Edible Read: Turning Up the Heat on Beer, Bourbon, and Chilies
Brew Beer Like a Yeti: Traditional Techniques and Recipes for Unconventional Ales, Gruits, and Other Ferments Using Minimal Hops
By Jereme Zimmerman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Paperback, list price $24.95
Since the craft beer and home-brewing boom of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, beer lovers have enjoyed drinking and brewing a vast array of beer styles. However, most are brewed to accentuate a single ingredient — hops — and few contain the myriad herbs and spices that were standard in beer and gruit (a herb mixture used for bittering and flavouring beer) recipes from medieval times back to ancient people’s discovery that grain could be malted and fermented into beer.
Like his first book, Make Mead Like a Viking, Jereme Zimmerman’s Brew Beer Like a Yeti returns to ancient practices and ingredients and brings storytelling, mysticism and folklore back to the brewing process, including a broad range of ales, gruits, bragots and other styles that have undeservingly taken a backseat to the IPA. Recipes inspired by traditions around the globe include sahti, gotlandsdricka, oak bark and mushroom ale, wassail, pawpaw wheat, chicha de muko and even Neolithic “stone” beers.
More importantly, under the guidance of “the world’s only peace-loving, green-living Appalachian Yeti Viking,” readers will learn about the many ways to go beyond the pale ale, utilizing alternatives to standard grains, hops and commercial yeasts to defy the strictures of style and design their own brews.
The State of Bourbon: Exploring the Spirit of Kentucky
By Cameron M. Ludwick and Blair Thomas Hess
Photography by Elliott Hess
Publisher: Indiana University Press Paperback, list price $16
The State of Bourbon showcases the region’s finest distilleries as well as the local restaurants, hotels, parks and adventures that every bourbon lover needs to experience. Bluegrass natives Cameron M. Ludwick and Blair Thomas Hess highlight some of their favorite stops on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the Urban Bourbon Trail and the Craft Bourbon Trail, at stills and rick houses where the history and heritage of the nation’s only native spirit come to life. Not just a trail or tasting guide, The State of Bourbon will lead you across Kentucky, through the history of the spirit and into your own bourbon adventure.
Bourbon Justice: How Whiskey Law Shaped America
By Brian F. Haara
Publisher: Potomac Books Hardcover, list price $26.95
Bourbon whiskey has made a surprising contribution to American legal history. Tracking the history of bourbon and bourbon law illuminates the development of the United States as a nation, from conquering the wild frontier to rugged individualism to fostering the entrepreneurial spirit to solidifying itself as a nation of laws. Bourbon is responsible for the growth and maturation of many substantive areas of the law, such as trademark, contract, fraud, governmental regulation and taxation, and consumer protection. In Bourbon Justice Brian Haara delves into the legal history behind one of America’s most treasured spirits to uncover a past fraught with lawsuits whose outcome, surprisingly perhaps, helped define a nation.
Approaching the history of bourbon from a legal standpoint, Haara tells the history of America through the development of commercial laws that guided our nation from an often-reckless laissez-faire mentality through the growing pains of industrialization and past the overcorrection of Prohibition. More than just bourbon history, this is part of the American story.
An Anarchy of Chilies
By Caz Hildebrand
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Hardcover, list price $29.95
A reference book that introduces the nuances and versatility of 100 members the chili family in lively four-color illustrations, this volume presents everything the aspiring chef or gardener needs to help them harness the heat.
With more than 2,000 varieties, and a dizzying array of flavors, shapes, sizes and colors, the riotous world of chili peppers has no laws and no limits, and a revolutionary power to transform our food and gardens. This kitchen companion profiles 100 versatile chili varieties, chosen to showcase their impressive range of shape, color, flavor and heat, ranging from milder everyday favorites such as the jalapeño, ancho and bell pepper to exotic new superhots like the Dorset Naga and Carolina Reaper.
Organized by heat level on the infamous Scoville scale, An Anarchy of Chilies tells the story of each variety and offers advice on how to identify, grow and prepare them.
For more about chilies, see In the Garden on page 56.
Our friends at Carmichael’s Bookstore suggest these books as excellent choice for edible readers. Carmichael’s represents locally owned retailers where the benefits of buying local can be experienced.
