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At the same time I started making Coventry's first Port, I also started off a beer home-brew. I used to do this a long time ago when I was a kid and later as a student, only using kits, I cannot be bothered with the stink of hops around the house. The one trick that I learned was this - get the best kit you can afford. So I did - Woodforde's Wherry, much beloved by Uncle Tom.

It's taken three weeks to get to the point that it is drinkable from the pressure barrel and the first tasting was...

...

and some more badly-drawn, inappropriate ellipses to annoy Julian ...

... lovely.

I did this as a tester for a Christmas barrel and now have to find a way to get through forty pints before starting another one. I'll find a way. It's genuinely good beer and as fresh as a daisy. Oh hang on, daisies are out of season. Never mind, you know what I mean.

Anybody else ever ventured into the nether-world of home-brew?

I used to do home brew cider, does that count? I've made cider from apple concentrate, apple juice and fresh apples - liquidised and pressed since I've never made enough cider to make it worth investing in a proper fruit press.

Once mostly fermented, I added a dosage and put the crown cork on the bottle to get a very successful lightly sparkling dry cider. Needed around 6 months of bottle age to get nicely rounded, but was extremely enjoyable.

AHB wrote:I used to do home brew cider, does that count? I've made cider from apple concentrate, apple juice and fresh apples - liquidised and pressed since I've never made enough cider to make it worth investing in a proper fruit press.

Once mostly fermented, I added a dosage and put the crown cork on the bottle to get a very successful lightly sparkling dry cider. Needed around 6 months of bottle age to get nicely rounded, but was extremely enjoyable.

Oh yes, this counts - Wokingham Scrumpy sounds like a marvellous idea.

40 pints? I never heard you complain about such a modest amount before.

I grant you that a gallon a night for five nights is not that excessive. Americans - our pints are bigger than yours, our are 20 fluid ounces each, so to you, fifty pints.

A friend of mine popped round and claimed it's one of the best pints he's ever had - praise indeed. I am now also a smug old Alex.

KillerB wrote:I grant you that a gallon a night for five nights is not that excessive. Americans - our pints are bigger than yours, our are 20 fluid ounces each, so to you, fifty pints.

As Julian explained to me, your pints are 20 British fluid ounces which are not as large as American fluid ounces. One American fluid ounce is slightly more than 1.04 British fluid ounces. Thus the British pint is ~1.2 American pints despite appearing to be 1.25.

So you have 48 American pints.

Good job my Irish blood has been diluted or I'd be after the evil swine that stole me two pints.

I used to home brew wine back in my early - mid 20s..... just yesterday I was going through the bottles in my 250 bottle vintage keeper and noticed I still have a few from back in the day.... dated 1996. I wonder if they'll be drinkable, or pretty much vinegar.....

I have one bottle of strawberry wine from 1997 left still. Last tasted about 7 years ago - it was lethal then. Thinking I will consume last bottle on or around my 40th birthday next year!

The Christmas batch is nearly ready now. It's in the cellar clearing and should be perfect for the run up. Actually, think I'll go and see what the clarity is like. Not bad, should be clear in about four days.

Something I remember about a lot of home-brewers was their inability to wait, drinking cloudy beer and then complaining that home-brew was rubbish. They were idiots, of course.

KillerB wrote:The one trick that I learned was this - get the best kit you can afford. So I did - Woodforde's Wherry, much beloved by Uncle Tom.

That's interesting...in my ignorance, I had no idea that you could buy kits of (for want of a better way of describing it) real real ale...I'd only come across those anonymous "Brown Ale" or "Best Porter" type things.

Not that it has much to do with home-brewing or wine-making, I'm quite fond sloe gin and usually try to do a bottle of that for Christmas. This year's batch might be a bit dodgy, though: the postal strike resulted in this year's berries being semi-fermented by the time they went into the gin...

Tried making beer last year, using those cans and then later doing it from scratch. Unfortunately the complaints regarding the smell of brewing put paid to that idea! (And the beer turned out a little watery).

More successful was the Bramble Brandy - about a pound of freshly picked blackberries, 150g White sugar and a 70cl bottle of inexpensive brandy. A little piece of vanilla pod in the mixture adds a nice dimension. Leave mixed together for a couple of months, and then fill into bottles, lightly filtered. It has some port-like qualities, and is rather nice poured over vanilla ice cream.

JacobH wrote:This year's batch might be a bit dodgy, though: the postal strike resulted in this year's berries being semi-fermented by the time they went into the gin...

It might be a little out of the way, but Mitcham Common has tons of sloe berries come late autumn.