Wild Culture: Elemental Cider

Humans have been fermenting for centuries. Today we think of brewing beer or making wine as a science, something that we are able to master if we have the right tools and the right knowledge. It was not always so.

Stephen Harrod Buhner writes in Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation about the first fermented drinks made tens of thousands of years ago: “They came out of a worldview in which the sacred is ever present with us, where all things possess a soul, the rocks are alive, and in which rabid destruction of the rainforest is inconceivable. The ancient beers came from cultures that, on every continent on earth, say human beings did not discover fermentation at all. They say it was given to humankind through the intercession of sacred beings, and they insist that these ancient beers contain within themselves some of the essence of the sacred source from which they come.”  Complete Article