Booze for Free

Description

Home brewing and wine-making is fun, easy and hugely satisfying. If you garden or forage, can follow a recipe or make jam, and you enjoy a drink, this is the book for you. Andy's no-nonsense, easy-to-follow guide will enable the beginner and inspire the expert with over 100 recipes including beer made from hops and but also yarrow, mugwort, elder and other foraged plants, great tasting wines from fruit, vegetables and the hedgerows, cider and perry from apples and pears, cordials from the leaves of a range of trees, and teas and fizzy drinks from herbs and wayside flowers.- Discover the secret language of home brewing and drinks making.- Make cheap, wholesome drinks, to your preferred taste and strength in little time, with minimum fuss and no need for expensive equipment.- Turn your garden into a drinkers' paradise.- Find where and how to forage for success.- Impress your friends with the weird, wonderful and just plain tasty.Try Carrot Whisky, Sloe and Damson Rum, Parsnip Sherry, Elderberry and Blackberry Wine, Pumpkin Beer, Broom Tonic, Meadowsweet tea as well as classics such as Elderflower champagne, sloe gin, prison brew... Cheers!

Andy Hamilton lives in Bristol where he is founder of the Bristol Brewing Circle and runs brewing workshops and an allotment. He forages and regularly takes groups on wild food walks, sharing his extensive knowledge of edible wild foods, plant folklore and herbal medicine. Andy is a co-creator of the hugely successful website- selfsufficientish.com (winner Nigel's Eco Awards 2009) and writes a wild drinks blog for Guardian.co.uk. He also writes a foraging column for Home Farmer magazine, writes the brewing and foraging features for the BBC's Countryfile magazine and writes features for the Guardian, the Ecologist, Tow Path Talk, Kitchen Garden magazine, selfsufficientish.com and the New York based website Civil Eats. He has also written a survivalist column for Wired.co.uk. He has been a consultant survival/wild food expert for various TV Shows and makes regular TV and Radio appearances both in the UK and abroad on shows which include the BBC's 'Countryfile' and 'Autumnwatch'. Andy isco-author of The Self-Sufficientish Bible.

"Some guys have all the luck. Andy Hamilton has 'road tested' over 100 DIY drinks - many of them pleasantly alcoholic- to be made from the plants of the garden, hedge, field and wood, and has brought the results to the pages of his Booze for Free. The result is a home imbiber's delight, full of lore, sense, entertainment, humour, botany, history and tongue-tantalizing recipes. Hamilton has that wholly underrated, but absolutely essential skill in a practical matters, of writing with pure clarity and absolute readability. His recipes won't let you down. You may fall down after sampling some of the stronger brews, but that's another matter" -- John Lewis-Stempel, author of THE WILD LIFE: A YEAR LIVING ON WILD FOOD "For those who give a damn about the planet but still want to enjoy a beautifully crafted pint of the finest, Booze for Free is absolutely compulsory reading. Slainte Andy" -- Mark Boyle, author of THE MONEYLESS MAN "Wow... it's brilliant! So many mouthwateringly delicious ideas and recipes!... But this is so much more than a 'recipe' book. Packed with fascinating and useful information about the world of foraging, not to mention a good pinch of humour, it makes me want to abandon life as I know it" -- Brigit Strawbridge, star of `It's Not Easy Being Green' "Booze for Free is a book-of-the year contender... a book which I'll be reading again and again (trying out recipes and techniques as I go along), and you'd have to be drunk not to want to do the same!" * www.realepicurean.com * "Andy's book reveals the treasure trove in our hedgerows, fields and woodlands" -- Kate Humble