Customer Reviews

An Essay on Brewing, Vintage and Distillation, Together With Selected Remedies for Hangover Melancholia: Or, How to Make Booze

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I bought this book back in the early 70s. During that decade I read it repeatedly (and it shows), made mead and wine based on its loose instructions, and unwittingly expanded my worldview thanks to its digressions into mythology and epic poetry. Thirty years later, I dared to brew beer using a kit (a 2002 Christmas gift from a well-meaning niece), and the result was barely potable. I pulled this book from the book archives, made my first batch according to Adams, and never returned to the kit.

Times have changed since the writing of 'An Essay.' Mead is now relatively available, the law prohibiting homebrewed beer was reversed in 1978, brewing supply shops abound, and wine shops are many. Still, Adams instructs us -- no doubt as he did his students in the great state of Washington -- in the general concepts of making a fairly good beer inexpensively, producing an ancient drink that still gladdens the heart (and produces a nasty hangover), home-distilling substances that the government still frowns upon, and producing a good wine from those local fruits.
I wonder if Adams ever considered a "How to Make Booze Revisited."

I can't remember where I got my copy, it was at my bedside for years and every couple months I would read (or re-read) a chapter or two. One day, my wife sold it at a garage sale for 10 cents. I decided not to divorce her because of the children.

This book is not so much a technical manual as a philosophical treatise on mans' quest for the molecule extraordinaire- ethanol, aka alcohol, aka "the real stuff". It will get you in the right frame of mind to give you the confidence to attempt home-brewing without feeling that you have to be a Chemistry major first. (I am not willing to sell my copy, so try Amazon's Used Book Finder!)

A true treasure from an era gone bye. Excellent for the reader with a desire to embark on the journey of homebrewing without the snobbish, elitest, cynicism usually found in do it yourself, how to books. Also, excellent for the reader that posesses true curiosity and a love for "reader friendly" words. A quick read that provides both laughter and actual instruction with pinch of back to the earth philosophy.