Customer Reviews

Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I find this book fascinating! Months after buying it, I find myself sitting down to look for a recipe to try, and spending hours reading the historical and herbal notes. Never would have expected the best herbal I own to be a beer book! There is also information on the religious practices of early Celts and Norwegians as they relate to the use of herbs, as well as lots of information on the spiritual use of herbs by modern traditional peoples.

As for the beers themselves, Buhner takes a relaxed attitude. Indigenous people make beer without fancy equipment, and we can too. What matters most is what tastes good to us--which means we have to do a lot of experimenting! There are lots of recipes to try here, from the Middle Ages up to the present. But the choice is not as wide as it first looks, because not all of the ingredients are easily available. If you get into this, the next book you'll want may be "The Brewer's Garden."

I had heard about older brewing, beers before 1500 almost never used hops, and was lucky enough to come upon this book when trying to find out more. Wow! What a book. I read many beers books - how boring they are! Most brewing books are as dry and bitter as the beers they describe - a certain prescription for sleep (again, like the beers they describe). But not this one. There is great poetry and magic in this book - it is an enchanting and endearing read. The beauty and wonder of ancient brewers comes through in the author's language - even more wonderful, the book contains an extensive, up-to-date overview of the medicinal actions of the herbs used in beers throughout time. Please, read this book, and help begin the move away from hopped beers to more healthy, wonderful tasting beers like yarrow ale, elder ale, and ginger beer. I can't recommend this book enough!

Stephen's book on beers is great because you learn about brewing, other cultures (human), and herbs. He is also very clear about how powerful plants can be, and for each herb he gives 2-5 paragraphs of well cited information. Some of the measurements are a little vague or confusing in the recipes but like he says the point is to make a mess and have fun. This is a great read for anyone into health as well, just for the chapter on fermented honey and bee products alone. And if he includes a recipe with jimson weed or henbane, he is very clear about the inherent risks. Lighten up and drink some meade.

First a word on safety. A few of these recipes use toxic ingredients. In general, my studies all suggest however that these ingredients both have long records in brewing and also are reasonably safe in that area. This includes both mandrake and henbane. In fact, henbane was smoked in the Middle Ages, and evidence exists for its use in beer for thousands of years. Mandrake was well known medicinally mixed with wine (Dioscorides mentions it, and mandrake wine seems to have been utilized by Hannibal as a narcotic). However, in all things some caution is required, and there are a few other steps I'd recommend:

1) It's probably a good idea to try small doses of such recipes until you know how your body will respond.
2) It's probably a good idea to do further research before you make up your mind on these matters.

Now for a word on substance. This book is written from a very primitivist perspective. The author is upfront about his views in this area, and tries to share them. I didn't feel like the book was overly proselytizing in this area, though I recognize that some fellow reviewers differ here.

Secondly he advocates what one might call "unscientific brewing." I'm a big fan of unscientific brewing. I've brewed in similar ways for nearly two decades. In this way, sense, artistry, and experience are used to produce a beer, mead, etc rather than rigorous measurement and control. For example, I sterilize all my equipment with heat (I don't use chemicals), I don't even own a hydrometer, and and I brew beer using touch and feel rather than time and temperature. In this way, I sacrifice some repeatability for variation and an ability to improvise at each step. Sometimes my recipes flop but since each one is an experiment, I just take note about what failed and go on. I figure this is the way brewing was done for centuries and I don't need to change. My view on this, as a long-time "unscientific brewer" is subtly different than Bruhner's. I think to some extent his writings make light of the careful ways that traditional cultures may have for controlling wort infection and the like, and tends to gloss over the role of deep, long-term experience in what was traditionally an art form much like poetry. These shortcomings may be acceptable given his audience (those just starting out), but it's worth noting up front. All in all, I think this is an important contribution to the area of brewing in this area. I may not agree with him on every point, but more voices help us all move forward.

Thirdly he provides a large number of recipes. These include molasses-based drinks, white sugar-based drinks, fermented fruit-based beverages, and the like. In general these track various other attempts at various beverages that I have seen, and many of his recipes are taken from old sources. These do not fit in well with standard contemporary brewing approaches which frown on sucrose sources and favor fructose instead, but when one is experienced (see paragraph above), one can still take them as inspiration and adapt them to whatever one wants to make (substituting honey for white sugar, for example). At the same time, I have had commercially produced molasses "beers" (i.e. brewed with molasses instead of malted grain) and they are quite pleasant. Consequently I have to assume that most of the recipes would be just fine how they are. I would however note that it is likely that "sugar" in many of the old recipes was the sort of dried cane syrup one can find at Mexican grocers than the white sugar we use today. This area could be fertile ground for future research.

However, whatever faults this book has, it's still a fascinating journey into another world in terms of brewing. I enjoyed it and I see why it was highly recommended to me. It is a solid contribution to this field and I'd highly recommend it to others.

This was exactly what I was looking for! He gives recipes for all kinds of fermented beverages, I hesitate to call them beers when most don't contain barley and are fermented with honey and other things, but the herbal lore is fabulous. I can't wait to try out some of the recipes!

I find it astounding how much the prohibition and Protestant reforms have affected our perception of history, that so many herbal remedies have been "cleaned up" meaning the original recipes of the fermented alcoholic drink have been changed to teas and tinctures which would be much weaker. Thank goodness there is someone like Buhner to do the detective work and find out all the real recipes before they are completely lost!

I believe this book completes the picture for Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions" and Weston A. Price's "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration".

I loved the heck out of this book. Although I'd
never brewed beer/ale before, I was able to
brew a satisfactory batch of gruit ale, from the
information provided and homebrewing guidelines
freely available online.
Next, I'm going to try saffron ale. Maybe others
later on.
Also, in response to an earlier post, the section
on henbane ale is extremely clear on the hazards
involved. Buhner has great respect for the
powers of the plants he uses.

There are many interesting nuggets in here. Since there are other books that give you plenty of information, including recipes, about brewing with unusual or 'primitive' ingredients, I found the passages about native rituals, ancient brewing traditions, and the like to be most interesting.

Unfortunately, Buhner has an obvious agenda to push (he makes no bones about this), and can't resist continually beating the reader over the head with it. Even when I agree with a lot of what he says, it's very annoying to be reading an interesting passage about tribal prayer ritual and have him go off on a screed about how much better this is than traditional patriarchal western spritless yada yada yada... again.

Furthermore, he seems unable to list an ingredient without mentioning how it cures every disease known to man ('studies have shown') and that 'growing number of scientists' are 'just beginning to realize' how far superior this ingredient is to anything science has ever been able to produce. It gets old very quickly.

In spite of my negativity here, he has gathered a lot of fascinating information. If you love the idea of 'Beer Soup for the Soul', this book is absolutely for you. Or if you're looking for some neat information on the history of brewing, and you can stand wading through what my friend calls, less charitably the 'hippie dippie crap', give it a look.

I didn't expect to find in this book both the wonderful herbal and the beautiful exploration of brewing that I found. The book's deep research reveals the intricate relationship that plants have had with brewing throughout history and shows how hops were added to beer only recently in the history of brewing. The plant information is backed up with lengthy sections about historical usage and scientific review of their efficacy. Though some of the more straitlaced readers of this book have cried wolf: plants with potentially toxic effects that were often used in historical fermentations are clearly labeled and all contraindications for each herb are listed. It is not surprising that this book won four awards. It is simply the best overview of historical brewing, the use of fermented herbal infusions in healing, the sacred place of fermentation and plants in human society, and one of the best general herbals I have ever seen. In addition the author is an extremely gifted storyteller. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I bought this book as a result of my interest in homebrewing.
However this book also has something in it for those interested in beer, herbs or rituals involving beer from a socialogical, anthropological or historical perspective.
There is is a good mix of back ground and history surrounding each type of beer or herb or other ingredient as well as the actual effects of each ingredient.
I haven't tried any of the recipes yet but will be doing a few.

If you are simply looking for a book of homebrew recipes that you can copy then this may not be the book for you. But if you have a genuine interest in beer and society and history then this is an excellent choice regardless of whether you homebrew or not.

Rich

This book takes the reader to places most homebrew books never dare or dream to go. Most homebrew books are a rehash of boring methods, and recipes. This is NOT one of those books.
This book brings brewing back to its human level. It tells the tales of people around the world and the methods they have used since before most of the cultures could write. Making fermented drinks is a prehistoric art and doesn't need to be performed by people carrying scales and wearing white lab coats. Not all brewing has been done by the German beer "purity" law; in fact most has not, and hop only beer is a new (and boring) invention. The journey to cultures around the world and the insight into their fermentations of "beer" is exciting and wonderful (I use the quotes because some of the fermentations seem more like wonderful wines, meads, or fermentations that do not have easy modern labels but well worth experiencing).
This is really the best book on brewing I have ever read and I own a couple shelves full. The ideas and concepts alone are worth the price but it also contains easy to follow recipes to get you started on some lesser known brews which are not set in stone. The recipes are a stepping stone to get you to be a brewing artist and create your own masterpiece fermentations. If that were not enough the stories are priceless.
I have seen that some of the reviews seem to employ scare tactics that would lead you to believe that following the brewing recipes will get you sick or dead. The author is very careful about explaining the use of any herb that could be dangerous in any way, but he did not feel the need to be your nanny and delete the historic recipes from the book for your own protection. He has enough confidence that you can use some common sense and not be a total idiot. If you can't refrain from being a complete fool don't buy this book because it might be dangerous for you. Be sure to not drink the bleach when doing your laundry and avoid driving into brick walls when you get behind the wheel. Most of the readers of this book wont need this advice. The ones that should be worried will be too busy drooling in front of the latest game show on TV to actually read the book.