Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.

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内容简介

A lively history of beer and brewing traditions as globally connected commodities created through borrowing and exchange from precapitalist times to the present.

Virtually every country has a bestselling or iconic national beer brand: from Budweiser in the United States and Corona in Mexico, to Tsingtao in China and Heineken in Holland. Yet, with the sole exception of Ireland's Guinness, every label represents the same style: light, crisp, clear, Pilsner lager. The global spread of lager can be told as a story of Western cultural imperialism: a European product travels through merchants, migrants, and imperialists to upend local patterns and transform faraway consumers' tastes. But this modern beer is just as much a product of globalization, invented and reinvented around the world. While distinctive craft beers such as London Porter, India Pale Ale, and Belgian sour ales have been revived by aficionados over the past half-century, they too have globalized through the same circuits of trade, migration, and knowledge that carried lager.

Here eminent food historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher narrates the brewing traditions and contemporary production of beer across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America--from the fermented beverages of precapitalist societies to the present. Over the centuries, he shows, the exchange of technological advances in brewing contributed to regional divergences and convergences in beer varieties, but always in tandem with other social and cultural developments. Unique local products, often homebrewed by women, were transformed into homogenous global commodities as giant brewing factories exported their beers using new refrigeration technology, railroads, and steamships. Industrial food processing helped to recast strong flavors as a source of potential contamination, turning lager, with its clean, fresh taste, into a symbol of hygiene and civilization. Local elites demonstrated their modernity and sophistication by opting for chilled lagers over traditional beverages. These beers became so standardized that most consumers could not tell the difference between them, leading to cutthroat competition that bankrupted countless firms. Over the past half-century, the global concentration of the brewing industry has spawned a reaction among those seeking to return brewing to the local, artisanal, and communitarian roots of the premodern alehouse, but microbrewers have often been driven by the same capitalist quest for profit and expansion.

Based on a wealth of multinational archives and industry publications, Hopped Up explores not only how humans have made beer but also how consumers--from nobility and clergy in the past to those raising a pint today--have used beer to make meaning in their lives.

本书生动讲述了啤酒及其酿造传统如何通过前资本主义时期至今的借鉴与交流，发展成为全球互联的商品。

几乎每个国家都有其畅销或标志性的国民啤酒品牌：从美国的百威到墨西哥的科罗娜，从中国的青岛啤酒到荷兰的喜力。然而，除了爱尔兰的健力士，所有品牌都代表着同一种风格：清淡、清爽、透明的皮尔森拉格啤酒。 拉格啤酒的全球传播可以被描述为西方文化帝国主义的故事：一种欧洲产品通过商人、移民和帝国主义者的传播，颠覆了当地模式并改变了远方消费者的口味。但这种现代啤酒同样是全球化的产物，在世界各地不断创新与再创新。虽然伦敦波特啤酒、印度淡色艾尔啤酒和比利时酸艾尔等具有特色的精酿啤酒在过去半个世纪里被啤酒爱好者重新复兴，但它们也通过与拉格啤酒相同的贸易、迁移和知识传播渠道实现了全球化。

著名食品史学家杰弗里·M·皮尔彻在本书中叙述了 欧洲、北美、非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲的啤酒酿造传统和当代生产情况——从前资本主义社会的发酵饮料一直到现在。数个世纪以来，他展示了 酿造技术进步的交流如何促进了啤酒品种的地区性差异与趋同，但这始终与其他社会文化发展相互交织。独特的地方产品，往往由女性在家庭中酿造，随着大型啤酒厂利用新的制冷技术、铁路和轮船出口其产品，逐渐转变为同质化的全球商品。工业食品加工助推了人们将浓烈味道视作潜在污染源的观念转变，使清新爽口的拉格啤酒成为卫生与文明的象征。当地精英阶层通过选择冰镇拉格啤酒而非传统饮品来展示其现代性与精致品味。这些啤酒变得如此标准化，以至于大多数消费者无法分辨它们之间的差异，导致激烈的竞争使无数企业破产。在过去半个世纪里，啤酒行业的全球集中化催生了一种反应， 一些人试图将酿造业回归到前现代酒馆的地方性、工艺性和社群性根源，但小型酿酒商往往也被相同的资本主义利润追求和扩张欲望所驱动。

基于大量跨国档案和行业出版物的研究，《跃动的啤酒》不仅探讨了人类如何酿造啤酒，还探讨了消费者——从过去的贵族和神职人员到今天举杯畅饮的人们——如何利用啤酒来为自己的生活赋予意义。

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评论

Alcohol-and especially beer-has been at the center of human civilization from its very beginning. This entertaining, informative book uses beer as a powerful lens through which to view various historical trends over recent centuries, especially globalization and the backlash against it. Highly recommended.

—Edward Slingerland, Author of Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

Jeffrey Pilcher takes readers on an encyclopedic beer crawl around the globe and across many centuries. Even if you think you 'know' beer, you will likely find a surprise on every page. A tour de force.

—Maureen Ogle, Author of Ambitious Brew: A History of American Beer

There are few products whose history can be traced hand-in-hand with that of civilization on this planet. Beer, then, is quite unique. And there are few authors who have been able to convincingly and authoritatively detail the evolution of beer and brewing from the ancient Fertile Crescent to the complexities of the brewing business in these times of dramatic change. Pilcher's book is a triumph.

—Charlie Bamforth, Senior Quality Advisor, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and University of California, Davis

A much-needed, wide-ranging, and occasionally polemical counterpunch to received wisdom on everything from the rise of pale lager to the spread of craft beer, and the movements, social, economic, political, and technological, that drove developments in beer and brewing over the centuries. Hopped Up will be essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the contemporary global beer scene and how we arrived where we are today.

—Martyn Cornell, Author of Around the World in 80 Beers

Hopped Up is packed full of fascinating facts, from the origins of brewing to the rivalries that shaped British industrial beer brewing to the meaning behind the label 'Pilsner.' The stories in Hopped Up illustrate how, time and again, these kinds of interactions between brewers, regulators, and consumers have helped to create new beer cultures.

—Foreign Policy

酒精——尤其是啤酒——从文明伊始就处于人类文明的核心位置。这本既有趣又富有启发性的著作以啤酒为强大的透镜，透视了近几个世纪的各种历史趋势，特别是全球化及其反弹。强烈推荐。

——爱德华·斯林格兰德，《醉了：我们如何啜饮、舞蹈，踉跄着走向文明》作者

杰弗里·皮尔彻带领读者展开了一场环球百科式的啤酒之旅，横跨数个世纪。即使你认为自己"了解"啤酒，也很可能在每一页都能发现惊喜。这是一部杰作。

——莫琳·奥格尔，《雄心勃勃的酿造：美国啤酒史》作者

能够与地球文明史携手同行的产品寥寥无几。啤酒因此独具特色。能够令人信服且权威地详述啤酒和酿造业从古代肥沃新月地区到当今剧变时代复杂啤酒商业演变的作者也屈指可数。皮尔彻的著作是一次重要突破。

——查理·班福思，内华达山脉啤酒公司高级质量顾问，加州大学戴维斯分校

这是一部急需且视野宏大的著作，它对从淡色拉格啤酒的兴起到精酿啤酒的传播，以及数世纪以来推动啤酒与酿造业发展的社会、经济、政治和技术运动等一切既有认知提出了偶有争议的有力反驳。《跃动的啤酒》对于任何想要理解当代全球啤酒格局及其形成过程的人来说都是必读之作。

——马丁·科内尔，《环游世界品80种啤酒》作者

《跃动的啤酒》充满引人入胜的史实，从酿造的起源到塑造英国工业啤酒酿造的竞争，再到"皮尔森"标签背后的含义。书中的故事展示了酿酒商、监管者和消费者之间的这些互动如何一次又一次地帮助创造新的啤酒文化。

——《外交政策》

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作者简介

Jeffrey M. Pilcher is Professor of History and Food Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Planet Taco: The Global History of Mexican Food (OUP 2012), The Oxford Handbook of Food History (OUP 2012), and Food in World History.

杰弗里·M·皮尔彻是多伦多大学历史学和食品研究教授。他著有和主编多部著作，包括《星球玉米饼：墨西哥食品的全球史》（牛津大学出版社，2012年）、《牛津食品史手册》（牛津大学出版社，2012年）和《世界历史中的食物》。