Author(s): Jeff Sparrow

Food Cooking Wine

I've never been in a Belbium brewery, but from what I hear, the health department in any city/state in the US would immediately shut them down. The very title of this book 'WildBrews' explains why. The traditional lambic beers of Belgium are produced using wild yeast. While you can find wild yeast everywhere, the ones you get here in the US produce truly bad beers. Each batch you produce will be different, sometimes totally different, but in my experience always bad. The yeast that seem to abound in Belgium produce beers with a consistency that has lasted for generations. I don't know if it is true, but I have always suspected that clumps of yeast would gather together rather like cob webs or dust balls around the brewery and fall or be blown into the mix. I was rather surprised at the appearance of the breweries in this book as they seemed clean and sanitary. Lambics have not been among the most popular beers made in this country. Only a few micro breweries produce lambics, the most popular around here is New Belgium from Ft. Collins, CO. You can, of course make your own Lambics, the recipies start on page 255 of this book. But you don't do it with the natural yeast floating around the air in your garden. You buy Lambic yeast from a couple of companies. One scary thought. Beer was invented some 5,000 years ago. Probably some grain got wet, sprouted, dried out, got wet again and some yeast got into the mix. Boy that must have been bad stuff. At that time it was all wild yeast. Personally I'm glad that we've had 5,000 years of yeast development. This is an enjoyable book, almost a travelogue through Belgium beers.