Richard Unger's study of beer is more than its title implies. The first chapters review brewing beer from the earliest documented instances in Mesopotamia and Egypt, giving ample attention to the technical problems of fermentation and preservation of potable beverages as presented in scientific literature. They also review the anthropological literature on brewing over time in diverse environments, providing a global setting for the subsequent, more-detailed findings on beer brewing from the twelfth through the early seventeenth century in Europe. An epilogue on the industrialization of brewing in the nineteenth century completes the framework that marks Medieval and Renaissance brewing as the transformational moment in a long and complex history.

The longitudinal approach in fact raises the possibility that brewing rather than the more commonly featured textile, grain, salt, or spice trades may best exemplify the changes brought by an emerging market economy and then by full-fledged capitalist development in Western Europe. By Unger's count, beer underwent at least six distinct phases in somewhat over three centuries, the earlier and faster-paced in the Middle Ages followed by slower changes in the Renaissance centuries (pp. 231–32).

In the first period, twelfth to thirteenth century, urbanization led to specialization and the triumph of brewers in towns over home brewers. The introduction of hops, which replaced gruit (an herb mixture) as a flavoring additive and promoted this transformation, was followed by a spread of the technology that made hopped beer preferable in many different venues. Preservation of the product was a key to success, while taste may or may not have contributed to the triumph of the new hopped product. New markets for hopped beer took considerable time to establish themselves north of the beer-wine boundary line in Europe, yet even that boundary line proved elastic as hopped beer consumption spread south and east. A fourth phase, adjusting existing techniques to the production of this drink, and adjusting beer to the tastes of consumers, followed. Acclimatization to local conditions was followed by a fifth period when the consistency of the product increased and quantities began to satisfy demand. Bremen and Hamburg spear-headed these changes, which spread to Holland, Brabant, Flanders, England, Prussia, Scandinavia, and finally south to Bavaria by the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. With maturity in the trade, innovation switched from the product itself to ways of producing beer that made the most of investment and scale of production. A sixth phase of process innovation created the industry of the seventeenth century, marked by relatively fewer breweries of about equal size in terms of workers employed.

Throughout, taxing policies and urban, state, and royal laws influenced the industry's course of development. Unger's decision to consider brewing guilds in a separate chapter (pp. 207–30) has the effect of downplaying their overall influence on the beer trade's development while emphasizing the consequences of the regulatory and taxing power of various concerned political entities, local to royal.

Along the way Unger relates details of regional differences in adapting to trade in hopped beer. Based upon his earlier study, The History of Brewing in Holland (Leiden: Brill, 2001) he notes that the importation of beer from Bremen and Hamburg disturbed the Count of Holland sufficiently in the fourteenth century that he actually banned hopped beer for a brief time (p. 77). The English resisted the adoption of imported hopped beer, perhaps out of taste preference for their native ale, but in time they too succumbed, and an important brewing industry was established in London. Wherever north German beer traveled it faced taxation.

The figures for consumption that Unger supplies are prodigious. For example, at Stockholm Castle in 1558 the daily rate of consumption per person was 4.5 liters. When rules were revised in 1577 aristocrats received 5.2 liters whereas tradesmen and workers got a mere 3.9 liters (p. 129). Keep in mind, however, that an aristocrat would be obligated to supply drink to his own body servants, who might in turn employ their own servants. Here, as on board ships, beer may have been of low quality and alcoholic content, “small” beer serving as a way to preserve a potable water supply in difficult circumstances. Nonetheless, the amount of beer consumed in Europe appears to have been impressive.

Brewing in noble households, a significant development by the sixteenth century, raises another interesting question. Whereas the Low Countries protected urban brewers from rural competition, England did not (p. 203), and England's noble households brewed in significant quantities. In 1552 one English country house put out over 83,000 liters of beer in a year (p. 112). In Eastern Europe such an assault on urban beer production would likely be chalked up to returning the economy to pre-urban modes of production, yet sixteenth century England is one of the early examples of full-fledged capitalist endeavor in the literature of economic history. Did aristocratic brewing in the rural countryside fail to cut into urban brewers' markets in England? If so, why? Here, as elsewhere in this complex and detailed treatment ranging over five centuries of development, beer brewing may provide a more useful case study of economic change than other industries and trades. This study of the fortunes of improved production and technology and the emergence of elaborate trade networks that adapted to local conditions, then readapted again many times over, is a very welcome addition to the economic history literature.