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Sunday, September 16, 2018

* DRINK BOOK OF THE MONTH! * "Brewing Everything, by Dan Crissman

1.BREWING EVERYTHING (The Countryman Press, 2018, 192 pages, ISBN 978-1-68268-174-9 $21.95 USD paperbound) is by Dan Crissman, an editor who was formerly editor at The Countryman Press. He's a longtime homebrewer/fermentation enthusiast. This is one of the publisher's "Know How" series. It is a very accessible book dealing with every type of brewing project: beer, mead, cider, sake, kombucha, and other fermented drinks. It concentrates on the sparkling, low alcohol side, and is best for those who like ease and bubblies with little aging. Grape wines are not included because they take a slightly different process and do not involve bubbles. There is a large chapter on beer, ranging from pilsner to a variety of IPAs and dark ales. Cider is next, followed by mead and sake. Then there is kombucha, kefir, and kvass, tonics and switchels. He interviews experts in every chapter, and also gives us some easy brews and some hard-to-do brews. Crissman ends with resources lists and URLs for bloggers and supplies.
Audience and level of use: beginners and other curious readers.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: sarsaparilla; ginger beer; caraway rye kvass;  fuji apple sake; watermelon mead; wild honey pale ale; dandelion wine; West Coast IPA; dry-hopped farmhouse ale.
The downside to this book: Preparations have their ingredients listed in avoirdupois measurements, but there is no table of metric equivalents.
The upside to this book: Crissman takes great pains to emphasize sanitation, freshness of ingredients, and exploding bottles. I used to make a lot of this stuff, but stopped as I aged and could not carry the volumes of weights.
Quality/Price Rating: 90.
 
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