The Fermentation Kitchen: Recipes for the Craft Beer Lover’s Pantry

By Gabe Toth, Brewer’s Publications, $19.95

My sense is that a lot of brewers also like to cook. We’re into recipes as communication—as sources of information that can be absorbed and adapted and refitted to our wants and interests. Most of all, we’re into making things that we get to enjoy tasting and consuming. We understand that we get more pleasure from it if we make it ourselves.

However, for the sake of argument, let’s say there are a lot of brewers out there who aren’t nearly as comfortable in their kitchen as they are in their garage. It’s plausible. This book—an excellent fermentation-themed cookbook—might well be tactically aimed at expanding their horizons and easing them into pastimes that are every bit as creative and delicious as their other one.

The Fermentation Kitchen is concise but offers breadth. In just about 150 pages plus the index, it manages to hit a range of our favorite things—bread (with an additional chapter devoted to sourdough), cheese, cured meats, hot sauce, kombucha, pickles (including sauerkraut and kimchi), and vinegar (including one made from porter or stout)—with each chapter offering a technical foundation, some needto-know technique, and a series of different recipes. After an initial dive through the book in search of ideas, I’m looking forward to trying

out some fermented mustard, some homemade feta, and a sourdough boule.

This is a book that will get some brewers and geeks into the kitchen to try new things. For the rest of us dabblers, there are plenty of ideas to pilfer and new directions to explore. As Gabe Toth writes, “The rabbit hole goes deep.” —Joe Stange