Big hardback 12x9 reference book of North American beer and beer history. 192 pages including index.

It has been said that bottled beer first arrived in America on the Mayflower and that it went home with the sailors to sustain them on the long journey back to England. Actually, the first commercial brewery had already been established in Mexico and the English had already built the first colonial brewery in Jamestown by 1620. In 1873 the United States alone boasted a record number of 4131 breweries that produced a total of 9 million barrels of beer. Today the number has dwindled to fewer than three dozen. American brewers produce over 95 percent of the 184 million barrels of beer that is consumed in the US, and the top six brewers are responsible for just over 90 percent of that. Anheuser-Busch alone brews 60 million barrels per year, and in fact one out of five beverages consumed in the US each year is a serving of Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser!

"Beers of North America" is a fact-laden chronicle that tells everything you might want to know about beer, brewing and breweries on this continent?all about the biggest brewery (Anheuser-Busch), the oldest brewery (Molson), the smallest (Thousand Oaks Brewery), the northernmost (Pacific Western) and the only brewery started by Benedictine monks and still in operation (Latrobe). It describes the full history behind brewing in the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, it also examines the brewing process and analyzes the various beers by region and the main types of beer, from ale and lager to a steam beer. Brewery tours guide you through a 1940s brewery (Acme), a small brewery (Anchor), the oldest (Molson), the largest (Anheuser-Busch) and a typical Mexican cerveceria (Mocte-zuma) to give you the feel of a variety of brewing operations. All major brands of beer produced are listed within the comprehensive catalog of the present major brewers of North America. The beer that is brewed in North America is brewed for North American taste. North American beer lovers, this book's is for you!

Bill Yenne grew up in Montana, the great grandson of an amateur brewer who emigrated from near Pilsen and settled in South Dakota, where he kept the old-world brewing tradition alive even in the dark days of Prohibition. Yenne graduated from the University of Montana and has traveled extensively in the United States and Europe. During his travels he has always been careful to sample the local brew wherever he goes, and he has also visited many breweries from Amsterdam to Guadalajara. For the past dozen years he has lived with his wife and two children in San Francisco, where he is a professional book designer and cartographer. He has written, designed or illustrated nearly a hundred books on such diverse topics as art history, military history, aerospace and railroad history, including the "The History of the US Air Force, McDonnell Douglas: A Tale of Two Giants" and the "Encyclopedia of US Spacecraft