The advantages of home brewing when you fancy a cheap tipple

January20

I have a question: how do you fit an airlock? I mean, do you have to do anything with the little red cap? Do you put water in it? (I have a very vague memory from when my dad used to make home-made wine but I was very young - and uninterested in those days).

mr2jay

January20 wrote: »

I have a question: how do you fit an airlock? I mean, do you have to do anything with the little red cap? Do you put water in it? (I have a very vague memory from when my dad used to make home-made wine but I was very young - and uninterested in those days).

The airlock pushes into the rubber bung to form a seal and you half fill each side with water (or vodka)

The red cap on the end (plastic one) fits loosely over the airlock. This is simply to avoid any dust or bugs getting in

January20

Thank you mr2jay. It's amazing that I could forget all of this! I've put an ad on freegle and a kind soul has offered me a demi-john so I will be starting soon I hope .

ETA: even sooner than I thought as I'm getting 4 demi-Johns from another kind toon freegler this afternoon! 4!! Can't wait to start now!

AnnieDaPea

mr2jay wrote: »

The airlock pushes into the rubber bung to form a seal and you half fill each side with water (or vodka)

The red cap on the end (plastic one) fits loosely over the airlock. This is simply to avoid any dust or bugs getting in

If your airlock does not have a red dust cap, a loose twist of cloth or cotton wool will keep dust and flies out.

SunFlower

What a brilliant idea for a thread!

I would love to try all those fruit wines. I would also love to try some raspberry beer ( I don't drink it often as it's not available everywhere and not cheap when it is).

How easy is it to brew your own beer?

mr2jay

I have only dabbled in beer to be honest, without much success it has to be said

But, having said that, I have only been brewing myself for about 2 months. The kits for beer work exactly the same way as the wine/cider ones. Be careful though, I found out that the reason my beer kit was bad was down to the kit itself. It is worth spending a little more to get a decent kit (about £20 for a 40 pint kit which is still only 50p a pint)

I'll be trying it again to see if I can get a nice, mellow ale. I have made friends with the guy that runs the local brewing store and have asked his advice. He admitted that the cheap kits aren't much cop but also said that there isn't much difference between the REALLY expensive kits (£30) and the middle of the line ones at £20...

To make a Raspberry Lager, I have found this recipe though

http://beerrecipes.org/showrecipe.php?recipeid=632

I would love to get into making my own recipes for beer and lager rather than using a kit. It is a bit of a black art to me at the moment

FireWyrm

I have a couple of beer brewing books which I got from amazon. One is particularly hard core in that it goes so far as to explain how to extract malt. I think he stopped short of explaining how to grow hops, but if you want to learn about fermenting grains, that's the book. I'll dig out the ISBN for you later.

In the meantime, I'm steeping Rose petals in raspberry juice and I'm going to start fermenting it into wine today. Our beer kit seems to be working, there are bubbles and stuff but DH and I are skeptical about the end result. We'll let you know later in the month what happened. I have honey in the post from free range bees getting their pollen from wild flowers (well, sort of apparently, as close to wild as it gets anyway, not that wretched stuff you get from the supermarket) and I'll be working on my first mead when that arrives. I have elderflowers drying and sloes in the post. Ive spotted elder berries close by and I intend to see about picking them and I know where there are lots of blackberries. There's a PYO just down the road and I was toying with gooseberries as a potential wine but I'm not sure. Like rhubarb, ive never been keen on eating gooseberries, mainly because I don't think they're sweet enough. I've also spotted wild damsons. I WAS going to have them for pie, but i might see about fermenting some too.

mr2jay

Hmmm - sounds interesting

You'll have to let me know how it comes out :beer:

SailorSam

I started to make my own wine last year and i don't really know why, i hardly ever drink. The first 2 gallon was ready at Christmas and is still sitting on the kitchen counter i think i've had about 4 glasses. And i've got another 7 packets of flavoured tea bags in the cupboard to make more, 'cos they were on offer at the time.

January20

mr2jay wrote: »

Hmmm - sounds interesting

You'll have to let me know how it comes out :beer:

I will. I'm always one for an experiment anyway, but the lady who gave me the demi-Johns yesterday told me that's what she used to make a lot of.

I can't wait to try making your raspberry recipe though - hopefully by the end of the week

Sailorsam, couldn't you make the wine and give it away as presents? I'm planning to do that. Well, with the wine my dd and her friends don't drink lol! I also think it would be nice for dinner parties to take along a bottle of home-made wine, as long as it tastes nice of course. I stopped drinking wine because it has become so expensive. In the good old day, you could get a good bottle for a fiver. Now for that price it tastes more like cat's wee than wine - not that I've even tasted cat's wee - I have to add (some people take things very literally:rotfl:)