The Drunken Botanist- The Plants That Create The World's Great Drinks

Product Information

Scott browsed the selection of bottled Agave tequilana. He was in the habit of trekking into Mexico in search of rare agave and cactus, and he’d encountered many of his prized specimens coming out of the working end of a handmade Oaxacan still." I really thought I was going to enjoy this book more than I did. It's well-researched, it has some funny anecdotes and it's a great book to have but it's not necessarily what I consider a must read. A must have, but not a must read. The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World’s Great Drinks" ist eine Reiseerzählung, nicht durch die Länder der Welt, obwohl man in diesem Buch auch viel herumkommt, sondern durch die Welt der Pflanzen, die uns Freunden des hochgeistigen Genusses so viel Freude bereiten.

Do yourself a favor and watch it! Even the worms have a happy moment! Believe me, those hangovers are REAL!

The Drunken Botanist Book Trailer

Cork comes from the Portuguese Oak [Quercus Suber. It is stripped annually with each tree yielding about 4k corks, primarily used in wine bottling, yet the trees regenerate new bark each year and live for about 2 centuries before finally dying. This isn't a buddy read anymore. My victim and I broke up and we're just cordial acquaintances now (that's a pun because this book is about liquor) Horticulture in bottles. Booze and botany. The elixir of life—the aqua vitae—that the plant world has given us. This book is about how plants are used in the making of alcoholic beverages from vegetative matter that serves as the primary ingredient in fermentation to obscure herbs and berries used to lend subtle flavoring. The book covers a lot of ground, being at once a guide to the chemistry of fermentation and distillation, a mixologist’s recipe book, and a guide to growing the plants used to make booze. My only gripe about this book is that it is best read in small increments. It reads like a collection of essays instead of one neat comprehensive narrative. It's an excellent reference and as such it is best read by topics of interest.

Review Last 10 star book of the season. My criteria for a 10 star book is really enjoyable, I learn quite a lot and it gives me plenty to think over. When I started the book which is a list of every botanical associated with alcoholic drinks imaginable I didn't imagine it would be this good. There are anecdotes and notes from history, science, gardening and specialist mixologists that enliven it and it is quite an achievement of research. You really don't need to drink alcohol to appreciate this book. It would help though if you have an interest in plants and the natural world. We had arrived at a liquor store by then, and I was gesturing wildly at the shelves around us. "This is horticulture! In all of these bottles!"... Suddenly we weren't in a liquor store anymore. We were in a fantastical greenhouse, the world's most exotic botanical garden, the sort of strange and overgrown conservatory we only encounter in our dreams. ... The formatting of this one was very well done. Stewart combines historical info, and brief descriptions with popup texts with interesting anecdotes, drink recipes, and more.

The Drunken Botanist Reviews

Excellent format. Easy to follow. This is a book of essays that is best read in short time increments thus the well-laid format is conducive to jumping around to topics of interest. Vodka became popular in America only after WWII because distillers couldn't get enough grain to use, so begged potato growers to send them all the small and misshapen potatoes they had, since appearance wouldn't matter. Distillers sold 1M gallons of Vodka in 1946 and 30M by 1965. BTW, Vodka uses rye, wheat, and other grains in its manufacture, but most Americans think of it as only made from Potatoes. There is also a big controversy over where Vodka originated, whether Poland or Russia. [p70] Drunken botanists? Given the role they play in creating the world’s great drinks, it’s a wonder there are any sober botanists at all." Amy Stewart has a way of making gardening seem exciting, even a little dangerous.” — The New York Times We learn the Barley is the most prolific grain at converting its starches into sugar to make alcohol because it has a high level of enzymes and that it is an easy plant to grow not being much affected by cold, drought, or poor soil conditions.

I enjoyed The Drunken Botanist. I would recommend it to anyone interested. It would make a great coffee table book. You will get a good handle on the process of fermentation. "The science of fermentation is wonderfully simple. Yeast eat sugar. They leave behind two waste products, ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. If we were being honest, we would admit that what a liquor store sells is, chemically speaking, little more than the litter boxes of millions of domesticated yeast organisms, wrapped up in pretty bottles with fancy price tags." Bonus, "But what about the other waste product, ethyl alcohol? That is what we call pure alcohol, or ethanol. After some tinkering, it makes for a great drink—but not for the yeast. As they excrete this alcohol, yeast make their own grave. They can’t survive in high concentrations of their own waste product, so as the alcohol content rises above about 15 percent, the yeast die off. That explains why, until distillation was invented, no human had ever enjoyed a stronger drink than beer or wine." I had never heard of chartreuse, but must tell you, this post has enriched my life and that of my friends. Our first batch was made collectively in early June, about gallon-size and containing 32 herbs. Before the month was out, a few of us gathered to make another bigger batch, so there would be some left after sharing. We benefited from one of our group, an excellent herb gardener, and did a little foraging and came up with about 62 herbs and spices that round! Absent the drought, I know we could have done better, but 130 seems out of reach! Despite being effectively a herbal with recipes thrown in, it's very soothing to listen to and didn't feel "list-y." Histories and anecdotes flowed naturally, and the recipes were separated from the text with an audible clink of a glass. Effectively perfect for casual listening in the car where your attention can dip in and out. Stewart creates an adventure for the readers regarding plants ranging from agave to wheat. One humorous story is about pear cider. It is smooth going down, then your stomach sounds like thunder, and it exits your body like lightening. Despite that memorable description, she highly recommends trying pear cider.Despite my love-hate relationship with potted plants (they keep dying), the title of this book immediately caught my attention. Maybe that’s because I have a love-love relationship with liquors and most kinds of alcohol, who knows. While writing this review, I was sipping a good red port and musing over all the great anecdotes in this book. The book is best described as an encyclopaedia of the botanical origins of drinks, and how people came to make alcohol out of every plant they could find, such as the banana. Sometimes I really do admire the inventiveness of humans. So grab a nice drink of your choosing and let me tell you a bit more about this book. Although there were hundreds of interesting facts regarding the various plant species, I would like to list just a few to give the readers an idea that the book was interesting and did not just discuss making booze. I just had an arresting moment when feces, two thousand years old, were discovered in the 1950s and analyzed. It did not go off well. The real difference between American and Canadian whiskeys is that each batch of American whiskey reguires a new oak barrel, while Canadians can use barrels previously used for making wine or whiskey before. This gives it more flavor than American bourbon, but each batch may taste slightly different depending on what the barrels had previously held.

I have both books, I will read them by myself and wish I had someone with whom I could discuss the contents.Some fun science facts, "The DNA of apples is more complex than ours; a recent sequencing of the Golden Delicious genome uncovered fifty-seven thousand genes, more than twice as many as the twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand that humans possess." An assortment of dried or fresh herbs, such as: Lemon verbena, lemon balm, spearmint, fennel, thyme, angelica stems, sage, scented geranium, lemongrass, chamomile, bay, etc. LOL This is just a taste - Stewart has plenty of entertaining stories about alcohol and its successes and pitfalls throughout history. The bread is not only delicious, but also extremely healthy. As children, we had our fill of both bread, nuts and non-fermented fruit. We knew which fruits to avoid and which were safe. I miss it every day! Humans and animals rejoice together in Marula season :-) Through all this, her writing is approachable and entertaining. Another reviewer compared her to Mary Roach, and I agree that's a fair comparison.