Provides an overview of medieval and modern beer culture across anthropology, archaeology, history, and literature

Analyzes the use of pre-modern history and culture in modern beer marketing

Questions beer medievalisms and their relationship to gender and race

Part I: Brewing (historical perspectives on the production of beer and ale in Medieval Europe).- Conan Doyle, Ale and Beer in Early Medieval England: A Survey of Evidence.- Mark Edwin Peterson, Reliving the Drink: The Difficulties of Medieval Beer History versus the Desire for Historical Beer.- Susan Verberg, Reconstructing medieval gruit ale: separating facts from fiction.- Part II Drinking (on the cultural meanings of beer in the Middle Ages; medieval drinking culture).- Richard Fahey, The Wonders of Ebrietas: Drinking in Anglo-Saxon Riddles.- Fernando Guerrero, Sacred Beer: Pre-Christian Cultural and Economic Perceptions of Alcoholic Beverages in Medieval Norwegian and Icelandic Liturgy.- Randy Schiff, Alcohol, Community, and Chaucer's Pardoner: Ale as a Populist Antidote to Alienating Avant-Gardism.- Part III: Gender (on beer and women.).- Rosemary O'Neill, Devil's Brew: Alwives and the Medieval Antecedents of Infernal Imagery in Contemporary Beer Marketing.- Carissa M. Harris, From Tapsters to Beer Wenches: Women, Alcohol, and Misogyny Then and Now.- Rebecca Straple, 'Far From Drunk With Ale': Women, Alcohol, and Power in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature.- Part IV Ludic Medievalism (on the Middle Ages as a space of play in modern perceptions of beer).- Noelle Phillips, Playing with Vikings: Ludic Medievalism in Norse-Themed Breweries.- Anna Czarnowus,'Harsh, violent, muddy,' or Ale and Beer in Adam Thorpe's Hodd.- Part V Nostalgic Medievalisms (on uses of the medieval past in the context of beer to bolster nationalist projects).- Mary Bateman, Nostalgic medievalism in Peter Mews' Ex-Ale-Tation of Ale (1663).- John A. Geck, Codex Cervisarius: A Pilgrim's Guide to the Medievalism of Craft Beer in Quebec and Ontario.- Robert Saunders, Latvia's Labietis: Modern Craft Brewing across the Pagan-Christian Threshold.- Donovan Tann, 'God wotte what liquor': Brewing History and Memory in Early Modern England.- Afterword.