Home brewing

[HemsbyPie]

Anyone on here brew any of their own beverages? It's my first year of making my own alcohol...

Just finished my cider ready for Christmas (never done it before but it's got to be better than letting the apples fall off to rot on the lawn).

In the picture is also the wine that finished last month (of which there were 4 bottles to start, went down rather well).

Also got a bottle of sloe gin, blueberry whisky and 6 litres of ale brewing, should be a good Christmas 

Edited September 11, 2015 by HemsbyPie

[BroadScot]

Do you have room for 1000 + NBN Forum members to help you out!

 

Iain

[HemsbyPie]

my lot are fairly good at clearing out my alcohol stash but if there is any left you'll be the first to know!!

[AdnamsGirl]

I've just got back into home wine making after a gap of around 20 years. This is (most) of the current brews .... there are not normally this many, it's just harvest season!

On the left is 5 gallons of greengage wine (greengages scrumped from absentee neighbours garden!). Behind that is 3.5 gallons of apple and peach wine. On the right is what will be 1 gallon of crab apple, pear and blackberry wine whilst the glass demijohn contains a bit of an experiment - liquorice tea wine. Out of sight is what will become 5 gallons of pear wine.

I've already bottled a gallon of swiss chard wine and a gallon of rhubarb wine. When you have an abundance of fruit in the garden and hedgerows, what else are you going to do with it?

Carol (hic)

[SteveO]

I used to make my own wine, and when I retire next year, I will take it up again. My favorites are blackberry an elderberry, Apple  and elderflower. You can also make a drinkable white wine from a 1 litre carton of orange juice. Never had much luck with plums, as the fruit contains a lot of pectin. Can't wait to get going again!

 

Steve

 

 

 

 

[Wussername]

Would you guy's be kind enough to tell me where you live. 

Discretion guarenteed

This information, I promise, will go no further than NBf.net

 

[HemsbyPie]

I've already bottled a gallon of swiss chard wine and a gallon of rhubarb wine. When you have an abundance of fruit in the garden and hedgerows, what else are you going to do with it?

Carol (hic)

crikey that's some set up you've got!! Haven't moved onto wine from scratch yet - I used a kit but I would like to start (my mum grows grapes most of which end up feeding the birds!)

totally right about using up the fruit - I was annoyed last year as the rotten apples ruined the grass so promised myself that this year I would make cider... Have enough apples for one more demijon (but need to invest in a ladder to get to those!)

 

[Hockham Admiral]

Gosh, Carol, you really don't do things by half, do you?  

[TheQ]

With this house on the site of an old pub, 17 apple trees here when we moved in ( 3 have died since) I've made 5 gallons each year, I would make more but it take so much time to crush all those apples. I've made home brew for many years, like my dad did.

In the garden  There are pear trees, elderberry, bullace, damson, and then hops in the hedgerows, I just don't have time to process it all

[MauriceMynah]

At the summer meet this year I found a great Home brew and wine making store in Beccles. so if anyone wants to start, A good place for kit and advice!

[grendel]

How do you do the cider, we have an apple tree and a decent juicer, but no idea on how to start cider, everything online seems to suggest you need to add all sorts to get it going, while all I really want to do is throw it in a demijohn and forget it.

Grendel

[riyadhcrew]

I buy 34 litres of red grape juice - split it into 2 water bottles - add 600 grams and a sachet of yeast to each and wait for 3 weeks. If luck is on my side - very drinkable.

 

 

[HemsbyPie]

How do you do the cider, we have an apple tree and a decent juicer, but no idea on how to start cider, everything online seems to suggest you need to add all sorts to get it going, while all I really want to do is throw it in a demijohn and forget it.

Grendel

I used a juicer. Granted it's not the old fashioned way, but you get pretty much all the juice.

As for extra ingredients, all I added was wine yeast (read loads of guides and they all said this was fine).

once I have tried it I'll be adding a bit of sweetener if needed but that's all I'm planning on.

[grendel]

where do you get the yeast, I have baking yeast (both dried and fresh) but understand its a different beast.

do you filter or strain your juice as mine has a lot of froth on top and sediment in the juice - we have a champion juicer, the motor part is huge.

Grendel

[GeoffandWendy]

I used to brew my own wine and beer, many years ago, when most outlets were selling beer kits and all the stuff to go with it. The trend for home brewing seems to have dwindled over the past twenty years, with cheap supermarket prices.

Worth having a go if you have never done it before and now is the best time of year, to get out there, picking Blackberries, Elderberries, Hawthorn Berries, and Apple windfalls for making good old Scrumpy. Mmmmm! Do you know this is all making my mouth water, I'm sure I have still got some of my old demijohns in the shed. Must have a look. Good time to start again, with all the fruits in season.

[ranworthbreeze]

I bet the members on this forum have collectively got enough brewing gear to almost stock an average brewing suppliers shop.

I dabbled many years ago, buying the kits and doing my own but everything tended to taste like sherry and I hate sherry. The home brewed beer beer & larger were ok but it was like rocket fuel, it left you with an headache after a couple of glasses.

Regards

Alan 

[BroadScot]

Ah ha Alan, perhaps IF you had used the very small sherry type glass for the beer, a clear head would have been maintained! I tried the wine making malarky back in the late 70's. As wine was so cheap at the Hypermarkets at Calais, decided it was the way to go, and stocked up there! A cheeky bojolly was only 79p a bottle!  €5 a case of 6

 

Iain.

[TheQ]

where do you get the yeast, I have baking yeast (both dried and fresh) but understand its a different beast.

do you filter or strain your juice as mine has a lot of froth on top and sediment in the juice - we have a champion juicer, the motor part is huge.

Grendel

a quick Google shows there are two homebrew shops in Norwich and one in Great Yarmouth,   there are at least two Norfolk shops online, goodlife homebrew, and norfolkhomebrew.co.uk.

Also Wilko do home brew gear.

Saying that ive made cider quite successfully using bread making yeast, there aren't too many home brew shops in Saudi.

i don't strain my juice till after fermenting is complete and I'm bottling.

 

[Hockham Admiral]

I used to make 5 gallons of beer at a time in the 60's, when I was a young Air Force officer, also lau-lau (rice  whiskey).

At one party we ran  out of 3 or 4 containers of beer and I offered fermenting lau-lau... A young AirTraffic Control Officer drank a pint of it and had to be admitted to the Station Medical Centre with gastroenteritis.

I was advised by the SMO to give up home brewing. ....  

[MostlyAfloat]

Funny this topic came up, I got back into home brew about 18 months ago, did the usual kit wines with a modicum of success (I always found them a bit lacking in substance, but never lacked the alcohol...) then went onto doing a few Wurzel wines just using fruit juice from lidles or aldi with pretty good results, well drinkable as they weren't trying to be something they wasn't - i.e a bottle of Rioja etc, Google is your friend here and pretty much all of the fruit juices (as long as they weren't made from concentrate) worked and were drunk with relish over the summer and a few were consumed on the boat the last week .

I then decided to have a go at beer/lager and took over the kitchen table for a few weeks and I can truly say some of the kit beers from coopers are exceptional imho, I particularly like the Canadian Blonde and Cerveza they do and a few bottles went on a boat trip last week but never survived as they came back empty... 

also have had really good turnouts from the Woodfordes two can kits of their Wherry Ale Bitter, and it was nice to be able to compare the "real thing" at the Ferry Inn last week and have to say it's a close thing, the pub version is lighter in colour and not so hoppy and very drinkable, the home brew version is a tad darker and slightly more bitter and if conditioned well gives a brilliant head retention if you use a nucleated glass.... Very yummy....

now im just thirsty....

Ray

[HemsbyPie]

OK so the cider isn't looking great... Can anyone tell me if it should have gone this pale colour? Hoping it's just part of the fermenting process? 

[HemsbyPie]

also have had really good turnouts from the Woodfordes two can kits of their Wherry Ale Bitter, and it was nice to be able to compare the "real thing" at the Ferry Inn last week and have to say it's a close thing, the pub version is lighter in colour and not so hoppy and very drinkable, the home brew version is a tad darker and slightly more bitter and if conditioned well gives a brilliant head retention if you use a nucleated glass.... Very yummy....

now im just thirsty....

Ray

im fairly partial to a Wherry and reading this I think I may have to get a batch made over the winter. 

Anyone know now a good place to get beer bottles?

[MostlyAfloat]

I tend to use the plastic bottles as they are cheap and you can get a good idea how the second ferment is going by how hard the bottle gets, they weigh less as well.

Ray

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[grendel]

I have had plastic bottles (and the glass ones too come to think of it explode when I have made ginger beer in the past, and a right sticky mess it made too.I used to keep the bottles in a plastic bucket with a towel over the top too.

Grendel

[Alan]

Also used to do this many years ago. My favourite was always elderflower wine. Only downside was that it smelt like cat's pee when it was fermenting! Lovely taste though.