Reviews for Making Wild Wines and Meads: 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers and More

The average rating for Making Wild Wines and Meads: 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers and More based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-06-21 00:00:00 Lisa Van Poyck I'm going to break my review of this book into two components, the instructions and the recipes. Instructions: Simple and straightforward, this would be a great book for someone starting out in the hobby. The directions are of the "tried and true" variety with a few procedural options thrown in, but not enough to overwhelm (and believe me, brewing can get AWFULLY overwhelming). There's a fairly nice balance of explanation and brevity, and I appreciated that it took the time to break a few things down that are taken sort of for granted in higher level texts. That being said; if you're old hat at home brewing it is probably worth taking a read-through for a baseline understanding of the practices the recipes are based on, a quick refresher, and perhaps a different way of wording things you might like better... but don't expect any mystical revelations. My main issue was that the section on sterilization was unexpectedly thin. Considering all the items they recommend you get from a brew supply already, household bleach should not be the focus of the sterilization section. Recipes: This is where for me this book shines. The recipes take up about 2/3 of the book and range everywhere from the tried and true classics (grape, strawberry, honey) to the really outré (beet wine anyone?). For an experienced brewer with a few books under their belt there might not be so many forays into the "wild" as the title might suggest, but the recipe list would look pretty out-there to someone used to grape table wines. Some brew science is still a bit deeper then I'm personally interested in going right now, and sometimes it's awfully nice to be able follow a pre-tested recipe to approximate the results I'm looking for rather then having to calculate every additive based on tables and graphs, and I think that alone will keep this book near the top of my reference pile for this hobby. There are variations of most of the wines to account for different tastes: most include at least a sweet and dry variation, and many include variations to account for different varieties of the same fruit and levels of ripeness. Yield for each of these recipes is one gallon, which is a nice economical size for testing out something, as the costs can add up fast, and in the worst case scenario it can be no fun having to get rid of several gallons of failed brew after what could be several years of work. In the end I still think the best judge of an instructional book is if reading it makes me start a mental wish-list of what to buy the next time I play with that specific hobby, and I've already started working out the contents of my next brew-store order.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-08-29 00:00:00 Stacy Hastie A great introduction to home wine- and mead-making, and lots of wonderful recipies I can't wait to try. Quantity vagueness was irritating - e.g., when they say to add additional sugar "a little at a time," does "a little" equal a teaspoon or a cup? There were others, as well, but with a few other reference books and assistance from experienced brewers, these things should sort themselves out. I know I have a lot more to learn than any one book can teach me, but this was a great one to start with.