DUMMERSTON, Vt. – Alan D. Eames, a beer historian and author whose globe-trotting research into exotic brews and their origins earned him the nickname “The Beer King,” has died. He was 59.

Eames, author of “Secret Life of Beer” and “A Beer Drinker’s Companion,” died in his sleep of respiratory failure Feb. 10, according to his wife, Sheila.

“He used to say that beer is food, nourishing to the body and the soul,” she said.

The son of a Harvard-educated anthropologist, Eames grew up in Gardner, Mass., and was fascinated with horror books and magic tricks as a boy.

His beer forays began in 1970s after he bought a Templeton, Mass., country store and began stocking exotic beers, turning it into a kind of mecca for aficionados. He later founded Three Dollar Dewey’s Ale House in Portland, Maine.

But he made his mark in publishing and travel, writing about the role of beer in ancient and traditional societies and traveling to Europe, Africa and South America for his research.

Once, during a trip to South Africa, he taste-tested a rare dark beer in a small village and liked it so much he asked to see the brewer, who was said to be a village grandfather. The women who served him began laughing, he said.

“My translator informed me that the beer wasn’t made by grandfather, it was made with grandfather,” Eames told the Rutland Herald in an October 2006 interview. “They put his cremated bone fragments in with the rest of the ingredients.”

Eames’ expertise landed him work as a consultant to beer companies, microbreweries and importers, including Guinness, Beck’s, and Pete’s Wicked Ale.

Eames, who was married five times, is survived by his wife, Sheila; his sons, Adrian Eames and Andrew Eames; a daughter, Elena Eames; and a grandson, Alexander Baker Eames.