The most exciting beer book for some time was released this summer.

Subtitled ‘One man’s search for the beer that built the British Empire’, Hops and Glory is a real-life travelogue that explains the colourful, if chequered, history of India pale ale by following in its footsteps, taking a keg of beer on a hazardous modern journey from IPA’s home in Burton-on-Trent all the way to Calcutta.

The one man brave (or should it be reckless?) enough to take up the challenge was Pete Brown (pictured right).

Much as Michael Palin discovered some 20 years ago, when he attempted a modern-day equivalent of Phileas Fogg’s voyage Around the World in 80 Days, Brown’s ambitions are handicapped by the fact that the old trade routes have long disappeared, making the re-creation of IPA’s journey difficult to say the least.

A lack of shipping, new customs restrictions and other 21st-century hurdles call for more than a degree of ducking and diving in the planning and execution of his mission, and of course make for compelling reading. But they also take a heavy personal toll on the author.

When I first heard that Pete was planning this life-changing journey, I suggested that what he really needed, if the book was to be a success, was for everything to go wrong.

I feel a bit guilty when I catch up with him after publication and discover that plenty did indeed go wrong, sometimes badly so, even to the temporary detriment of his own sanity.

Barnsley Boy

Born in Barnsley in 1968, Brown’s involvement in the world of beer started – by his own admission – badly. His first experience, he reckons, was a can of Kestrel Lager poured into a glass a quarter filled with lime juice.

His taste did not improve for some time. He drank Castlemaine XXXX as an underage schoolboy, before eventually graduating to cask John Smith’s and Tetley’s.

‘We didn’t call it real ale,’ he reveals. ‘We didn’t know what the difference was. We just knew that handpulled was better.’

A relapse at university in St Andrews, Scotland, saw copious pints of Tennent’s Lager downed, happily not enough to prevent his graduation in Management Studies with International Relations. Then finding that his degree didn’t open any doors, he turned to advertising as a potential career, and his beer education began in earnest.

His first job was with soap powder, as part of the team behind Danny Baker’s Daz Doorstep Challenge. He followed this with contributions to campaigns about margarine, bleach and building societies before a contract with Whitbread turned up, to plan adverts for both Stella Artois and Heineken.

The work opened his eyes to the wider context of beer, as he analysed social trends in preparation for the campaigns. He soon realized that no one had published a book that covered the history of beer and its role in civilization, so he toyed with the idea of writing one himself.

‘It was around the time of that book The History of Cod, which obviously wasn’t a history of cod,’ he says. ‘It was using cod as a vehicle to talk about some amazing stories in human development. My initial plan was to write a chapter or two on the history of beer and then add a chapter on each of the great lager advertising campaigns of the last 30 years.'

'In the end there was one chapter on brand marketing and the rest of it is the history of beer and pubs, because that became the more interesting story when I got into it.’

Direction Change

The book was published as Man Walks into a Pub, and Pete’s life changed direction overnight. He kept on working in advertising to pay the bills, but now had licence to travel the world drinking beer, as demonstrated in his second work, Three Sheets to the Wind.

This time around, he looked at the social context of beer in other countries, and clearly had a lot of fun in the process.

The idea of his third book, the aforementioned Hops and Glory, came to him, as revealed early in the text, while sitting in a pub. He’s a little embarrassed about that.

‘If I was going to jazz it up a little bit, I would not have chosen that, because it’s such a hackneyed format. The idea of blokes, after a few beers, coming up with a wacky travel scheme has been done to death. But that’s the way it happened.’

Exhilarating and Terrifying

The prospect was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

‘When the idea hit me it was with resignation and despair, rather than joy and euphoria. It scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know if it was possible to get ships. I didn’t know if I’d ever get a brewer to create a beer for me. I didn’t know if I’d be able to find out anything else about the history of IPA. But there was no choice in the matter.’

‘Judged in terms of writing a book about beer, it was a great idea. Judged in terms of the impact it would have on my life, it was a terrible idea. It created enormous damage to my life, so I feel really weird about it, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I suspect it’s the best thing I ever will write and I’m enormously proud of it.’

Brown’s epic tale begins when he collects a container of IPA brewed at the White Shield Brewery in Burton and sets out to transport it by dray, canal boat, train, cruise liner, tall ship and cargo vessel all the way to India.

A plane is used for one small part of the journey, to fit in with his prior work commitments, but otherwise it’s as close to authentic a voyage as is possible to re-create in modern times.

In keeping with the most enthralling travel writing, disaster lurks around every corner, hiding behind all the colourful characters encountered en route, as Pete, wracked with doubt as to the value of the voyage and his wisdom in embarking upon it, quakes in his bunk at night. It is a journey and experience of sublime highs and desperate lows.

“The best bit was being on a tall ship in the middle of the Atlantic, steering it at 3am, with shooting stars above you, phosphorescence in the sea behind you, and flying fish going over the bows. The worst bit has got to be in the middle of the Indian Ocean, having a breakdown, going utterly insane and just not knowing what I was going to do.'

'I’d run out of DVDs to watch, I’d run out of beer to drink and, once you’ve been writing for 12 hours a day and it’s still early evening, you’re sitting there with nothing to do. It’s dark outside and some nights you can’t even have the lights on because of the pirate threat.’

It’s at this point that even the most envious of readers sit back and let out a huge sigh of relief that they are not on the journey themselves. Pete, however, is upbeat about this traumatic time and pulls out plenty of positives.

‘I came out of it thinking I’m really glad I had that experience. I’m grateful for it because I know myself better. It was horrible at the time but I got to the end of it, landed in India and nothing after that fazed me. I could take everything in my stride.’

He certainly looks sane enough as he explains to me that ideas for more books in a similar vein are now in the pipeline. But surely only a madman would ever put himself through all that again?

Hops and Glory, by Pete Brown, is published by Macmillan at £14.99. Buy now at a discount from amazon.co.uk.
Jeff’s review of Hops and Glory can be read in Beer Book Reviews.