The River Cottage Booze Handbook (River Cottage Handbooks)

I make my own tincture for healthand this was a fun and informative book. It make a great addition to my collection. the recipes are easy to read and fun to do.

This is a great series and they make great gifts.

A great resource book for making your own booze

A very interesting and funny book full of great recipes and humour.

This week I got a new book from the River Cottage series entitled "Booze Handbook" by John Wright. I was so impressed with the first book I found - "Curing and Smoking Handbook", that I wanted to read more books by this same author in the same series, and I have found this one.I love this book! It gives me an insight into the process of making various types of alcoholic products that I would never be able to do on my own without some guidelines. John Wright is great at describing all the details of the process, and gives you a great overview of what you would need to get started with making alcohol.One of the questions that came up when reading this book was that the author makes a lot of infusions with vodka. The question we got was - well, why not explain how to actually make vodka. I was able to find the answer in the book. The author is from Britain, and apparently it is illegal in Britain to make your own vodka or brandy. I guess it is illegal in other countries as well, I have never really thought about it. I am not much of a booze person, or a person who would know this sort of thing. But it just made me think why would you, as a homesteader, be buying vodka, to just make an infusion. You will be forever dependent on the store. I know though that making vodka is not an easy process at all, and I don't think I myself would ever want to attempt anything like that.Infusions have become very popular, but even as a child I often saw grown-ups drinking home made infusions, and everyone seemed to have really loved those.Basically, if you have a garden with an overflow of fruits of some type, you will want to preserve them, but just making jams might be only one avenue of using your harvest up.John Wright gives great recipes for infusions, as well as wine, and beer. My parents made cherry wine before, and I never got a recipe of how to do that from them. Well, now I can do this myself using this lovely book. IF only I had an unlimited supply of cherries. I will hold on to this book until we actually have a farm, and an overflow of fruits to use up. For now, I hardly have enough extras for even small amounts of jam or drying. We eat fruit raw and fresh mostly.I would recommend this book as it has a ton of recipes with very familiar plants and fruits, so the ideas are great in the book, and worth trying them out.I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Just about anything in this world can be transformed into a delicious alcoholic beverage, if you know what you're doing. That is precisely the message of John Wright's new River Cottage Booze Handbook. As the title suggestively implies, the booze culture of Wright's world is more akin to Hobbits in hobbit-holes or Redwallian friar mice in forest abbeys. His passion is for the forageable fruits, nuts, berries, leaves, and roots you can pick for yourself in the wild, and the delightful concoctions you can then make for next to nothing.The book is a series of recipes for the most unusual and delightful drinks divided up into four categories: infusions, wine, cider, and beer. From rose hip vodka to green walnut grappa, from elder flower and gooseberry wine to blackberry cider, from puffed wheat beer to dandelion and burdock beer, it is clear that alcohol is really something of an art form for Wright. These brews are intended to stand out from the crowded shelf of normalcy.Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and the true test here is whether these recipes are truly drinkable. Since the mint patch in my backyard is in season right now, I decided to follow Wright's recipe for Watermint Vodka (67). My variety is actually chocolate mint, but the infusion was simple to make and turned out quite well within just a couple hours. (I decided to get a little crazy, however, and add some lemon thyme leaves after a few hours. I wouldn't recommend it--the resulting flavor was close to cough syrup.)One of my favorite parts of the book is Wright's discussion on each recipe. Sometimes he offers tips on where to find various ingredients and how to identify them in the wild, or what sort of cocktails you might make, or how to maintain the correct specific gravity when adding high water content ingredients. All the while he maintains a wonderfully dry sense of humor.The one downside to the Booze Handbook is that Wright is English, and the book is really aimed at the UK. Though the edition I am reviewing here is the US edition, there are plenty of terms that Wright uses that are unfamiliar to me as an American reader. This gets most problematic when certain ingredients don't even grow (natively) in the US, such as Alexanders. One might expect that in a US edition of a book like this, substitutions would have been made.Notwithstanding, this book is a pleasing collection of recipes, many of which I intend to try soon. The hardcover edition is gorgeous, with innumerable high quality photographs, thick paper, and a rugged binding. I would recommend it if you enjoy crafting your own beverages from raw ingredients and you're comfortable with the necessity of figuring out substitutions for UK-native ingredients.DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of a fair, unbiased review.

You won’t learn how to distill your own tequila, but if you’re looking to learn some basic liqueurs or wines (strawberry wine, anyone?) then this sturdy little book is for you. Everything from cordials to cider to mead, John Wright guides the reader through the equipment needed for making your own homemade hooch, the time frame (be patient, some can take over a year and many container transfers), and the history of the drink. The absinthe section is particularly interesting, including quips from past writings about how evil a drink it is. Look to the glossary when you hit something you’re unfamiliar with. This book will make an excellent gift for someone who’s got any interest in making their own imbibements, they’ll either be thrilled to have such a wealth of knowledge and such clear instructions at their fingertips, or they’ll be utterly turned off to the idea of so much work and display it on a shelf before running out to pick up a six pack of Angry Orchard.I received this book from Blogging for Books for review.

Oh dear god what did I do... I have a shed full of current potions brewing.Fantastic book, the hedgerows have been trembling each time I leave the house with a bucket!Anyone starting in brewing or wanting to know a little more, well worth a read. Funny stories, great recipes and cracking results.

This book looks to be filled with tips and wrinkles of the making of alcoholic drinks at home, by brewing and infusing. However, this particular edition was printed for a market far to the west of West Dorset - the US. So, if you don't mind being told how many dollars you're going to save, and are interested in knowing that sea buckthorn just isn't as widely found in the US as it is over here, go ahead and buy this edition.And have your calculator at the ready for converting from US units to UK units, as although John Wright gives both US and metric units between the recipes, seeing stuff in cups and quarts in the recipes is somewhat old-fashioned, almost quaint.A handy book from the author of 'The Naming of the Shrew'.