Filthy Queens: A History of Beer in Ireland

Dr. Christina Wade, an award-winning beer writer and historian who received her doctorate from Trinity College Dublin, specializes in the hidden histories of the brewing trade, particularly the role of women. Published by the innovative small press Nine Bean Rows, Filthy Queens uses beer as a lens to examine Irish history from the Late Iron Age through the early 20th century.

Wade demonstrates how well the story of beer illuminates Ireland's broader history, drawing on sources that span more than two millennia. Her cast ranges from saints like St. Brigid to an 18th-century courtesan with a wicked streak of beer snobbery. Early medieval monks wrote beer reviews that would feel familiar to any modern craft beer enthusiast, while her broader roster includes figures from goddesses to thieves and murderers.

Importantly, Wade pays careful attention to who left the historical records she examines—a crucial consideration in any history, but especially one as complex as Ireland's. (It was an Englishman who called Dublin's alewives "filthy queens.")

Through beer tastings, parties, wakes, and the everyday drinking culture that connected kings and paupers, Wade shows how brewing and drinking practices reflected the social, economic, and political forces shaping Irish life across centuries.

This is both serious historical scholarship and an engaging exploration of how a ubiquitous beverage can reveal the texture of daily life across more than two millennia.

Hardcover.