Home Brew

[Ken L]

It's good to have nice wines to hand but home brew gives you access to good beers as well. Brew out a stout kit to 30 pints instead of 40 so it's strong and malty and serve it over ice on a hot summers day......

Or have the brown ales, porters, and bitters that you can't get in Spain by simply ordering kits weghing a couple of kilo's.

The ginger cider is also a lighter more refreshing alternative to wines.

Go for it.

 

http://www.cervezasdelmundo.com/index.php

Edited July 30, 2010 by Ken L

[captain cojones]

thats an interesting website Ken, thanks. I normally only drink spanish beers in small glasses though!

I attended a wine presentation recently, put on by the " Mendoza" family. wonderful wines. I have to admit i was totally out of my depth with it all though. There were food and wine critics from the national press, i just kept quiet and listened!

 

Couple of pics of the venue

The wine bloke getting his life together

One of the tv people getting ready a broadcast.

 

Like i said, well out of my depth!

[Ken L]

Tried the "Turbo Cider" last night.

Very passable but I'll be tweaking the recipie just a little for the next batch with just a bit more added grape tannin and twice as much lemon juice for acidity.

In fact, I was so inpressed that I just picked up 20L of apple juice from the supermarket

[chesters1]

mines still gently fizzing in the shed

[Ken L]

Actually, I had a mate around last night. He quite liked the turbo cider but was blown away by the ginger cider - if anything, that stuff has got beter with an extra week in the bottle.

[Ken L]

I just cracked the first bottle from my trial batch of WOW.

This was bottled in a 330ml beer bottle with no back sweetening and a very light priming to give a slight sparkle.

I was a little concerned about the rough edges on the flavour from the orange pith whan I bottled but these have rounded off a lot in the 10 days or so since I bottled and I assume that they will continue to round off a little more as the other bottles mature.

Mouth feel is good but there is a slight cloying catch at the back of the tongue. This wouldn't be noticable with food but with a glass on its own, it was definatley there - but again, I expect this to fade off a bit with maturation.

In short, the WOW is astonishingly good for a wine that costs pennies a bottle and I would comend it to anyone who dabbles in brewing but is yet to try it.

 

This is a link to the thread on a homebrew forum that I read when I first came across the whole WOW thing and there's a link to the original thread that started the whole thing off at post #7.

[chesters1]

mine was so-so ,slightly tainted as i didnt notice the stainless steel handle was riveted to the stainless steel pot with alloy rivets

not very gingery despite nearly twice the "dose" ,i will buy another glass fermenting vessel and try again .

still cannot find the chemist and druggest version it was brilliant

[Ken L]

Wilkinsons will sell you a demijohn and airlock at a reasonable price but better if you can freecycle some that need a new home- a much beter option than trying to ferment in an open vessel.

At the moment, I'm short of wine bottles but for WOW, beer bottles with crown caps will be fine.

There's a wine festival starting in Brum next week and they will inevitably be offering samples so I'm hoping I can blag some empty bottles without screw caps.

 

There's plenty of ginger beer recipies on that site to check out if you do a search but like you, i was suprised at how light the ginger hit was from a big chunk of grated ginger when I made my ginger cider - I was expecting a slap around the face andn ended up with a pleasant tickle.

I just might make a batch of proper eye watering ginger wine at some point, ferment it out dry and prime the bottles for the ultimate vodka mule mixer..

[chesters1]

got about 10 air locks from decades ago ,i chucked all the demijohns in the skip when we lost our house they were far to bulky to store in my sis's garage especially with her car in it

[Ken L]

Bummer.

If you plan on doing decent qualtities, try to source yourself a couple of 18.9L office water bottles - the ones that fit on top of the chillers.

I picked up four from a skip a few years back and araldited airlocks into them and they're the muts nuts for doing decent sized brews of "Turbo Cider" or WOW.

Depending on how much fruit I can lay my hands on, I may even be using them for this years elderberry wine. I intend to do at least 6 gallons but I'll do 17 if there's enough fruit about.