Tag: Dr. Christina Wade

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Reading Day – Beer Book Review – Devil’s in the Draught Lines

The first beer history book from Dr. Christina Wade and the second one that I have read, The Devil’s in the Draught Lines, about the role of women in British brewing is …..

The sub-title of the book is 1,000 years of women in Britain’s beer history and Dr. Wade covers that time frame admirably. The book is broken into seven sections and the reader is plunged back and forth into history.

I did like that this hook had a particular focus on recent history, weaving in anecdotes from various female beer professionals from brewers to writers to publicans. The recent history strongly counterpoints the past showing both how far society has come but also how agonizingly slow and incomplete that is.

Nowhere is that more plain and startling than the last section of the book which talks about women as just drinkers of beer and the hurdles and taboos placed on it from men who seem to be so weak as to not want to allow women to order full pints! The justifications for mens actions are so pathetic if not that they are still well believed to this very day.

My fondness for the modern should not hide the fact that Dr. Wade has done a heckuva lot of research looking for mentions of ale, then beer and brewing in the past. There must have been some real eureka moments when an old parchment mentioned hops or taverns or anything beer related.

I highly recommend this book and her latest, Filthy Queens. Get both!

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Beer Book Review – Filthy Queens

Combine history and beer and I am in and I quickly pre-ordered Filthy Queens by Dr. Christina Wade that covers the history of beer in Ireland.

My overriding history book guide is that if it is textbooky then it is not good. History, when written well, can be electric. Most school taught history though is dry as dust.

Preamble aside, Wade has put fun into this gallop through Ireland and its brewing history from 300 AD up to 1900. I mean gallop because it is under 200 pages. Part of the reason is that back just over a century ago, a fire broke out in Dublin and the flames consumed a lot of historical documents. Making a hard task even harder and necessitating comparing other countries and making leaps and guesses as to what could have happened in Ireland.

I knew that I was in good hands when an Untappd joke appears on the pages of this book. Wade doesn’t bog you down with dates and instead finds little personal moments where people and beer intersected through the years.

The only down note is that the book ends at 1900. I know I wasn’t going to get modern craft beer in Ireland but I think the boundary end could have been up to pre-WW2 where there are more sources and info that could be passed on.

Every chapter of Filthy Queens had a nugget of learning, if not more and I am sure I will be referencing this book in the future.

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Book Day – A Good Dirty

There is far too little written about beer history that isn’t German White Male heavy.  Thankfully that imbalance is reduced now with the upcoming release of Filthy Queens: A History of Beer in Ireland by Dr. Christina Wade. 

Here is a little about this book: 

“You’ll find an 18th-century courtesan who had a wicked streak of beer snobbery and early medieval monks who wrote beer reviews so terrible, any Untappd fan would feel right at home.

There will be beer tastings, parties, music and wakes.

You’ll meet thieves and murderers, saints and goddesses.

You’ll hear stories of kings and paupers, witches and bishops, Irish, English and Vikings from the Late Iron Age all the way up to the early 20th century.

Oh, and don’t forget the zombies.”

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Draught Devil

The last few years have brought to light women in brewing (finally and belatedly), the latest being The Devil’s in the Draught Lines: 1000 Years of Women in Britain’s Beer History by Dr Christina Wade.

It is from the publishing arm of CAMRA and is described as a “new groundbreaking book that delves into the history of women in brewing, explaining the real reasons why women brewers became marginalised, while also debunking some tired old myths along the way.”

Since I am a beer history fan, you know I will be ordering this one.

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Latin for Brewster

Found another beer and history website for all of us that geek out on the longer arc of beer history. Written by Dr. Christina Wade, Braciatrix covers women in beer history and Wade is both a medieval scholar and BJCP judge so she has some serious bona fides.

Definitely start with her BeerHerstories list and then make sure to be on the look out for her book when that comes out.