major breweries. He lives in California with his wife, Diane. They have three children aged 22, 18, and 8. He has written extensively on his professional specialty, beer, and about his other passion, socce toon minder

Werken van Charles Bamforth

Beer: Health and Nutrition (2004) 14 exemplaren
Everyday Guide to Beer (2019) 11 exemplaren
In Praise of Beer (2020) 6 exemplaren
Brewing: New Technologies (2006) 6 exemplaren
Scientific Principles of Malting & Brewing (2006) — Auteur — 4 exemplaren

Gerelateerde werken

The Oxford Companion to Beer (2011) — Advisory Board — 197 exemplaren

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Only middling as far as Great Courses go. Bamforth is engaging and jovial, if not as polished a speaker as presenters in other Great Courses offerings. "The Perfect Pour" is the stand-out lecture, and the lectures on the history of beer and buying and storing are also very good. The final lecture, "Beer and Human Health", is generally informative but unsurprisingly not free of bias. Unfortunately, many of the other lectures are little more than commercials for Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, "Pairing Beer with Food" being especially egregious in this regard. Final verdict: Everyday Guide to Beer is worth checking out if you're interested in the subject and can stream it for free, but it's probably not worth paying for something that's half advertisement.… (meer)
 
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Trismegistus | Oct 26, 2020 |
This book popped up as free for Kindle one day in 2010 and I downloaded it because it reminded me of this Keith Walters post on alcohol and Scripture. I hadn't thought about it much until we were in Turkey, where we befriended a Lutheran family via our church, the husband of which is an avid home brewer (as is apparently a requirement of Lutheran males). He hosted beer-brewing & NFL-watching nights attended by many expat Christians and curious Turks, good times had by all.

Bamforth is a PhD chemist from the U.K. who holds a chair endowed by Anheuser-Busch at UC Davis. He has worked in research and development in the beer industry and has chronicled its development over the last few decades. To my surprise, the book was nothing about God at all, it's simply a treatise on the art and economics of beer brewing.

Bamforth chronicles the merger/buy-outs of the beer industry as centuries-old companies swallow other centuries-old companies. He discusses the economies of scale and what they mean for brewing. He explains some of the history, the quality control, and health benefits of beer. (Beer has many more potential benefits for you than your Coke, Dr. Pepper, etc.) He also provides some anecdotes from his international travels about the various types of beer being produced abroad.

Beer has been brewed for thousands of years (Bamforth claims the Sumerians were first, but this NY Times article last month put forth even earlier dates) and anthropologists consider it to be important to the development of civilization. Bamforth laments that such a sophisticated drink is now marketed as a juvenile product to college-aged delinquents:

"It certainly has been an uphill battle for me endeavoring to spread messages of moderation and that beer ought to be a beneficial, welcome, and wholesome aspect of an adult’s lifestyle when I am confronted by imagery of flatulent horses and soccer ball juggling turtles as an aide to selling beer." (Loc. 1260)

Bamforth has been annoyed by the neo-prohibitionist culture in the U.S., and does spend a chapter or so defending beer consumption from its critics. He points out the irony that the original colonists migrating from England believed that alcohol consumption was essential for their survival (the title of the book is from a Benjamin Franklin quote). Beer was actually not in the crosshairs of early prohibitionists, seen as not a problem compared to stronger alcohol. (The author would find Kentucky's free-smoking but anti-alcohol laws quite annoying, I'm sure). Bamforth is Episcopalian by upbringing. He offers a quote from C.S. Lewis, who was known to enjoy a pint in his day:

"An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning." (Loc. 1741)

But for Dr. Bamforth, beer isn't his passion-- it's his job. I appreciated his candidness that although he is a renowned expert on the subject, he could take it or leave it:

"I work with beer as I do the thing that fills me with joy: teach. In truth, it would not matter what I was teaching. My joy is in the performing, the transfer of information."


I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. If you want to know a lot more about beer than you currently do, check it out. Alas, it appears it's no longer free for Kindle.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
justindtapp | 1 andere bespreking | Jun 3, 2015 |
A missed opportunity. Bamforth's technical knowledge and love of beer is obvious, but I doubt he'll do much to convert people from wine to beer. He starts with the premise that beer ought to be as highly regarded as wine and proceeds to spend the totality of the book cramming that point down the reader's throat. Note that I think he's spot on; beer is superior to wine in countless ways. At the same time, his evangelism was so forceful, I found myself thinking that perhaps the gulf isn't as wide as all that and there's more to wine than I originally thought. (For the record, there isn't.) If you're a beer fan, there's little in here that you don't already know. For the wine enthusiast, the smug tone will likely rub you the wrong way. On to "Tasting Beer", where I get to wallow in a technical analysis of the world's greatest drink.… (meer)
 
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BrianFannin | 2 andere besprekingen | May 31, 2013 |
"Let us not forget that a major brewing company will be producing beer 24 hours a day for 365 days of the year. There is no concept of a crush for them: all hell let loose for a few weeks after the grapes enter the winery. It is always a mystery to me what those wine guys do for the rest of the year."

Ho smesso di leggere qui. Ho capito che ti piace la birra (piace pure a me) e vuoi un po' riabilitarne l'immagine, ma se non hai la più pallida idea di cosa succede in una cantina (come se tutto consistesse nel prendere l'uva e pigiarla) non sei mica obbligato a scriverci un libro al riguardo.… (meer)
 
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Tonari | 2 andere besprekingen | May 19, 2013 |

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Statistieken

Werken
23
Ook door
1
Leden
391
Populariteit
#61,941
Waardering
½ 3.5
Besprekingen
7
ISBNs
69
Talen
2
Favoriet
1

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