Wild Drinks: The new old world of small-batch brews, ferments and infusions

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Wild Drinksis the definitive book on infusing, brewing and fermenting delicious and often nutritious things to drink, from mead to kombucha to cider to kvass. With the entertaining and assuring voice of fermentation expert Sharon Flynn, it is a perfect jumping off point for anyone who is curious to learn more about this magical and witchy world. Wild Drinks is the definitive book on infusing, brewing and fermenting delicious and often nutritious things to drink, from mead to kombucha to cider to kvass. With the entertaining and assuring voice of fermentation expert Sharon Flynn, itis a perfectjumping offpoint foranyone who is curious to learn more about this magical and witchy world. Across six chapters, ‘Wild Drinks’ features more than 60 recipes. Learn the basics of wild fermentation and read about the equipment you need to start your fermentation journey.

AMEX Essentials: Your first book, Ferment for Good, mentions ‘ancient food for the modern gut’ in its subtitle. Why are fermented foods so beneficial to our modern-day digestive systems? A good way to get these beautiful foods into your body is by putting the jars of them on the table at each meal. Think not of ‘taking’ some as a medicine, try and eat a small amount of a wide range of fermented food regularly. It won’t work for you unless you find some that you like and know that you’ll enjoy a tablespoon of here and there. Usually, once you get into the habit of enjoying a sour food, you’ll start to crave it. One of Australia’s leading authorities on fermentation, Sharon Flynn is the owner of The Fermentary, supplying top restaurants and independent grocers across Australia with high-quality fermented food and drinks – a business she started after having experienced the benefits of these foods first-hand when her youngest daughter was ill. Out of this venture came two books on fermenting at home, geared towards curious beginners and more experienced fermenters alike. Here, we chat with Sharon about why everyone should incorporate living food into our everyday diets, and how to start fermenting in our very own kitchens.

Other Titles by Sharon Flynn

I think the best thing about home fermenting is that it is something we’ve been doing at home since we had kitchens. Maybe even before. So you don’t need anything in particular to begin. Many fermented foods are readily available at speciality markets. Why, in your opinion, should people start fermenting their own drinks and foods at home? We aim to source our ingredients as locally, in season as possible, each season ending up with salvaged fruits for our water kefirs. We use local vegetables, Australian native botanicals, herbs, barks and Franklinford spring water, so each of our ferments captures the unique tastes of our region. And, unlike current food standards which encourages anonymity, we don’t use any synthetic starter cultures or other processes to help speed our ferments, making us 'wild fermenters'. This may sound a bit rogue, but really this makes us more traditional and old fashioned than radical. Wild Drinks is the definitive book on infusing, brewing and fermenting delicious and often nutritious things to drink, from mead to kombucha to cider to kvass. With the entertaining and assuring voice of fermentation expert Sharon Flynn, itis a perfect jumping offpoint foranyone who is curious to learn more about this magical and witchy world. Please be aware that the delivery time frame may vary according to the area of delivery - the approximate delivery time is usually between 1-2 business days.

The taste of some fermented foods might take some getting used to when you’re not familiar with them. Do you have a tip on how to let your palate get accustomed to these foods that are good for your gut? Ferment for Good’ bursts with Sharon’s warmth, charisma and wisdom, a thread that carries through into her second book, ‘Wild Drinks’. In both books, Sharon draws on a body of knowledge established over more than two decades living in Malaysia, Japan, the US and Europe as an ex-pat.

Delivery restrictions

In your second book, Wild Drinks, you focus on infusions, brews and ferments. What are some of your favourite drink recipes in the book? My mum is Dutch - so happily I do have some blood connection to sauerkrauts although we were much more into salted liquorice, croquets and fries with mayo than kraut, to be honest. I did end up with a pretty cool handed down kraut recipe though.

Many fermented foods are pasteurised so the life that you might be hoping for is often no longer there. When we heat living foods like this, the bacteria are killed. The kombucha industry has been hit by the alcohol content, as well as the batch variance. Commercially made kombucha couldn’t possibly be as wild and good as the one you’d make at home: instead, they have to use the smallest amount of ‘kombucha product’, force-carbonate it, and then also add non-fermentable sugars so that the alcohol and fizz don’t grow in the bottle. Delivery with Standard Australia Post usually happens within 2-10 business days from time of dispatch. Please be aware that the delivery time frame may vary according to the area of delivery and due to various reasons, the delivery may take longer than the original estimated timeframe. Wild Drinksis the definitive book on infusing, brewing and fermenting delicious and often nutritious things to drink, from mead to kombucha to cider to kvass. With the entertaining and assuring voice of fermentation expert Sharon Flynn, it is a perfect jumping off point for anyone who is curious to learn more about this magical and witchy world.

Over the last couple of hundred years, we have simultaneously added ways to kill bacteria on a larger scale as well – in our water, in our food systems, the medicine that we take, and feed the soil and animals we farm to eat. Pasteurisation happened around the same time as the large-scale industrialisation of our food system, which also brought about larger-scale agriculture and monoculture, meaning the need for more pesticides and less biodiversity, and at the same time we introduced antibiotics, to both ourselves and the animals we farmed, which also goes into our water. Wild Drinks’ is the definitive book on infusing, brewing and fermenting delicious and often nutritious things to drink, from mead to kombucha to cider to kvass. Since we industrialised and commercialised food and drink, it has come down to profit and the bottom line. And when it comes to fermentation, sometimes the most expensive ingredient is time. To make it more affordable – in every ferment from sauerkraut to soy sauce – we have imitated real flavour with substitutes.