Ancient Brews Rediscovered And Re Created

One of Smithsonian Magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year about Food A Forbes Best Booze Book of the Year Interweaving archaeology and science, Patrick E. McGovern tells the enthralling story of the world’s oldest alcoholic beverages and the cultures that created them. Humans invented heady concoctions, experimenting with fruits, honey, cereals, tree resins, botanicals, and more. These “liquid time capsules” carried social, medicinal, and religious significance with far-reaching consequences for our species. McGovern describes nine extreme fermented beverages of our ancestors, including the Midas Touch from Turkey and the 9000-year-old Chateau Jiahu from Neolithic China, the earliest chemically identified alcoholic drink yet discovered. For the adventuresome, homebrew interpretations of the ancient drinks are provided, with matching meal recipes.

Ancient brewing traditions and techniques have been passed generation to generation on farms throughout remote areas of northern Europe. With these traditions facing near extinction, author Lars Marius Garshol set out to explore and document the lost art of brewing using traditional local methods. Equal parts history, cultural anthropology, social science, and travelogue, this book describes brewing and fermentation techniques that are vastly different from modern craft brewing and preserves them for posterity and exploration. Learn about uncovering an unusual strain of yeast, called kveik, which can ferment a batch to completion in just 36 hours. Discover how to make keptinis by baking the mash in the oven. Explore using juniper boughs for various stages of the brewing process. Test your own hand by brewing recipes gleaned from years of travel and research in the farmlands of northern Europe. Meet the brewers and delve into the ingredients that have kept these traditional methods alive. Discover the regional and stylistic differences between farmhouse brewers today and throughout history.

A celebration of beer--its science, its history, and its impact on human culture What can beer teach us about biology, history, and the natural world? From ancient Mesopotamian fermentation practices to the resurgent American craft brewery, Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall peruse the historical record and traverse the globe for engaging and often surprising stories about beer. They explain how we came to drink beer, what ingredients combine to give beers their distinctive flavors, how beer's chemistry works at the molecular level, and how various societies have regulated the production and consumption of beer. Drawing from such diverse subject areas as animal behavior, ecology, history, archaeology, chemistry, sociology, law, genetics, physiology, neurobiology, and more, DeSalle and Tattersall entertain and inform with their engaging stories of beer throughout human history and the science behind it all. Readers are invited to grab a beer and explore the fascinating history of its creation.

This is the first comprehensive book ever written on the sacred aspects of indigenous, historical psychotropic and herbal healing beers of the world.

There has been a very long and rich European beer-making tradition which developed independently of any traditions in the Middle East or Egypt. This text demonstrates the important technological as well as ideological contributions made by the Europeans to the history of beer.

• North American Guild of Beer Writers Best Book 2022 Dismiss the stereotype of the bearded brewer. It's women, not men, who've brewed beer throughout most of human history. Their role as family and village brewer lasted for hundreds of thousands of years—through the earliest days of Mesopotamian civilization, the reign of Cleopatra, the witch trials of early modern Europe, and the settling of colonial America. A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse celebrates the contributions and influence of female brewers and explores the forces that have erased them from the brewing world. It's a history that's simultaneously inspiring and demeaning. Wherever and whenever the cottage brewing industry has grown profitable, politics, religion, and capitalism have grown greedy. On a macro scale, men have repeatedly seized control and forced women out of the business. Other times, women have simply lost the minimal independence, respect, and economic power brewing brought them. But there are more breweries now than at any time in American history and today women serve as founder, CEO, or head brewer at more than one thousand of them. As women continue to work hard for equal treatment and recognition in the industry, author Tara Nurin shows readers that women have been—and are once again becoming—relevant in the brewing world.

A complete guide to using the best ingredients and minimal equipment to create fun and flavorful brews Ancient societies brewed flavorful and healing meads, ales, and wines for millennia using only intuition, storytelling, and knowledge passed down through generations—no fancy, expensive equipment or degrees in chemistry needed. In Make Mead Like a Viking, homesteader, fermentation enthusiast, and self-described “Appalachian Yeti Viking” Jereme Zimmerman summons the bryggjemann of the ancient Norse to demonstrate how homebrewing mead—arguably the world’s oldest fermented alcoholic beverage—can be not only uncomplicated but fun. Armed with wild-yeast-bearing totem sticks, readers will learn techniques for brewing sweet, semi-sweet, and dry meads, melomels (fruit meads), metheglins (spiced meads), Ethiopian t’ej, flower and herbal meads, braggots, honey beers, country wines, and even Viking grog, opening the Mead Hall doors to further experimentation in fermentation and flavor. In addition, aspiring Vikings will explore: • The importance of local and unpasteurized honey for both flavor and health benefits; • Why modern homebrewing practices, materials, and chemicals work but aren’t necessary; • How to grow and harvest herbs and collect wild botanicals for use in healing, nutritious, and magical meads, beers, and wines; • Hops’ recent monopoly as a primary brewing ingredient and how to use botanicals other than hops for flavoring and preserving mead, ancient ales, and gruits; • The rituals, mysticism, and communion with nature that were integral components of ancient brewing and can be for modern homebrewers, as well; • Recommendations for starting a mead circle to share your wild meads with other brewers as part of the growing mead-movement subculture; and more! Whether you’ve been intimidated by modern homebrewing’s cost or seeming complexity in the past—and its focus on the use of unnatural chemicals—or are boldly looking to expand your current brewing and fermentation practices, Zimmerman’s welcoming style and spirit will usher you into exciting new territory. Grounded in history and mythology, but—like Odin’s ever-seeking eye—focusing continually on the future of self-sufficient food culture, Make Mead Like a Viking is a practical and entertaining guide for the ages.

Primitive beers, country wines, herbal meads, natural sodas, and more Baudar has elevated the concept of terroir into the realm of extreme beverages, both fermented and unfermented. His book brings to life the innovative quest of the Palaeolithic shaman/healer/brewer.--Patrick E. McGovern, author of Ancient Brews Fermentation fans and home brewers can rediscover "primitive" drinks and their unique flavors in The Wildcrafting Brewer. Wild-plant expert and forager Pascal Baudar's first book, The New Wildcrafted Cuisine, opened up a whole new world of possibilities for readers wishing to explore and capture the flavors of their local terroir. The Wildcrafting Brewer does the same for fermented drinks. Baudar reveals both the underlying philosophy and the practical techniques for making your own delicious concoctions, including: Wild sodas Country wines Primitive herbal beers Meads Traditional ferments like tiswin and kvass. The book opens with a retrospective of plant-based brewing and ancient beers. The author then goes on to describe both hot and cold brewing methods and provides lots of interesting recipes; mugwort beer, horehound beer, and manzanita cider are just a few of the many drinks represented. Baudar is quick to point out that these recipes serve mainly as a touchstone for readers, who can then use the information and techniques he provides to create their own brews, using their own local ingredients. The Wildcrafting Brewer will attract herbalists, foragers, natural-foodies, and chefs alike with the author's playful and relaxed philosophy. Readers will find themselves surprised by how easy making your own natural drinks can be, and will be inspired, again, by the abundance of nature all around them. With gorgeous photos and clear technical details, this book will be a source of great inspiration.--Sandor Ellix Katz, author of The Art of Fermentation