Home Brewing

[-Matt-]

Wondering if anyones had a go at this before.

An old school mates been doing it for years and trying to sell the idea to me - hes done beers, ciders, wines and maybe more for all I know.

Long story short he owes me some money and to repay the debt has insisted on buying me a brewing kit for christmas to get me into it. On the face of it, and from his explanations it all seems fairly simple, and actually quite economical once you get things going.

Potential good hobby - or likely to end in failure, sickness, poisoning and death

[gfrancisdev]

great hobby, very easy and relatively simple

just make sure you wash everything out really well, baby bottle cleaner if you're doing something sensitive like wine.

My specialty is mead (the wine variant), throw together 1.5kg of honey, a gallon of warm water, and some high alcohol yeast and you've got yourself a party. (wouldn't recommend mead if you want it quickly though, takes a good 6 months to mature)
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[Martin_T]

My Uncle and I had a go at this once, it did not turn out well at all; then again we were pretty slack at sticking to the instructions... Needless to say what we ended up with was a poisonous jelly...

Now on the flip-side, my dad has been home-brewing for about 40-odd years and has created some absolutely blindingly good beers. As long as you follow the instructions for the first few batches, you can then start to experiment and get some serious brews on the go.

Currently enjoying a "from-scratch" home brewed ginger beer. Good stuff!

Definitely give it a go, it's well worth it!
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[angryjonny]

I've been tempted myself since I moved house and got a bigger airing cupboard. I always remember my dad having something bubbling away in the airing cupboard or the spare room or the garage or occasionally coming through the lounge ceiling. I'll watch this thread with interest.

[-Matt-]

I know hes tryed more complex stuff, but tends to do the quick turn-around stuff generally as he doesn't buy drink anymore, only the products to brew it. The stuff i've tryed was pretty impressive, but I don't know if thats more down to years of experience and refinement.

If i'm honest i'm more interested in whether its a money-saver longterm if I can brew largish amounts of drinkable ciders/beers. The refinement of flavours and mixing different grains etc would be second to that once I get to grips with it, if I do

[Martin_T]

As long as you can brew and store a reasonable amount of it, it probably works out cheaper. The kit my uncle and I tried worked out at something like 56 pence a pint for the kit (as long as the end product doesn't work better as a marmalade).

I would recommed some of these as bottles, just because they look the shiz: Swing Top Bottles
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[-Matt-]

Is it easy [even possible] to control the strength of it to some extent.

Would be a PITA if its a roulette of piss-weak or max-strength lager each brew

Space wise, particularly if I can whack a few brew ups during a day into one big tank or barrel I should be fine, I just have doubts about how well it'll turn out under my hand

[gfrancisdev]

[angryjonny]

[Martin_T]

[Ariel Badger]

I knew a lot of home brewers in my teens and they would make wine out of all sorts of junk which very often was dreadful tasting and needed pouring down the drain. This is where I came in I would take there unpalatable wine and run it through the still we had made at work and make poteen
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[-Matt-]

The stuff i've tryed so far, which was mainly ale's tasted pretty good, but then i'm not heavily into ale's to compare it to the top stuff you can get in the shops really.

I did notice there was a hell of a lot of silt in most of them, but as long as the bottle wasn't treated too roughly it just meant ditching the last half inch of it.

Not sure if the silt is the yeast or not, I didn't risk finishing it to the bottom

[Martin_T]

[Walloper]

No time to read.

Clean Clean Clean and Clean.

Sodium Metabisulfate

Citric Acid

Mix together for a food safe sterilizer.

Bottles Bottles Bottles.

Tops and or corks (beer or wine)

Topper or corker.

Mainly you need sugar and yeast to make a brew.
Control of temperature helps the process.
Measure sugar at start and end to determine % alcohol using a hydrometer. Be careful with this so the readings are very accurate. Look in Wilkos for gear as they are cheap as chips.
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[PH1L_T]

Instead of buying expensive sanitiser, use milton tablets (used for babies bottles). Much cheaper does the same job!

I've got 40 pints of bitter in the garage, in a pressure barrel, ready to go.

As far as hobbies go, it's only a couple of hours work, for a big return.

Get brewing

[-]

I started doing wine a year or so ago. The first few 6 bottle kits were canon fodder, until I learn't about keeping it within the right temperature range.

Now, we make 2 X 30 bottle Pinot Grigio kits a month to try ot build up some to age. I use either Kenridge Classic (£47 for 30 bottles) or Beaverdale (£39 for 30 bottles). The Kenridge Classic is better as it has 10 litres of varietal juice and concetrate to the Beaverdale's 8 litres. There are cheaper kits but these 2 bith make very good wines. I've spent £120 on a 30 bottle Tempranillo recently which is bulk aging now. At about 8 months old it's really coming along, by next spring it should be nicer than a £10 supermarket bottle.

Use bottled mineral water instead of tap water to top the kit up to 23L and get it to 25 degrees before putting the yeast in. I then keep it between 20-25 degrees by wrapping the buckets in inner liners from a couple of bike jackets, with a wireless weather station sensor poked inside to monitor temperature.

If you follow the kits instructions and pay attention to temperature, you can't go wrong.

I've done a cheap Young's lager and a cider kit, they were OK too but with a top end wine kit it's far easier to produce a good end product as it's mainly just grape juice/concentrate, water and yeast.

We store our wine in the 5L mineral water bottles we buy to top up the kits with. When aged for a bit we bottle some to put on the rack for 6 motnhs, the rest gets drank straight from the 5L bottle in the fridge!

[Walloper]

For the Record:

Grape is the popular fruit for wine as it naturally has the correct balance of sugars, water and natural yeasts (on the skin) to make alcohol.

We use other shit as flavouring but need to add sugar and water to suit the fermentation.

In 'dry' countries I used to make cider using 20 1ltr apple juice cartons a couple of pounds of sugar and some bread yeast in a water container. A latex glove with a pin hole in a finger on the top as an air trap.

It was raw, rare and went down VERY well indeed. Hic
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[dodsi]

I have been a fairly avid home brewist...

At the moment have 3 of 4 pressure barrels filled with treacle stout, St Peter's ruby red ale and a winter warmer style. Plus in bottles some Christmas style Belgian beer, woodefords wherry, kreik, framboos and normal stout.

As said... Temps are important whilst fermenting and is sterilisation.

And time... Lots of time to mature.

[Dan87]

I got into home brewing this year. Only basic things, so wine made out of cartons of juice, vimto and ribena ciders, they're very cheap to make and require very little skill.

I've now moved onto beer making, only using kits at the moment but for £15 can make 40 decent pints with a good abv too. My last lager came out at 6.5% and went down a treat.

Ask on free cycle for the basics that's where I started. Alternatively if you need a demijohn to give wine making a go and are in Lincolnshire drop me a pm. A bought 20 as a good idea, but only seem to be using 5! lol.

Cheers

Dan

[Walloper]

[i.p.phrealy]

made some Bitter years ago, cost me about £15 all in and made 40 litres, gave 4x2 litre bottles to a mate who was going to Donnington Monsters Of Rock (as it was called back then), he doesn't remember seeing the headline band, fairly potent stuff it was!

when I move house in February and have an airing cupboard i'll start making some again.
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[Benson_JV]

I brew All grain (which is to say I mash the grain, boil the runoff with the hops etc) but kits are an excellent and cheap way to get into brewing. Well worth a bash. Try to get some spraymalt rather than making the kit up with sugar.
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