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Slow Drinks: A Field Guide to Foraging and Fermenting Seasonal Sodas, Botanical Cocktails, Homemade Wines, and More
A quick foray outdoors is all the inspiration you need to make your next drink—alcoholic or not.
Weeding the garden might yield the makings for Dandelion Mead, while an early spring walk reveals the green shoots perfect for brewing Spruce Beer. Danny Childs brings his training as an ethnobotanist to the world of drinks, and with loving regard for even the humblest ingredients, explores each season’s offerings to make sodas, syrups, wines, beers, and amari.
Organized by season, Slow Drinks teaches home cooks, industry pros, homebrewers, and foragers how to transform botanical ingredients—whether gleaned, grown in the garden, or purchased from the store—into singular beverages and cocktails. With transporting photography and gorgeous color illustrations, Slow Drinks is the definitive guide to backyard mixology that can live just as comfortably in your basket on a foraging trip, as it can on the coffee table as a conversation piece.
Equipped with all the basic information needed to ferment, infuse, and pickle, and the reminder to attune your eyes to the bounty of the fields, gardens, and neighborhoods around you, Slow Drinks is your guide to making drinks that tell a story of time and place.
Danny Childs trained as an anthropologist and ethnobotanist studying the traditional medicinal uses of plants in the Amazon rainforest. Back home in Southern New Jersey, he now runs the standard-setting beverage program at The Farm and Fisherman Tavern, a locavore restaurant in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill.
Weeding the garden might yield the makings for Dandelion Mead, while an early spring walk reveals the green shoots perfect for brewing Spruce Beer. Danny Childs brings his training as an ethnobotanist to the world of drinks, and with loving regard for even the humblest ingredients, explores each season’s offerings to make sodas, syrups, wines, beers, and amari.
Organized by season, Slow Drinks teaches home cooks, industry pros, homebrewers, and foragers how to transform botanical ingredients—whether gleaned, grown in the garden, or purchased from the store—into singular beverages and cocktails. With transporting photography and gorgeous color illustrations, Slow Drinks is the definitive guide to backyard mixology that can live just as comfortably in your basket on a foraging trip, as it can on the coffee table as a conversation piece.
Equipped with all the basic information needed to ferment, infuse, and pickle, and the reminder to attune your eyes to the bounty of the fields, gardens, and neighborhoods around you, Slow Drinks is your guide to making drinks that tell a story of time and place.
Danny Childs trained as an anthropologist and ethnobotanist studying the traditional medicinal uses of plants in the Amazon rainforest. Back home in Southern New Jersey, he now runs the standard-setting beverage program at The Farm and Fisherman Tavern, a locavore restaurant in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 3, 2023
14 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 24, 2023
This is a difficult book to review for me. I love it, but I love it's potential, more than what it delivers.
First the good. It's a beautiful book. I like the cover, with curved corners. And the pictures are beautiful. There are both good information and good stories in the book and I like that it goes by the seasons of the year.
You need to live in the same climate, as Danny Childs (American) to get the full value, if you are going to get all the ingredients from the book. But even if you can't get it all, it's still great for inspiration.
I feel very inspired by reading the book. And I've already begun making my own ginger bug and fermented sodas and beer/cider. I have more plans for what I'm going to make, when the season is right for it. Walnut liqueur and cherry pit liqueur, among others.
The reason I don't give it a higher rating, is that there is only one (or rarely two) recepi for each foraged ingredient and one cocktail recepi to use it in.
I can easily come up with more cocktail recipes myself, but I would have liked to get more than one way to use a fruit or nut, when I have foraged it.
I feel I have to go online and search for more info alot, and as such, it is not a complete book.
I would still love to read more from Childs and I can't wait for the seasons to turn, so I can forage the next ingredients form the book.
First the good. It's a beautiful book. I like the cover, with curved corners. And the pictures are beautiful. There are both good information and good stories in the book and I like that it goes by the seasons of the year.
You need to live in the same climate, as Danny Childs (American) to get the full value, if you are going to get all the ingredients from the book. But even if you can't get it all, it's still great for inspiration.
I feel very inspired by reading the book. And I've already begun making my own ginger bug and fermented sodas and beer/cider. I have more plans for what I'm going to make, when the season is right for it. Walnut liqueur and cherry pit liqueur, among others.
The reason I don't give it a higher rating, is that there is only one (or rarely two) recepi for each foraged ingredient and one cocktail recepi to use it in.
I can easily come up with more cocktail recipes myself, but I would have liked to get more than one way to use a fruit or nut, when I have foraged it.
I feel I have to go online and search for more info alot, and as such, it is not a complete book.
I would still love to read more from Childs and I can't wait for the seasons to turn, so I can forage the next ingredients form the book.
December 24, 2023
Great Resource
Well written and informative. I love that recipes were often left open to adapt by using what is local and to personal taste. The formula of a base ingredient recipe followed by drinks made with that ingredient provides a great base of knowledge and sparks the imagination to experiment.
Well written and informative. I love that recipes were often left open to adapt by using what is local and to personal taste. The formula of a base ingredient recipe followed by drinks made with that ingredient provides a great base of knowledge and sparks the imagination to experiment.
January 21, 2025
I had the privilege of knowing Danny during his formative years at the Farm and Fisherman. During that time, I was lucky to enjoy some wonderful Amaro, cucumber soda, and the best eggnog that I suspect will ever cross my lips. I also experienced some of his flaws, like having thought he cleaned a crock pot of a kombucha mother only to discover the ginger beer he later added to the crock turned into a ginger kombucha. Danny is a teacher at heart and unlike those who only focus on successes, he tells you how to make the drinks or mixes and also includes his mistakes/trials and errors along the way This book reflects the class and character of he and his wife. Her pictures in the book are stunning. The text is well composed and I found the initial sections regarding the basics of slow drinks to be particularly well written and understandable. I only skimmed the recipes, but they seem understandable and full of alternative ingredients/processes in the event the reader doesn't have access to the natural ingredient(s) in the base recipe. He does not limit the book to alcoholic beverages but details how to make natural sodas as well as the basics of fermentation. I am glad to have this book as a reference and plan to pursue some of the drink recipes. I highly recommend reading Slow Drinks.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews