Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation

The best book out there for the beginner home brewer.

You go into a beer supply store and you're surrounded by hundreds of products, many with very large price tags, it can be daunting, and frankly unnecessary. Brauner takes the approach of "Humans have been drinking for 5000 years with out all that stuff just fine." His recipes are bare boned and cheap, he teaches you how to work from scratch, making your own malt extract, growing your own plants, capturing wild yeasts, you can effectively brew for the cost of the sugar. 120 Recipes from 31 countries over 6 continents, will keep even the most dedicated brewer quite busy for years to come.

No matter where in the world you are, you can produce refreshing beverages with local plants and food. If you grow your own grains, you can honestly brew for free. Sure it's not going to taste like anything you've ever had before, but what's the fun in that anyways?

Much of the stuff covered is going to be of an acquired taste, many of these beers are made of plants that haven't been used commercially in centuries. He admits he has not tested all the recipes, some of them get pretty out there. Yet in these fringes lies great possibility for new avenues of exploration, creating your own formulas and special purpose elixirs.

Henbane, Yarrow, Broom, Sweet Gale, wild Rosemary, Wormwood, Sage, Clarry, Mandrake, Darnel, Saffron, and Wild Lettuce, make up the chapter of "Psychotropic and Highly Inebriating Beers", a fantastic selection of plants, some rarely covered in recipe books. The nightshade info alone is well worth it, it's rare chance to explore the edge of one of our darkest allies.

The mead chapter alone has 25 recipes dating back to ancient Greece. His translations are excellent and the language is often intriguing and delightful.

He does a fantastic job critically discussing reported and tested medicinal properties of the plants, his approach is honest and well backed up. He makes no outrageous claims and it's clear what came from folk tradition and whats been peer reviewed. It is not entirely clear if the recipes would be of "medicinally active quantities of herbs", they seem to be on the weak, more palatable side, but further testing will be needed.

This really is such a wonderful book, the perfect lazy day project. There's nothing like going to a park, picking some wild plants and turning them into beer. A must for any psychonaut's books shelf.

Oh yes, I really do recommend the rice beer

2 quarts of cooked rice
gallon of water
champagne yeast

Aerobic fermentation for 2-3 days, cap with an airlock, ready to drink in another week and a half.

sugar until the yeast is dead and then maybe a bit more if ya like it sweet, start with 2.5 pounds and add more after a few days, adjust after that.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Excellent book review. Keep up the good work!