Home brew wine

I have started brewing again over the last couple of months (Red Wines.. her indoors preferred choice) had about 10yrs lay off. Give all my stuff away ..and had to buy it all again !! Anyone out there brewing ? I would like to pick your brains on a couple of matters...rather than scrolling through Google and you tube etc .

I'm the same. ie Summut I used to do.

Don't seem to have the time nowadays. Only occasional brewing when a surplus of fruit from the garden. Though elderberry was always my favourite.

I am probably not a good person to offer advice, as I myself usually shunned it. Won't use campden tablets or any clearing agents etc. Never had a problem, but I accept other have.

Funny you should ask that BB because, I brew beer, never done wine at all, I buy the kits and its just a case , mixing the kit in a 5 gallon container, add 2 kettles of boiling water, sugar ( 2 pound ) mix thoroughly , add 22 litres of cold water and yeast. allow 1 week to ferment, next add hops and store for another 14 days then its ready to sup

How do you rate the flavour of the kits, tom?

When I used to do beer, I used to get my water from the brewery. They were not allowed to sell it, so the water was free, and I paid a couple of quid for the analysis/lab report.
(Straight from their bore hole: no chlorine ions)

I use hops, there are many sorts , I like to use Ammolla it give a citrus fruit taste , others give a nutty taste, some give a earthy taste so its trial and error,

the start

I used to brew my own, I only like sweet wines so it was banana ..sultana-elderberry which if my memory serves me well I used to get from Gidlow Cemetery.. the first time I did potato wine my don came home from work had a drink and we couldn’t wake him up for ages.. but my house isn’t very big and space was getting me down..someone on WW wanted to know where to get the ingredients bottles demijohns etc from so I gave him everything I had …but guess what I’d love to be brewing again. I got great satisfaction from it.

I used to get my brewing requisites from Wilko too.
Will miss them for stuff like that.

Good grief Momac... that sounds like Irish Pocin . Rocket fuel...no wonder he was unconscious .

Yes BB,I didn’t make any more potato wine after that, it’s a bit scary,but I still miss not brewing any more,

Give it a go...very informative TP your video...similar to red wine..although Specific gravity readings are taken before brewing commences

I used to home brew in the 1980s, so it is quite a while since I last did a home brew, but the kit and the methods Tom uses are identical to the ones I used, and I actually bought my beer kits from B&Q when they were in Caroline Street, and I brewed throughout the 1980s, so I had me favourite way of doing things, I sterilised the equipment in the fermentation barrel and I also left the fermentation barrel with a bit of sterilisation fluid in it between brews, and that was made using sterilisation tablets from the home brew shop, there were a few home brew shops to choose from in those days, and I mainly used one in Orrell, in the Tontine area for most of my equipment, B&Q basically only sold the kits.

I sterilised everything and then rinsed everything in cold water, and I used the same method as Tom to get the thick syrupy mixture out of the can, using boiling water from the kettle, but then I used a slightly different method of mixing everything together, because for my sins I had acquired a catering pan, and this pan held something like two gallons of liquid, I cannot remember the exact amount, but it was a lot and as well has using the kettle this pan went on the stove with some water in it on the boil, and I did not use refined sugar, I used 'glucose chips' which looked something like the fudge you could at one time buy loose from a sweet shop, they were a beige type of colour, and were supposed to be better for brewing, than normal white processed sugar, and after dissolving the glucose chips, I put in the syrup stuff, using boiling water out of the kettle to dissolve it in the tin, and running the hot water over the lid of the tin, and into the pan, burning me fingers in the process, then I would heat the beer syrup and glucose chip mixture up to near but not quite boiling point, and in the five gallon fermentation bucket has I called it, I would put in half of the five gallons using cold water, delivered with a 4 pint catering jug, I had also sterilised with all of the other equipment, and to the two and a half gallons of cold water, I would add the hot beer syrup and glucose mixture, and stir it in and then top up the barrel with cold water to just over the five gallon mark, just like Tom did and I then stirred the mixture using a long plastic spoon, which was quite bendy, and added the yeast to the top of the mixture, and with trial and error and using just the right amount of hot water in the pan to cold water, I could get the mixture to just to the right temperature for fermentation to start, and I had a thermometer and specific gravity wotsit, along with various tubes for syphoning and what not.
My fermentation bin did not come with an airlock, but it did have a very tight fitting lid.

At the time I lived in a fridge in winter, so to keep the fermentation vessel warm I used one of these LINK

At the 'kegging' or 'bottling' stage, which was when the mixture stopped bubbling, and was at a certain specific gravity, but here I added a product called brewing finings, this helped to make the beer 'clear and thus not cloudy' by helping the now dead yeast in the brew to fall to the bottom of the barrel and stay there at the kegging or bottling stage, the alcohol in the brew kills the yeast at a certain alcohol %, and in the early 1980s I had a try using a plastic keg with a top of the keg system for drawing off the beer, which comprised of a standard tap at the bottom of the keg with a butterfly type tap and inside the tap was connected to a tube and a flotation device, which floated on top of the beer, and that was how the beer was drawn from the top of the keg, instead of the bottom, where there was a yeasty residue, which got into the beer if the beer was drawn from the bottom of the keg, turning it cloudy and making it taste of yeast, and you had to slightly undo the filler plug at the top to let air into the keg when you were pouring the beer.

I quickly tired of this method of storing and pouring of the beer, the main reason being that I couldn't cool the beer down, before serving it, and it is not as though I am in favour of very cold beer, but warm home brewed beer, does seem to have a yeasty taste, which canned beers do not have, but just cooling the beer slightly for me, seemed to improve the taste of the beer drasticaly.

So for the remainder of the times I home brewed I bottled the stuff, after amassing quite a number of Nooky Brown bottles, which gave exactly a pint of beer, and although you could seal the beer in with plastic snap fit bottle caps, I found that they leaked, the beer would not pressurise in the bottle, and on a few occasions, the beer went off in the bottle, so I used a brilliant method where I used 'Crown Caps' to seal in the beer, these are the same metal caps, which are used to this day on bottled beer, and which you remove with a bottle opener, and to cap the beer you placed the flat crown cap over the bottle and then carefully positioned the capper, and then wacked it with a hammer, too soft and the cap did not seal the beer in, too hard and the bloody bottle broke, drenching you in beer.



But prior to bottling, what you did after sterilising the bottles was to put in each bottle a level teaspoon of sugar, and then I added the beer just using a plastic tube, syphoning it with my gob, and sealing the tube with my sterilised finger, and then just added the beer to each bottle, and after capping the beer I would mix the sugar into the beer by inverting the bottle several times, and that also showed if the bottle was sealed properly, the sugar, this small amount of sugar actually fermented and produced a amount of CO2 (fizz) into the brew, it also gave the brew a nice head, that was called conditioning the bottle, and the longer you left it the better it tasted, but it was better to leave it for at least three week before suppin it, and prior to serving it I would just cool the bottles in the fried for an hour or so, as I said I am not a fan of very cold beer.

That was just for standard brew, I also made beer from scratch boiling malts and hops, and using fresh yeast and other stuff, but those kits seemed to do the job just fine, and they made the job quick and easy.

I have home brewing book, which is from somewhere in my family history, it was printed in the 1960s and was written in the 1950s and that as some good home brewing methods and beer recipes in it.

Tha cont halfway tommy

I make my own Ribena, from a kit!

I take the kit, open it, pour the ingredient into a pint glass then run it under the tap to add water. Voila! Ribena!!
Sometimes I utilise the plastic bottle, what the kit comes in, to fill with water and put in the fridge. Voila! Cold Ribena!!
The method also works with Vimto!

Tonker

Is that anything too doo with the fact that Ribena took over the old Morgi (Morgans) pop factory in Haydock, and they made Ribena there, me dad worked there for a while in the late 1960s early 70s and I had look around that new factory at the time.
But at the back of the factory was where they grew the Ribena trees, and they harvested the Ribena Berries

I believe it was the Vimto works near Old Boston!

Very informative TTS...A master brewer in your day

Tonker

Oh Aye it was, well same stuff.

Billinge Biker

I did a bit, but I never tried making wine, I think I might try that now

Tommy 2 stokes, tha con tell a tale thy con, Was you trying to compete with the writer of, War and piece with that brewing post ? As I have always said, TTS is one of the most interesting posters on WW, He has informative posts on almost everything,
I'll bet if he put his head in gear he could produce Petrol in 5 gallon cans from cooking Vaseline adding his home brew and make a killing,

Try a nice Red TTS...White wine to me is like vinegar

OK, I will turn water into red wine LINK

Top Tune TTS.