A review by samuelbeer
Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-created by Patrick E. McGovern

3.0

I'm feeling generous. The discussion of the methods used to construct hypotheses of what sort of beverages might have been made/consumed in the past and of the beverages themselves was interesting. However, the re-imaginations of the beverages seemed pretty clearly to me to have been for pleasure and/or profit, the concern with being able to sell the beverages reflected, for example, in concern with TTB regulations. This belied the recurrent claim that the brews were made for scientific reasons. Additionally, it was far from engaging as travel writing--it read like an editor saw an early manuscript and demanded more local color, which was reluctantly added in in the most cursory way as an afterthought. And surely there's a way to write about the interesting and longstanding collaboration that McGovern has had with Dogfish Head without coming off as such a commercial. 2.5 stars.