The advantages of home brewing when you fancy a cheap tipple

FireWyrm

Funnily enough, Mr FireWyrm was saying this morning about using Jasmine Tea for wine making. We were discussing the possibility of banana and also dandelion & burdock. I'm a bit leery of dandelion since it's a natural diuretic as is alcohol so I'm going to research that one a little more. Mr FireWyrm declared himself very interested indeed in the raspberry beer as am I. We tested the SG of our beer batch this morning and are pleased to report that it is definately alcoholic although needs to grow some body. I tasted a little and it looks, smells and tastes like beer, so I don't think we've fluffed it. Rack and keg tomorrow and leave it to a secondary ferment for three weeks.

For those interested in beer the hard way...

The Everything Homebrewing Book by Drew Beechum ISBN10 1-60550-122-0 or 978-1-60550-122-2
Home Brewed Beers and Stouts by CJJ Berry, ISBN10 0-900841-58-3

I gave my Rose and raspberry wine a stir this morning and it smells divine.

Hillbilly1

The Berry book is 1p on Amazon! We just bought a copy inspired by this thread and are converting part of a storage shed to keep the brewing stuff in!

FireWyrm

Hillbilly1 wrote: »

The Berry book is 1p on Amazon! We just bought a copy inspired by this thread and are converting part of a storage shed to keep the brewing stuff in!

Careful. The reviews say the information is out of date. The way I see it is that it's a general guide, not a definitive work. You should combine the information in that book with others and your own experience. However, it does give you chapter and verse on brewing from the ground up. These days though, most commercial kits will produce perfectly good beer, no knowledge required. I only posted that ISBN because someone asked about making beer from scratch.

mr2jay

That'll be me

I have about 35 bottles of ale here that I brewed when I first started. Truth be told, when it was "fresh" is was a bit hoppy to put it mildly. Certainly tasted like beer but had a VERY strong taste of hops.

I have kept it though to see if it improves with age - in fact it has been bottled a month now so might crack open a bottle tonight :beer:

mr2jay

Yum

OK, as promised just opened up a bottle of the ale to give it a bash after is has time to "mature"



Top tip for anyone brewing an ale? Leave it a bit before drinking it. REALLY good flavour

mr2jay

OK scrap my earlier comments about the ale....

Just opened the second bottle which has been sat on the fridge for a month and put in to chill this afternoon....

It really is nectar It has a slight fizz, great head and is REALLY smooth to drink

Here you go - this gives you an idea of the quality



My old man is staying with us for a couple of days this week so no doubt a few more will go over the next few days :beer:

FireWyrm

Now THAT looks like a lovely glass of ale! I hope our lager looks and tastes as good. I'm counting the days until I can try my wine but it'll be a year before the mead is mature enough to sample unfortunately.

AnnieDaPea

FireWyrm wrote: »

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.

Gooseberries make excellent wine, though you will need to add sugar and I seem to recall adding raisins.

AnnieDaPea

January20 wrote: »

I was quite interested in the tea wine, and remembered I had a small box of Wild Cherry tea which I bought from the Chinese supermarket in town. Nice tea, but I'm more of a coffee (or wine ) drinker.

I'll have to dig out a recipe I saw for coffee wine.

MrsTinks

Great thread (and I'm going to be a naughty BG and keep it on DFW for a little bit although it really should be moved to Old style lol) - but can I just remind everyone that links to blogs is not allowed? I'd recommend removing them as soon as possible or the MSE admin team will remove your whole post

Now... WHERE did I put my demi johns???? This is the first time anyone has made wine making sound simple enough that even I can work it out!!!