The marines on the First Fleet refused to sail without it. Convicts risked their necks to get hold of it. Rum built a hospital and sparked a revolution, made fortunes and ruined lives. In a society with few luxuries, liquor was power. It played a crucial role, not just in the lives of individuals like James Squire - the London chicken thief who became Australia's first brewer - but in the transformation of a starving penal outpost into a prosperous trading port. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary sources, Grog offers an intoxicating look at the first decades of European settlement and explores the origins of Australia's fraught love affair with the hard stuff.

In this book you will find many homebrew recipes which will allow you, the craft brewer, to make superb real ales at a fraction of the price of those that are commercially available. With easy-to-follow instructions, both beginners and seasoned mashers can quickly start brewing classics such as Flowers Original Bitter, Belhaven Sixty Shilling Ale, Whitbread Best Bitter, Castle Eden Ale, Wadworth 6X and Marston Moor Porter. All the recipes are based on information supplied by the breweries which, combined with your own skill and quality ingredients from specialist homebrew suppliers, will virtually guarantee superb resulting ales.