This book is free today on Kindle, so I am reposting this review from 2010.
Takeaway: Short, very informative book about the state of beer in the world from a professor of beer. Not really about the soul or really any other religious thoughts on beer.
I have a somewhat mixed relationship with beer. On the one hand, I like beer and I drink it fairly often, although in quite moderate amounts. On the other hand I come from a family that is historically against drinking and from a church background that still has a hard time dealing with alcohol.
My grandmother was raised by an alcoholic father and she dropped out of high school to support her family because he was so often out of work because of his alcoholism. She later went back to high school, graduated from college, became a teacher and raised 8 children. She passed on her strong views of alcohol to most of her children and that passed on to many of the grandchildren.
For church background, I do not remember any strong messages on alcohol other than it was not talked about and not drank publicly. I went to college where we signed a pledge not to drink alcohol as long as we were enrolled. So I did not really start drinking until my mid-20s. (I went to seminary at University of Chicago Divinity School where much of the proceeds of the student coffee shop went to parties with lots of alcohol served. I did not really participate much.) It was really after seminary that I started hanging with a different church crowd that had a more tolerant view of the proper use of alcohol.
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