Pilsner: How the Beer of Kings Changed the World

by Tom Acitelli

On the night of April 17, 1945, Allied planes dropped more than a hundred bombs on the Burghers’ Brewery in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, destroying much of the birth-place of pilsner, the world’s most popular beer style and the bestselling alcoholic beverage of all time. Still, workers at the brewery would rally so they could have beer to toast their American, Canadian, and British liberators the following month. It was another twist in pilsner’s remarkable story, one that started in a supernova of technological, political, and demographic shifts in the mid-1800s and that continues to unfold today anywhere alcohol is sold. Tom Acitelli’s Pilsner: How the Beer of Kings Changed the World tells that story.

Pilsner shatters myths about pilsner’s very birth and about its immediate parent-age. Acitelli, author of the acclaimed craft beer history The Audacity of Hops and the James Beard Award finalist American Wine, also pops the top on new insights into the pilsner style and into beer in general through a character-driven narrative that shows how pilsner influenced everything from modern-day advertising and marketing to immigration to today’s craft beer movement.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Beer, Brewing, Food

320 pages, Paperback

Published August 4, 2020

About the author

Tom Acitelli is the author of The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution (Chicago Review Press; May 2013; 416 pages), the first history book of the American craft beer movement. He is a regular contributor to Town & Country and is the founding editor of Curbed Boston. He was a senior editor at The New York Observer for five years; and has also written for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg View, the New York Post, Redbook and All About Beer, the leading trade magazine for the American brewing industry. He earned degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Columbia Journalism School; and lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife, an art historian.

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I teach a class on this topic (complete with tasting flight) and it was gratifying for this to feel so much like my own material. That said... my class is only 90 minutes, so Acitelli went into far more detail than I could possibly have time for. And I learned a lot while I was at it. (Always so much to learn!)

Short version: the modern history of beer is inextricably linked to the invention and popularity of pilsener -- and this book does it justice.

[Dan Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the beer it describes, this book is crisp, clear, well-crafted and enjoyable. It explains the history of how the pale lager climbed to the top of a mountain of other beers brewed from other traditions. The book presents the economic history blended with biographical information on the people who were guiding the businesses.

My only complaint about this book is that it was not quadruple the length and more ambitious in its scope. Don't get me wrong - the book does not promise what I want, and the author set out his scope clearly.

If you are looking for homebrew recipes and information on how the style can be duplicated, you will be disappointed. If you want loving travelogue descriptions of enjoying the beer in European pubs or Asian cities, you won't find them. You won't even find authoritative breakdowns of the various types of pale lager - he treats them all as pilsners, without parsing the distinctions among the Beer Judge Certification Program's variants.

Like the beer it describes, this book delivers plenty, but doesn't try to light up every taste bud in your mouth (or facet of your interest). Tom Acitelli is either supremely self-disciplined or has an editor who should be cloned. I recommend this book highly, and look forward to reading others to quench my curiosity.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5…Nothing super-earth shattering here. Pretty encyclopedic survey of the Pilsner, and therefore the lager, and by necessity the original centuries dominated by ales. From the glory decades to the more recent corporate decline of the Pilz, with a necessary dip into late 20th Century craft. Maybe the sometimes chaotic, whip-around the globe, yet manageably sized chapters were required by the chronological structure, but sometimes, I wanted to hang in a continent for a bit longer, once America and Europe were equal components.

The one section that I found most new and enjoyable (though surely I’d come across it before) was the contest at the Columbian Exhibition…where depending on the week, either the King of Beers or Pabst Blue Ribbon reigned. I still need a revisit to The Devil in the White City…maybe I forgot a chapter.

[Jacek Bartczak]

The history of Pilsner and the beer industry - from monks to global corporations. Don't make my mistake and choose ebook instead of the audio version. Some parts were full of "beer details" - those parts were difficult (at least for me to follow).

Pilsner, Heineken, Carlsberg, SABMiller and a couple of others - the book covers the origins of those companies. And shows how wars, prohibition and the invention of cans and refrigerators impacted the industry.

What kind of details you can expect from this book? Mostly details about kind of beers (differences between them etc.) and stories from hundreds of years ago.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was so interesting to look at a huge breadth of world history through the lens of a very specific topic. Incredible to map out the impact of this particular beer style on the course of history, as well as history's impact on the beer's change over time.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a former beer drinker, I found this book very interesting. It was a fun travel log through the history of beer, making the characters and beer itself alive with every turn of the page. Beer lovers will love reading this book.

[Josh Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed reading this. Provided great insite into the origins of Pilsner and its subsequent world takeover. Also provided great perspective into how, what we've come to call, macro breweries came to be and how light beer's dominance is relatively recent.