Home Brew

[chesters1]

good idea i'l keep my eye out for one

usually at the bootfair i go to your tripping over demijohns ,today NADA and it will be NADA until i fork out for one then they flock back

I,m not a wine person so usually it was the beers or cider i brewed (i even didnt mind kits) but this place is tiny so only the shed to play in which is unheated so strictly a summer venture.tthe old place had five beds and with all the kids gone i even had a brewing room ,out of the mrs sense of smell range that is

Edited August 15, 2010 by chesters1

[Ken L]

Don't tell anyone but the turbo cider works out at 50p a litre and it's actually quite good

[Ken L]

I did the initial 1 gallon batch of "Turbo Cider" as a trial and while it was perfectly drinkable, it was a bit insipid so when I upped the quantity of apple juice to 17L for the second batch, I added the juice of 8 lemons and four limes along with two teaspoons of glycerine, 2 heaped teaspoons of grape tannin, a little nutient and an extra 600g of sugar before fermenting out with a cider/champaign yeast.

This was bottled with a very light priming to give a just slightly sparkling drink and left for a week.

 

I tried the first one last night and damn it's good - and it should continue to improve over the next couple of months.

 

I think I've bought my last comercial cider for drinking at home.

 

Even with the "value" apple juice, all the added ingredients listed above, bottle caps and specialist sterilizing chemicals, this stuff works out at about 30p a pint.

 

One suggestion that I saw on a homebrew forum was "Damson Cider". Now that sounds like a plan and with a limited season, I'll be freezing a lot of Damson juice.

If damson cider works, the frozen juice will last me through the year. If it isn't any good, I can turn it into a damson wine.

[Ken L]

I thought I'd resurrect a 9 year old thread just to share a tip for anyone left on here who still brews.
I got gifted a pile of Newcastle Brown bottles a few weeks back, which is great but getting the labels and crud off new bottles is always a PITA so I decided to experiment.
5 days soaking in sodium hydroxide solution in a tub in the garden and after a good rise, the bottles came out absolutely spotless - not a mark, not a bit of glue residue and even bits of crusted up beer are gone.

Zero effort but with such powerful chemicals, you obviously have to be careful.

 

Oh and I've revised and simplified the cider recipe above. If anyone's interested, shout up and I'll post.

Edited September 28, 2019 by Ken L

[Martin56]

I don't do home brewing but I remember as a kid, there was a thing called a ginger beer plant that was passed around every household in the street to use as a starter for making ginger beer.

I believe it was kept alive by feeding it with sugar.

 

Maybe a bit like sourdough bread starter??

[Ken L]

Yes, it's a weird complex mixture of yeasts and bacteria that's fairly slimy and unpleasant.

You can make ginger beers without it and n fact, I have some downstairs that is a couple of years old. Nice over ice with lemon but you have to be in the right mood.

[Phone]

Ken,

 

No etching on the bottles? - disposal plans?

 

Phone

[Ken L]

I didn't use a massively strong solution. There was no etching, no sign of precipitates and it was dumped out into the garden (after being further diluted by sticking a hose in the tub and letting it overflow) where it didn't even kill the plants.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Ken L

[chesters1]

I used to have a chemist and druggist of 1865 book (not sure where it went?) But it was full of wonderful concoctions for just about any use.

I made a few where you could source the ingrediants (many now banned even from chemists) several "syrups" which were very nice and a few recipes for both brewed and non brewed ginger beer (and many many others)

Some of the latter were ok and a couple very nice using home brew equiptment (heat belts and pads especially as we couldnt afford to heat most of the house!)

I keep my eyes out on ebay but the old ones dont appear but browsing i see theres dvds containing many books so i may have a gander

[Ken L]

I've never bothered with heat pads and the like because the yeasties will do their thing happily at anything other than mid winter temperatures.
In fact there is a general consensus that overly rapid fermentation in the summer can impair flavour.
Fermentation might slow up a bit in the cool but I'm never in a rush to bottle - I had far too many bottle bombs when I was a kid due to being in a rush and don't fancy any more.

If you feel that you have to have a heater, they don't have to be made with brewing in mind.