Wild Brews: The craft of home brewing, from sour and fruit beers to farmhouse ales. By Jaega Wise.
If this issue has made you keen to brew your own Fruit Beer or Sour, then there’s a great new book that goes into more detail and will help you on your brew journey: Wild Brews by Jaega Wise. One of the UK’s experts in wild fermentation, Jaega is Head Brewer (and co-founder) at Wild Card Brewery in East London, presenter of Amazon Prime’s Beer Masters, BBC R4’s The Food Programme and beer presenter for Channel 5’s The Wine Show. Jaega was also named UK Brewer of The Year in 2018 by the British Guild of Beer Writers. So she certainly knows what she’s writing about! And she’s made it a juicy read - personable, useful and very accessible.
While Wise is also a qualified chemical engineer - a great background for a brewer - she presents the technical side of wild brews in an understandable way, covering the different microorganisms of wild brews, barrel ageing, packaging (including carbonation) and different wild brew styles and recipes. She’s also included a section on brewing with fruit. While rich in content, Jaega has kept it relevant; it doesn’t overwhelm. So it’s suitable for both advanced and less experiences homebrewers. It’s ‘the book I would have wanted to read when I was starting out on my journey into wild beers’, she writes.
The area of wild brews can, admittedly, appear a little daunting - I mean, bacteria! Infection! food poisoning! - but Wise’s snobbery-free approach to brewing Sours leaves you feeling optimistic. She’s included two methods for making sour brews: The Kettle Sour Method and The Pitch and Wait Sour Method. So if you’re hesitant about committing to all the meticulous sterilising and waiting for a ‘true’ Sour you can still make a great brew using the Kettle Sour Method. And while she admits that this way is ‘cheating’ and sours made this way will lack the nuances of a traditional sour, she does encourage you to give it a go. Besides, as she says ‘I think you don’t always need complexity, but an easy-drinking moreish beer you can enjoy in volume.’
If, however, you do want to go the traditional route, there’s instructions for that too. There’s also a useful section for identifying and problem solving if things go wrong with your wild brew.
There are 11 recipes in the book. These include: Kveik NEIPA and Raspberry Saison (using The Basic method); Sour Raspberry Saison and Passion Fruit Gose (both Kettle Sours) and Berliner Weisse, Lambic, Gueze and Old Ale (The Pitch and Wait Sour Method). The Lambic recipe includes instructions for Inoculated, Mixed Ferm and Spontaneous Fermentation Methods. Is your mouth watering yet? Yeah, me too!
I’d definitely recommend this book.
Order yours from www.hive.co.uk or your local independent bookshop. And, hey, don’t be a sourpuss - be sure to show us your wild brews! Tag us:
@darkfarmhops
Follow Jaega’s adventures in brewing: @JaegaWise
Order Wild Card Brewery beers: wildcardbrewery.co.uk
Wild Brews: The craft of home brewing, from sour and fruit beers to farmhouse ales
By Jaega Wise
Kyle Books (Octopus Publishing Group), 2022
ISBN: 9780857837813
191 pages
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