Home Brew !

four18

Did anyone ever go down the home brew route ? It was all the rage about 25 yrs ago. I used to buy all the stuf, kits little packs of yeast , tubing etc in Easons of all places. I remember having about a dozen bottles fermenting in the top of the hot press.....They exploded, destroying my mothers clothes "Airing" in the hot press. It tasted poxy too and was very cloudy. I tried and tried but never got drunk on the stuff !!

aidan_walsh

Quite the little community of them on boards.

Run_to_da_hills

15 440ml cans of Fosters on special for e10 at Tesco why bother.

Bad as it is I would take Fosters over any home brew.

BaZmO*

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Bad as it is I would take Fosters over any home brew.

Have you tasted any home brew lately? It's come an awful long way from the hotpress days of 70's and 80's

gipi

Remember 2 buddies of mine deciding to brew their own beer as an economy drive....so they got all the stuff (including a plastic 40 pint barrel) and followed the instructions...

First barrel was drunk by the pair over one weekend - not much savings there!

Second barrel was drunk before the 3 week brewing time had passed - tasted a bit rough, I'm told but was drinkable!

Not many more barrels brewed after that! It was back to the local for a bit of a social life!

lord lucan

My Da' went through a phase in the mid-80's of brewing his own stuff. I can still smell it now as it wafted through the house. Didn't taste particularly good though!

Run_to_da_hills

In the 80's a mate of mine use to brew it "commercially" and sell it to classmates, one bottle got out with a dead mouse sealed inside. :eek:

round tower huntsman

i home brew my own cider....rocket fuel.

bullets

I'd love to brew my own cider.
I hate the taste of beer so it would have to be Cider.

I remember the kits in Easons when I was a teenager,
The kits themselves I could afford I remember but could
never get away with buying the huge drums and mange
to hide them at home from the parents so never bothered trying!


~B

Run_to_da_hills

In the 80's the average price of a slab of beer, ie 24 cans of 440ml was £24 old money when the working mans wage was less than £100. It is reconed that the price of take away beer has dropped 400% when one takes takehome pay and the current price of takeaways.

This leaves home brewing today down to the hobbiest. In my day home brewing was not an option. (On £25 a week apprentiship first year rate.

four18

Em Stupid Question but do you need apples for cider brew or is it a bag of chemicals that you just add water to ? Did not even know you could get cider kits. Anyone ever make hootch ? Its a spirit of sorts that you can make from anything, berries, spuds, plums. I think the recipe is well known in our prison system........:)

BaZmO*

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

In the 80's a mate of mine use to brew it "commercially" and sell it to classmates, one bottle got out with a dead mouse sealed inside. :eek:

Find that hard to believe tbh. Homebrewing is full of urban myths.

four18 wrote: »

Em Stupid Question but do you need apples for cider brew or is it a bag of chemicals that you just add water to ? Did not even know you could get cider kits. Anyone ever make hootch ? Its a spirit of sorts that you can make from anything, berries, spuds, plums. I think the recipe is well known in our prison system........:)

Making alcoholic at it's basic level is a really simple process.

Essentially you need to have water, sugar, and yeast that eats the sugar to convert it into alcohol.

Beer is made with 4 basic ingredients, Water, Barley (sugar source), Hops (flavouring and preservative), and Yeast.

Wine is as basic as you can get. Grapes are used for liquid/sugar source and the wild yeasts on the grapes convert the sugars contained in the juice to alcohol.

Cider would be pretty much the same as Wine. However, homemade Cider would taste very sharp compared to the usual sweet commercial Cider you get.

Obviously the processes described above can get an awful lot more complicated and involved, but at it's very essence, alcohol production is a very simple process.

round tower huntsman

four18 wrote: »

Em Stupid Question but do you need apples for cider brew or is it a bag of chemicals that you just add water to ? Did not even know you could get cider kits. Anyone ever make hootch ? Its a spirit of sorts that you can make from anything, berries, spuds, plums. I think the recipe is well known in our prison system........:)

we pick our own apples and press the juice from them for our cider. we made hooch before using water sugar and yeast...taste like piss but it'd fcuk you up.

Run_to_da_hills

BaZmO* wrote: »

Find that hard to believe tbh. Homebrewing is full of urban myths.

It was true, the idiot never steralised or checked the empty bottles before he filled them. I can remember throwing up when I saw it. :eek:

Bigcheeze

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

15 440ml cans of Fosters on special for e10 at Tesco why bother.

Bad as it is I would take Fosters over any home brew.

Because most beer sold in Ireland is very bland. If it's all your used to you don't really notice. People bake cakes and bread at home because they're better than mass produced supermarket versions. It's the same with brewing beer.

Welease

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

15 440ml cans of Fosters on special for e10 at Tesco why bother.

Bad as it is I would take Fosters over any home brew.

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

This leaves home brewing today down to the hobbiest.

Exactly.. with fizzy piss so cheap in Tesco's, the only ones who would bother are those who actually want to have a decent beer..

Meanwhile I am enjoying a magic pint of scottish heavy which cost me 40c and went down a storm at my bbq

Just Like Heaven

As a frequent home brewer i must admit that you don't appreciate the fizzy piss of tesco until your also home brewing.

Having said that i would much rather take any home brew over fosters.

Asphyxia

My father used to make his own Potcheen years ago and sell it to the pubs. They used to supply him with the ingredients and bottles and he would make it for them. The first drink I ever tasted was Potcheen and it is one of the only drinks that I can drink like crazy and still wake up fresh in the morning. My father still has a couple of bottles of it in his bar.