Product Description

The original India Pale Ale was pure gold in a glass a semi-mythical beer from the late 18th century, brewed in Britain to travel halfway around the world, through ocean storms and tropical sunshine, and arrive in perfect condition for a long, cold drink on an Indian veranda. And although you can still buy beers with 'IPA' on the label today, most are, frankly, pale imitations of the original. For the first time in 140 years, a keg of traditional Burton IPA has been brewed for a voyage to India by canal and tall ship, around the Cape of Good Hope; and the man carrying it is award-winning beer writer Pete Brown. Brazilian pirates and Iranian customs officials lie ahead, but will he even make it that far, having fallen in the canal just a few miles outside Burton-on-Trent? And if Pete does make it to the other side of the world with 'Barry' the barrel, one question remains: what will the real IPA taste like? Weaving first-class travel writing and new historical research with assured comedy, Hops and Glory is both a rollicking, raucous history of the Raj and a wonderfully entertaining, groundbreaking experiment to recreate the finest beer ever brewed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6723 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
'The tale of his travels and the alcoholic history of the Raj is big beery fun.' --The Times

`A meaty tome and give good value as Brown is both an engaging and witty writer, creating an entertaining work combing travelogue with a decent bit of historical context. It contains a number of beer facts which I will find useful to have at my elbow and is a more than welcome addition to his body of work.'
--London Drinker

Review
'Covers everything from the definitive history of Indian Pale Ale to the chaotic recreation of its 30,000 mile sea journey.'

Review
`The tale of his travels and the alcoholic history of the Raj is big beery fun.'

Customer Reviews

Vastly entertaining history of IPA
This book is many things:

A great travel book which makes you want to visit to places you never considered before. Like Santos, or Burton...
A well researched entertaining history of that most famous of beers, India Pale Ale.
A mind numbing description of the atrocities and excesses of the "Honorable" East India Company whose antics should make any British person deeply ashamed.
A very very laugh-out-loud funny book.

A great read, buy it.

A thrilling read from first page to last
Brown takes you on a wonderful journey both through history and in person that is a real roller coaster of thrills and spills (literally at times!).

The book delivers all that it promises and is already my pick of the year!

One man and his hog(shead)
The book starts very brightly, combining a broad-ranging riff on the beer, the history of brewing and the colonial history of India with an entertaining account of starting a journey halfway around the world.

Unfortunately, once he joins a container vessel in Brazil half way through his journey, the author seems to become becalmed, communicating a boring experience in a boring way, and the book doesn't really recover. There are no particularly interesting characters in India and the grand finale is a damp squib.

Definitely worth getting to read the first half, but not a great travel book.