How did the brewing of beer become a scientific process? Sumner explores this question by charting the theory and practice of the trade in Britain and Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.From an oral culture derived from home-based skills, brewing industrialized rapidly and developed an extensive trade literature, based increasingly on the authority of chemical experiment. The role of taxation is also examined, and the emergence of brewing as a profession is set within its social and technical context.

"'This book is groundbreaking both in its quality and scope in addressing the history of the application of science in brewing. Sumner succeeds in putting brewing practice into the commercial, political, fiscal, social and scientific/technological context of 18th and 19th century Britain. His is a beautifully-written book with a lucid, well structured presentation...scholarly and entertaining. This book is to brewhouse what the revered book by Peter Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England 1700-1830, is to the counting house. There can be no higher praise.'"