Pete Brown has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is Miracle Brew: Hops, Barley, Water, Yeast and the Nature of Beer.
The Apple Orchard
Summary
An orchard is not a field. It's not a forest or a copse. It couldn't occur naturally; it's definitely cultivated. But an orchard doesn't override the natural order: it enhances it, dresses it up. It demonstrates that man and nature together can - just occasionally - create something more beautiful and (literally) more fruitful than either could alone. The vivid brightness of the laden trees, studded with jewels, stirs some deep race memory and makes the heart leap. Here is bounty, and excitement.
©2016 Pete Brown (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
Shakespeare's Local: Six Centuries of History, One Pub
Summary
Welcome to the George Inn near London Bridge: a cosy, wood-panelled, galleried coaching house a few minutes' walk from the Thames. Consider this: who else has made this their local over the last 600 years? Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims almost certainly drank in the George on their way to Canterbury. Shakespeare may have popped in from the nearby Globe, and we know that Dickens definitely did. Mail carriers changed their horses here, while sailors drank here before sailing. The pub, as Pete Brown points out, is the 'primordial cell of British life' and in the George he has found the perfect case study. All life is here, from murderers, highwaymen and ladies of the night to gossiping pedlars and hard-working clerks. So sit back and enjoy a tour through six centuries of history, through the stories of everyone that ever drank in one pub.
©2012 Peter Brown (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Hops and Glory
Summary
The original India Pale Ale was pure gold in a glass; a beer specially invented, in the 19th century, to travel halfway around the world and arrive in perfect condition for a cold drink on an Indian verandah. But although you can still buy beers with 'IPA' on the label they are a pale imitation of the original. For the first time in 140 years, a keg of Burton IPA has been brewed with the original recipe for a voyage to India by canal and tall ship, and the man carrying it is Pete Brown, Britain's best beer writer. Brazilian pirates and Iranian customs officials lie ahead, but will he make it that far, having fallen in the canal a few miles out of Burton? And if Pete does make it to the other side of the world, what will the real IPA taste like? Weaving first-class travel writing with assured comedy, this is both a rollicking history of the Raj and an entertaining, groundbreaking experiment to recreate the finest beer ever produced.
©2010 Pete Brown (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Miracle Brew: Hops, Barley, Water, Yeast and the Nature of Beer
Summary
Most people know that wine is created by fermenting pressed grape juice and cider by pressing apples. But although it's the most popular alcoholic drink on the planet, few people know what beer is made of. In lively and witty fashion, Miracle Brew dives into traditional beer's four natural ingredients: malted barley, hops, yeast, and water, each of which has an incredible story to tell. From the Lambic breweries of Belgium, where beer is fermented with wild yeasts drawn down from the air around the brewery, to the aquifers below Burton-on-Trent, where the brewing water is rumored to contain life-giving qualities, Miracle Brew tells the full story behind the amazing role each of these fantastic four?a grass, a weed, a fungus, and water?has to play. Celebrated U.K. beer writer Pete Brown travels from the surreal madness of drink-sodden hop-blessings in the Czech Republic to Bamberg in the heart of Bavaria, where malt smoked over an open flame creates beer that tastes like liquid bacon. He explores the origins of fermentation, the lost age of hallucinogenic gruit beers, and the evolution of modern hop varieties that now challenge wine grapes in the extent to which they are discussed and revered. Along the way, listeners will meet and drink with a cast of characters who reveal the magic of beer and celebrate the joy of drinking it. And almost without noticing we'll learn the naked truth about the world's greatest beverage.
©2017 Pete Brown (P)2017 Chelsea Green Publishing