Home brewing has come a long way from the days when charming elderly ladies would concoct lethal or explosive beverages from hedgerow or garden ingredients.

These days, thousands of amateur wine and beer makers are engaged in this enjoyable and cost saving hobby, producing excellent results from a variety of fruits and other plant sources. This book is a round-the-year guide to wine and beer making, covering dry and sweet wines, beers, lagers, liqueurs, and fortified wines. In the introduction, the author explains the basic principles of the art and advises on health and safety and the choice, use, and care of equipment.

The main body of the text, illustrated with line drawings, is a season-by-season guide to ingredients and recipes for making wines and beers to suit all tastes.

There is a comprehensive index and appendices on measuring acid content, blending liqueurs, gravity readings, sugar content and potential alcohol, poisonous or unsuitable plants and a checklist of the common and scientific names of plants to be avoided.