Hi, I’m Kris

Beer, maps, and endless exploration.

TravelSips is about traveling solo around the world searching for beverages and their stories. I’ve had some fun experiences- like judging a beer competition in Italy, working the bottling line at a brewery in Switzerland, collaborating on a beer for a cartography conference in Copenhagen, meeting up with a Japanese brewer at a beer bar in Tokyo over fried hop flowers, stumbling into and joining the Beijing Homebrew Society. That was all before I started to write about my adventures. It was winning an essay competition where I proposed bringing French culture to the US through beer that prompted this site- and is the first series post here.

Below I am officially joining the John Snow Society at the John Snow Pub in London, summer 2021. Long story; happy ending.

My home base is Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. My father’s Bloody Mary was so loved that I sent the recipe with the thank you notes after his funeral. My grandfather always drank a martini on the first tee- out of a proper glass. My mother is game to try anything I hand her, but prefers Coors and espresso martinis. Sigh.

I wrote a book called Drink Maps in Victorian Britain, is out now both the UK (where it is published by Bodleian Library Publishing) and in the US (where it’s distributed by the University of Chicago Press). I regularly teach courses at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

I’ve been talking about Drink Maps a lot lately- at the Charlbury Beer Festival in England on June 29th and at the International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) in Lyon, France in July, 2024. Before that I presented at the University of British Columbia (March 2023) and at the International Conference on Food and Drink Studies in Tours, France (June 2023). In February 2020 I gave a talk about English Drink Maps at the Boston Public Library; in July 2019 I presented my temperance map research at the International Conference on the History of Cartography in Amsterdam, and in 2018 I gave a talk and curated an exhibit at the Harvard Map Collection called Hang a Left at Prohibition Park: The Intersection of Beer and Cartography.

My personal Instagram is @KrisButler6; the Instagram and Twitter accounts connected to the book are @DrinkMapBook. I’m on the board of the Washington Map Society and post to their Instagram as well, @wmsmapsociety.

I’m hoping you’ll find a drink map and tell me all about it.