Britain has one of the world's largest and best organised brewing industries, producing a great variety of beers. Over the years it has grown from a cottage industry into a trade which annually contributes a vast amount of revenue to the government. This book looks at the history of beer and brewing from the earliest times to the present day and includes a large number of illustrations which have not been published commercially before. Individual chapters describe the major periods of development: brewing in ancient times, the middle ages, eighteenth-century expansion, mechanisation in the nineteenth century and modern brewing. There is also a description of the brewing process and a detailed glossary of terms.