Minimum alcohol pricing is nigh

dartboardio wrote: »

Aww bless.

The government disguising another money making racket as 'caring for the people of Ireland'

Just another bright idea to make more money from us while pretending to care about an issue

Makes me sick to be honest. In other countries, selling the same heineken bottles we have, however at a fraction of the price and almost 1% stronger.

It won't make much extra taxes for the Govt.

It makes more profits for retailer / supplier.

dartboardio wrote: »

Aww bless.

The government disguising another money making racket as 'caring for the people of Ireland'

Just another bright idea to make more money from us while pretending to care about an issue

Makes me sick to be honest. In other countries, selling the same heineken bottles we have, however at a fraction of the price and almost 1% stronger.

If anything sales will fall leading to lower excise and vat take.

The winners here are the VFI no one else really

Leroy42 wrote: »

Not sure the vintners will in anything out of this, although I can fully appreciate that they think it might. Increasing price of a can of Bud from €1 to €2 still leaves a massive price gap to a pint in a pub. If people are drinking at home to save money, why would they suddenly abandon that?
... This seems to mainly help the big brands as it destroys the ability to compete on price.

Agreed on vintners, but this wouldn't be getting progressed by government if they weren't in the vintners pockets.

Main beneficiaries could be smaller off licences whose prices will now match up with supermarkets. Think the off licence association was in favour of it too, funny that

Quackster wrote: »

If/when Brexit happens it's game on as folk will no longer be able to legally import alcohol from NI in excess of normal duty free allowances. Expect a strong customs operation (aka a 'hard' border) to enforce this.

How do you definitively know this? Nobody knows.

i havent had a chance to read through all 257 pages of posts so this might have popped up.

But what is the cheapest way to get drunk.

i see a can of 4% 500ml beer in the supermarkets for 75 cents
a bottle of 12% 750ml wine for 4 euro in tesco.

anything cheaper in the price per alcohol grams content?

sdraobs wrote: »

i havent had a chance to read through all 257 pages of posts so this might have popped up.

But what is the cheapest way to get drunk.

i see a can of 4% 500ml beer in the supermarkets for 75 cents
a bottle of 12% 750ml wine for 4 euro in tesco.

anything cheaper in the price per alcohol grams content?

Learn how to brew it from ingredient kits, the simplest forms of brewing only require an afternoon of time investment once every few weeks and will produce strong beer which easily rivals that found on the cheapest shelves of off licenses and supermarkets - and you can buy ingredients for as little as €12 for a 40-pint batch. That's what I've done, anyway

The vintners are on a hiding to nothing on this one, putting up the price of a carry-out leaves people with less spend for the on trade, if they think they can social engineer people back into pubs they are mistaken, this will cost.

The big winners from this will be home brew/distill suppliers the losers publicans and street drinkers, beware the law of unintended consequences.

Can the paid pro-alcohol lobby group please let themselves known here. I suspect certain posters are trying hard to peddle their rhetoric to protect their employer's interests.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

you mean i could be getting paid for this? by who?

Damn you beat me to it.
DIAGEO IF YOU ARE LISTENING I AM HERE.

sdraobs wrote: »

Can the paid pro-alcohol lobby group please let themselves known here. I suspect certain posters are trying hard to peddle their rhetoric to protect their employer's interests.

Good point. If anyone here would stand to gain from this legislation they should probably declare an interest, including the family pub, off licence. The list for our TDs and Senators would make interesting reading.

KrustyUCC wrote: »

https://www.thejournal.ie/minimum-unit-pricing-ireland-4703692-Jun2019/

I suppose all the people who commented negatively in that article about MUP are part of the paid pro-alcohol lobby group as well lol

And the 75%+ who said no on the poll on this forum.

sdraobs wrote: »

Can the paid pro-alcohol lobby group please let themselves known here. I suspect certain posters are trying hard to peddle their rhetoric to protect their employer's interests.

You mean the vintners, right?

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Can you recommend any kit beers? I've done extract brewing a couple of times and it's a pain in the ass and way too much sediment. I know I'm probably just not doing it right but something easier would be appreciated.

This really depends on what type of beer you usually like to drink, what categories would you normally go for in the pub or offo? Personally I'm very much a dark ale / stout man first and a hoppy IPA man second, so my brewing experience is fairly skewed towards these styles.

The nicest one I ever made (by a long shot) was The Craft Range's Citra IPA, it's currently out of stock everywhere but Home Brew West tell me it'll be back in sometime during mid-July. Costs about €23 for the kit (40 pint bottles) or a little less when it's discounted, I got it for around €19 last time around. The Citra hop blast was incredible

The Bulldog Easter Chocolate Stout is absolutely delicious. A more expensive kit coming in at around €25-€30 again for 40 bottles, but totally worth it and fairly strong at 6%-6.5% (the kit is 6% and carbonation drops / priming sugar is said to add roughly 0.4% give or take) Legitimately tastes like a chocolate milkshake with hints of Guinness.

In terms of making a properly cheap one, the UK Brew Mexican Czerveza (I'm quite sure I'm spelling this wrong) is, if you remember to stick a slice of lime in the glass before pouring, absolutely delicious - and if you started it in July it'd be ready for the spell of warm weather we usually get in and around the end of August / beginning of September. It costs around €12 for the kit and an extra couple of euro for a bag of dextrose (it's intentionally a light tasting beer a la Corona or Sol so you wouldn't actually want to use fancier sugars or malt extract)

Regarding sediment, I have several techniques I use during a brew which are possibly overkill for kit brewing, but it does mean I've never had the sediment issue. For starters, if you haven't got one already, get a second fermenting bucket with a tap attached. This will be your bottling bucket - not only can you leave most of the sediment behind in the primary fermenter by eaving the last litre or two behind and holding the siphon a little above the bottom of the bucket to avoid sucking in dead yeast and trub, the tap itself is set a little above the bottom of the bottling bucket, so if you leave it for an hour or two to settle after siphoning and clamping the lid on, the sediment should settle below the tap level. It does mean that from a 23L batch, you'll probably only get 18-19L (so 36-38 pint bottles) but it definitely lessens the sediment issue significantly.

On brew day, I basically pour the kit ingredients into the empty, sanitised bucket and then fill it with 3 or 4 litres of boiling water straight from the kettle. After that, take a paddle or wooden spoon (again, boil this first to sterilise it) and stir the sh!t out of it until everything is dissolved. Most brewing guides will tell you to oxygenate at the end once you've topped up the fermenter to 23L of cold water, but what I do (which takes more time, but has been hugely successful in jump starting fermentation - even in a recent case where I accidentally killed most of my yeast by dropping the sachet in boiling water before making the kit) is to actually oxygenate after each litre, so when you pour another litre into the fermenter, stir it in vigorously with your paddle until there's loads of foam and froth sitting on top, then do the next litre. Once it's up to 23L, stick on some very upbeat music and just go to town splashing and stirring it, I usually get a couple of Avicii songs queued up and make a point of switching direction repeatedly with the stirring so as it makes more bubbles - you're trying to get as much oxygen as possible to dissolve into it. Pitch the yeast after 10-15 minutes of this stirring of the full fermenter.

When I do it this way, I usually start hearing bubbles within just a few hours of sealing the fermenter, which is significantly less than many brewers report - and on one or two occasions I've managed to get the yeast "shockwave" where you drop it in and it immediately "erupts" with activity under the surface. Looks amazing when it happens.

Finally, discard the advice in the instructions about how long you should ferment, and give it a full two weeks at a minimum - three preferably. On top of this, when you bottle, leave the bottles for two full weeks before sticking them in the fridge, then wait as long as you can (ideally another week or two) before drinking - this allows any floating yeast or sediment to clump together in the cold conditions and sink to the bottom. Then just be careful pouring, so you leave the sediment in the dregs at the bottom of the bottle!

One extra note - if you're doing a style with aroma / dry hops (so where you add the hops to the fermenter after it's been sitting for a few days), in my advice, discard any and all instructions you might have got with the kit and wait until one day before bottling to add the hops. Also, don't boil the hops, just open whatever bag they come in and dump them straight in. This gives the most intense "ipa" hop taste in my experience - the aroma seeps out through the airlock if you do it too soon before bottling, and it likewise boils off completely if you follow Bulldog's moronic "make tea with the hops and pour that in" idea.

It does take practise but I've been at it for over a year now and I can't remember the last time I bothered buying beer in an Offo

sdraobs wrote: »

Can the paid pro-alcohol lobby group please let themselves known here. I suspect certain posters are trying hard to peddle their rhetoric to protect their employer's interests.

can you come back and tell us who this pro-alcohol lobby is?