Wild Brewing

~WILD BREWING~

Wild brews on the bubble using seasonal wild yeasts and seasonally abundant ingredients. Pictured: Bottled Kumarahou beer, Fermenting Mugwort Beer (with feijoa's for wild yeast), Wild yeast starter bug (again with feijoas).

I LOVE playing with Wild brewing. It's so fun throwing together a handful of seasonal ingredients, letting them bubble away & ferment on the bench for a few weeks, strain, bottle, and then surprise surprise you either have a delicious medicinal brew, which can be sparkly like champagne, or flat like wine, or even a total flop! Yes I've had many total flops, but this for me, is part of the fun of wild brewing. You never really know what you are going to get next.....

Wild brews make one of the best gifts. I mean really, who doesn't like being gifted a bottle of handmade, homegrown or foraged wild brew??

So far my all time favorites have been Nettle Beer, the experimental Kumarahou beer (using our NZ native Kumarahou as a bittering agent), Elderflower Champagne, and of course Feijoa Fizz. This year I've made a stunning Elderflower wine, and am attempting a few Feijoa wines, as well as some forest brews, with turkey tail mushrooms, pine needles, and yarrow from my garden...fingers crossed...

The best wild yeasts I've used are found on homegrown feijoas, elderberries, elderflowers, grapes, or wild pine pollen in spring.

You don't need any fancy equipment to wild brew. Water + wild yeast + foraged ingredients + sugar + lots of patience & anticipation. Let your imagination run wild, I think you can brew up just about anything....

If you're interested in Wild brewing or fermenting and looking for recipes, check out @pascalbaudar & his mind blowing book about Wild Brewing.

Also Sandor Katz 'Wild Fermentation' is a classic and a must for any fermenting beginner or enthusiast.

Milkwood Permaculture have loads of interesting articles and recipes about brewing and what to do with feijoas too (those guys are amazing).