Imported Lagers

I find this book fascinating! Months after buying it, I find myself sitting down to look for a recipe to try, and spending hours reading the historical and herbal notes. Never would have expected the best herbal I own to be a beer book! There is also information on the religious practices of early Celts and Norwegians as they relate to the use of herbs, as well as lots of information on the spiritual use of herbs by modern traditional peoples.

As for the beers themselves, Buhner takes a relaxed attitude. Indigenous people make beer without fancy equipment, and we can too. What matters most is what tastes good to us–which means we have to do a lot of experimenting! There are lots of recipes to try here, from the Middle Ages up to the present. But the choice is not as wide as it first looks, because not all of the ingredients are easily available. If you get into this, the next book you’ll want may be “The Brewer’s Garden.”
Rating: 5 / 5

I had heard about older brewing, beers before 1500 almost never used hops, and was lucky enough to come upon this book when trying to find out more. Wow! What a book. I read many beers books – how boring they are! Most brewing books are as dry and bitter as the beers they describe – a certain prescription for sleep (again, like the beers they describe). But not this one. There is great poetry and magic in this book – it is an enchanting and endearing read. The beauty and wonder of ancient brewers comes through in the author’s language – even more wonderful, the book contains an extensive, up-to-date overview of the medicinal actions of the herbs used in beers throughout time. Please, read this book, and help begin the move away from hopped beers to more healthy, wonderful tasting beers like yarrow ale, elder ale, and ginger beer. I can’t recommend this book enough!
Rating: 5 / 5

There are many interesting nuggets in here. Since there are other books that give you plenty of information, including recipes, about brewing with unusual or ‘primitive’ ingredients, I found the passages about native rituals, ancient brewing traditions, and the like to be most interesting.

Unfortunately, Buhner has an obvious agenda to push (he makes no bones about this), and can’t resist continually beating the reader over the head with it. Even when I agree with a lot of what he says, it’s very annoying to be reading an interesting passage about tribal prayer ritual and have him go off on a screed about how much better this is than traditional patriarchal western spritless yada yada yada… again.

Furthermore, he seems unable to list an ingredient without mentioning how it cures every disease known to man (‘studies have shown’) and that ‘growing number of scientists’ are ‘just beginning to realize’ how far superior this ingredient is to anything science has ever been able to produce. It gets old very quickly.

In spite of my negativity here, he has gathered a lot of fascinating information. If you love the idea of ‘Beer Soup for the Soul’, this book is absolutely for you. Or if you’re looking for some neat information on the history of brewing, and you can stand wading through what my friend calls, less charitably the ‘hippie dippie crap’, give it a look.
Rating: 3 / 5