Home Brew

Just put on 40 pints of a Blonde Lager.

3kg Maris Otter Malt (£3.60)
1kg Irish Pale Malt (£1.00)
15g Columbus 90 mins (50p)
30g Fuggles 15 mins (70p)
Youngs Ale Yeast (£1.10)

I'm mixing the malts (first 2 ingredients) for 60 minutes at 68° with 17L of water. Temperature is critical because below this you won't get all the sugars while above this you get tanins that spoil the flavour.

After 60 minutes I wash the grains with 8L water to remove more sugars at a slightly higher temperature of 72°

I strain the liquid, discaring the grains, then I boil the "wort" with the Columbus Hops for 90 minutes, adding in the Fuggles Hops for the last 15. Hops give beer its bitterness.

Strain again into a sterilised bucket, cool down to room temperature and then pitch my yeast.

Leave a week to ferment and then bottle with a spoon full of sugar in each bottle to give the beer some fizz.

Drink after 2 months.

Gonna do a Guinness clone next week but todays efforts should take me around 4 hours an cost me around £7

Really easy to do and not expensive, just time consuming. I may have a pint or 2 of my Scottish Heavy I brewed 2 months ago.

I remember Stan Butler making some home brew - with hilarious results

Remember my Dad making his own booze 25 years ago. Sterilisering all those bottles took awhile although. Tasted ok but you had to watch out for the sediment at the bottom of the bottle.

I've always fancied the idea of having a go. Sounds a good hobby mate

I tried it in the 70s and it was woeful.
No doubt the stuff will be more sophisticated now but back then it put me off the home brew for life.

The kits you can buy are a simple way to get into it (that's how I started) but they don't taste great. I'm drinking a Scottish Heavy from a kit now which is OK but has that Home Brew twang.

The difference is clear when you move to all grain. If you've ever tried Real Ale, it's just like that with no twang. Sure some can be horrible but others are delicious and you can tweak things to your liking and have so much more control. I've now brewed several brews incluing a Chocolate Stout and a Dark Ale. I've spoilt one batch but I'm really pleased with the results so far. I'm also surprise how little difference there is in a Stout to a lager, the steps are the same and ingredients similar but the taste is so much different. I'm also surprised at how much sugar can be extracted from a grain. I add no sugar at all to my brews.

My current brew is not so much a lager but a Blonde Ale. It looks like a lager but shouldn't taste like one. I'm now at the boiling stage and adding my hops for 90 minutes. The next stage is usually cooling the wort quickly but I'm bypassing that as an experiment (others have done it with good success).

The only things needed are time an cleanliness. It's important to sterilise everything when the yeast is pitched or the beer will spoil (as my last brew did). Sterilising can be a right pain but it's essential.

It's not rocket science Steve, I got into all grain thanks to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPRLc9-C73Y

You should have most of the equipment around the house and ingredients can be bought online for a few £££. It's not expensive.

TBH my main problem with it was a lack of attention to detail and impatience.
On reflection it is no surprise it was horrible.
GL with yours but I still have those two weaknesses and would only botch it again.

I've noticed my beer making skills improve with every beer. My first kit was horrible but my Chocolate Stout astounding. I'm hoping good things from this brew. I was given a boiler by a kind person on the Homebrewforum and he supplied me with some grains and a bottle of the Blonde Beer I'm brewing today. It's by far the best Home Brewed beer I've tasted so I want to emulate his beer hopefully. It would be good to compare.

I've a Guinness clone ready for next brew (maybe 2 weeks time)

5.0 lbs. (2.3 kg) English 2-row pale ale malt (probably use Irish Stout Malt which is £1 a kg)
2.5 lbs. (1.1 kg) flaked barley
1.0 lb. (0.45 kg) roasted barley
12 AAU East Kent Goldings hops (60 min) (2.4 oz./68 g of 5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale)

I've already got most of the ingredients

Chilled by chucking in 3L of ice. In hindsight it watered the beer down too much but I should still end up with a session beer of 3.5 - 4%, slightly darker in colour than I expected but it will probably clear. The temperature is still too high, 29°, to pitch my yeast (heat kills yeast) so I'll wait until it drops to room temperature in a few hours.

SNAFU