Elderflower Champagne (Latest)

It has been over a month since the elderflower champagne was started and this thing is still fermenting. Not just a little but lots.

Here is a video to show what is happening.

I don't think it's ever going to stop...

Rosemary and Bay Ale (UPDATE)

So it has been over a month since I started the Rosemary and Bay Ale. I have to say that I'm really impressed by the results.

So roughly 14 days after the ale was sealed in the fermentation bin, the hydrometer showed that it was ready to bottle.  Approx 1.010 reading. Not quite 1.000 due to unfermetables in the malt extract.

To each bottle I added 1 teaspoon of golden syrup, a tedious task but made easier by using a squeezy bottle of syrup. The ale was syphoned into the bottles and sealed with crown caps.

I used one plastic coke bottle as a test bottle to reduce the risk of bottle bombs by testing how much carbon dioxide was being produce by the feel of the bottle.

The bottles where the left for 1 week in a warm place, helped by the British summertime which has since finished

After 1 week the bottles where then moved somewhere cooler. The test bottle was now hard at this point so it was looking promising. 

After about 12 days, I transfered a couple of the bottles to the fridge ready for tasting. The ale had cleared very well and the moment of truth arrived. As the first bottle was opened i was greeted with the lovely sound of a hiss. Brilliant. 

First hit of flavour you get is the heat from bay, almost gingery . Confirmed also by my father-in-law. The rest of the ale is a refreshing pale ale which goes down far too fast.

Really please with the result of this and the reception from people who have tried it has been great.

Will defiantly be making this again. 

Any questions please leave a comment.

Rosemary and Bay Ale

So this morning I had my first go at making beer. After reading Andy Hamilton's Booze for Free, I decided on the Rosemary and Bay Ale. It looked fairly simple for a beginner so off I went and bought the ingredients.

1kg Malt Extract
10 Large Rosmary Sprigs
20 Bay Leaves
500g Sugar
250g Golden Syrup
Packet of Ale Yeast
13 Litres of Water
2 tbsp Golden Syrup for priming

For the Malt Extract I used Holland and Barretts which costs £2.35 and comes in 454g size jars so I used 2 which gave me just over 900g. Hopefully 100g less won't make too much of a difference

 I used Brewers Beer Yeast which was recommended to me by the Homebrew Supermarket in Runcorn, who said that customers had said good things about it. Only 99p

 The bay leaves and rosemary ready to be added.

 5 litres of water brought to the boil

 The Malt Extract, Bay Leaves and Rosemary boiled for 30 mins. After the 30 mins was up, the sugar and syrup was added and allowed to dissolved.

 The wort was then strained into the fermentation bin then 8 litres of cold water was added and was cooled to 18c. The yeast was pitched and the wort was aerated.

 Hydrometer showed 1.040

Using the AlcholCalculator App for the iPhone the calculations show that the abv is approximately 5.3%

It needs to be left for 4-14 days to ferment.

Overall the process was really simple for the first time beer maker. Everything into the same pan and boiled. While boiling, the wort had a rather savory smell but once the sugar and syrup was added it turned into an almost fruity Horlicks taste.

Looking forward to see how the turns out. 

Bottled - Toffee Apple Cider

Today I bottled a Toffee Apple Cider that i made earlier in the year following this recipe from the Brew UK Forum

After a first taste since this was put in the demijohn for conditioning, I'm not 100% happy with it. Non of the pears and the honey come through or even a toffee taste and it is a bit sharp. I plan on drinking this for halloween/bonfire night so hopefully 6 months in the bottle will do it some justice.

Before bottling I add some Vanilla Flavouring. 1 and half teaspoons per litre. This was 83p and it was only until I added it that I noticed that it wasn't vanilla essence, Damn!

It was then siphoned into four 1 litre bottles along with 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar to carbonate it.

Fingers crossed that time can save this. I was really looking forward to this and would hate to chuck it down the sink

Bottles,bottles,bottles

Busy Saturday afternoon cleaning my collection of bottles that have built up over the past few weeks. Some labels proving a lot more difficult to remove then others. (I'm looking at you Hogs Back Brewery). Already to bottle my toffee apple cider next week


All Clean and ready

The troublesome Hog Back bottles
 

Elderflower Champagne *UPDATE*

I've followed a recipe by Andy Hamilton that was featured on the Guardian website LINK HERE

I'm a big fan of Andy's work and everyone should get a copy of his book Booze for Free. I will be brewing an ale from this book later next week.

First things first - The Ingredients

Elderflowers, Sugar, Lemon and Yeast

I used Young's Dried Elderflowers for this as I had a packet that I bought on ebay for a couple of pounds. This is the first time I've used them so look forward to seeing the results.

Next up is the Yeast. I went for a champagne/sparkling wine yeast - Muntons GV10. Purchased from the Homebrew Supermarket in Runcorn for £1.10

The Method for this is fairly simple. As the recipe says, this is more of a Elderflower Wine which is then re-fermented to produce the fizz. I picked this recipe after reading horror stories about exploding bottles, hopefully nothing this extreme will happen to me.

First stage is to add the elderflowers and the rind of the lemon into a bowl and pour over 3.5 litres of water. I added an extra 500mil of water after the dried elderflowers seemed to soak up a lot of the liquid.

This solution needs to be left for 4 days so I'll pick up this post then

*UPDATE*

So it has been 4 days since I made up the elderflower solution. This has now been strained and added to a fermentation bin along with 1.3 kg of sugar (that seemed a lot when measure out) the lemon juice and the yeast. It's bubbling along nicely helped a lot by the nice weather we've had.

Now have to wait for the fermentation to stop at which point it'll be transferred to a demijohn.

An Introduction

Welcome to my first blog. I started home brewing in November 2012 after i received a wine making kit for my birthday and the aim of this blog is to post updates of my brews. Hopefully you'll find it interesting, please feel free to contact me