I recently gave you some gift ideas for foragers and wildcrafters and for backyard gardeners, and now here’s a gift guide for fermenters and homebrewers! Fermenting is a huge passion of mine, and I love showing people how easy it is. This is going to be a long one because I have many recommendations, and…
Homebrew
15 Easy Mead Recipes for Beginners
Homemade mead (honey wine) is probably one of my favorite fermented beverages to make. It’s a simple and inexpensive way to produce your own tasty homebrew. I put together this awesome list of easy mead recipes so that you can have access to all of them in one place! If you want to learn more…
Spruce Beer Homebrew Recipe (made with spruce tips)
Homebrewing is one of my favorite things to do, but I especially love it when I can incorporate foraged ingredients. I came across some nice big spruce tips recently, and when I saw them I immediately knew what I was going to make with them: spruce beer! Homemade spruce beer has been something that I’ve…
Dandelion Mead Recipe (Dandelion Wine Made With Honey)
Dandelion wine is an old school recipe that has been around for centuries. The yellow petals have a honey-like flavor and they make a delicious wine! I prefer to make dandelion mead, as I feel like it is even more flavorful that way. Mead is simply wine that is made with honey instead of sugar….
Fermented Apple Ginger Beer (Made with a Ginger Bug)
Fall is the season for apples, and apples and ginger go together spectacularly. Ever since I first made a ginger bug, I knew that I wanted to make ginger beer with it, as that’s its traditional use. But then I got the great idea to make fermented apple ginger beer, and I knew that was…
Blackberry Mead: One Gallon Recipe
Hot summer days mean one thing to me: blackberries are ripening! It’s usually sometime in August that we start foraging for blackberries, and I always make sure to reserve some for making a gallon (or two or three) of blackberry mead. Of course blackberry cobbler and crisp will also be made, and they are delicious,…
Maple Mead with Orange and Spices (Acerglyn)
Traditional mead is made with honey as the sweetener, but I’ve always wondered about using maple syrup instead. As it turns out, this is actually a thing that people do, and the technical term for “maple mead” is acerglyn (just as a mead made with fruit is called a melomel). For it to be mead,…
Mulled Hard Cider
Well, the holidays are upon us, so who wants a drink? Seriously though, there’s really not anything better than a hot, spiced drink on a chilly and festive day, alcoholic or otherwise. I’ve been a big fan of mulled wine for a long time, but this year we have quite a bit of wild hard…
Applejack: Is it Legal and Safe?
Homebrewing your own hard cider is fun, legal, and safe (that is, if you don’t imbibe too much). However, it is often the case that one will come across recipes for other kinds of homemade alcoholic drinks during the researching period. When I was looking into all the different ways to make hard cider, I…
How to Make Hard Cider With Wild Yeast
We recently had a whole lot of fresh pressed apple cider on our hands after building a simple DIY apple press and pressing a bunch of apples from our tree. While the juice is incredibly tasty as is, we couldn’t drink it fast enough, and some of it even started to ferment in the fridge!…