A 21st century good life in Bristol: part 2 - beer
Tue, 2011-01-25 13:17
The quick way to cheap and delicious ale
I went to the pub last Friday and bought a round of four pints of admittedly delicious foaming ale. But the round cost £14. At this rate, a pint of beer is going to become a rare treat.
A rare treat, that is, unless you become brewer, landlord and customer in one fell swoop. I’m talking about home brewing. Please don’t run for cover – I realize that those two words conjure up images – and flavours – that have ruined many a friendship. I can recall (just about) my student days when the booze would run out at a party and even then, no one would touch the brown mixture bubbling in a bucket under the stairs.
But things have changed. I’ve been brewing my own beers from kits for the past three years and have not had a single failure. Every one has turned out to be both easy and drinkable. Not to mention the price – by my rough calculations, my brews work out at about 40p a pint.
What do you need:
Your basic equipment – available from a host of online suppliers and high street retailers – will include:
a large plastic brewing bucket that can hold 40 pints (20 litres). With a lid
a plastic pressurized barrel that holds 40 pints,
2m of plastic tubing
a long plastic spoon.
Sterilising solution – this is essential. See below.
Your initial equipment will cost you about £40-£50.
Alternatively, you could do what I did and find it all on Freecycle. Here, instead of throwing useful things away, people offer them on a website. Home brew kit is much sought after but I got a car full of barrels and demijohns without spending a penny. The man who gave it to me was very sad to see it go but had to give it all up for health reasons – a salutory warning…
How you make beer from a kit
A typical beer kit (which costs anything from £7-20) comprises a can of malt and hop flavourings plus a sachet of yeast. Some come with sugar already added but I find it cheaper to add the sugar myself.
A typical brewing cycle works like this (in all, it takes about an hour’s toil).
1. Stand the can of malt in hot water for 10 minutes then add it to your clean plastic bucket. (The warming loosens the viscous contents).
2. Boil eight pints of water and add this to the bucket. Add 1 kg of granulated sugar and stir until malt and sugar are completely dissolved.
3. Add cold water until you reach the 40-pint mark in the bucket.
4. Wait until the mixture (called the wort) in the bucket has reached room temperature or slightly above. Then add yeast.
5. Close the lid. With a few hours, foam will appear on the surface – the product of sugar reacting with the yeast to create alcohol.
6. Check every couple of days – open the lid and tap the side of the barrel. If bubbles come to the surface, it’s still brewing so leave for another day.
7. Once it’s stopped brewing, use the plastic tube to siphon the liquid into the ultra clean barrel. Be careful not to suck up the silt at the bottom of the barrel. These are dead yeast cells.
8. Add about 3oz of sugar to prime the beer (sparks off a further brewing process that makes the beer lively)
9. Leave for about three weeks. The beer should now be clear and delicious but improves if you leave it another couple of weeks. If you bottle it (which IS time-consuming – you need up to 40 beer-strength bottles that have to be sterlised…), you can keep the beer for months and the flavour improves with age.
So basic beer making really is simple and easy. Invite friends over, pretend your front room is the saloon bar and happy days are here again.
My only tip – make sure you clean everything with the sterlilising solution (available from any home brew supplier or even some supermarkets and iron mongers). If bacteria gets into the brew, no one will thank you.
Later this year I will be attempting to brew beer by using the basic ingredients rather than a kit. Will it be cheaper? Will it be tastier? Watch this space.
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