What the f uck are you having for Dinner thread..

I know that one.

I like Marques de Caceras.

 

The black bottle of that is very nice.

 

Shmancy!

I rarely spend that much on a bottle. Perversely I'm more likely to go large in a restaurant, where the mark up is ridiculous, than at home. Possibly because I know I'm in for a pasting on the food bill anyway so may as well have a decent bottle of plonk to wash it down.

 

I only get it when on offer.
Home brewing tomorrow.

 

Ended up in Ask today as the pubs were all busy. Quelle Surprise. I'm never allowed to book or plan as everywhere will 'always' have a table.
Anyway, that's another story. The point is had a very nice bottle of nero d'avola. Was fifteen quid so probably a tenner worth in a supermarket but was very nice.

The food was merely ok. Was starving by then so it went down a treat.

 

Sicilian by the way, forgot to mention that.

 

Went for a Thai this afternoon.

Got a leg of venison to cook tomorrow.

 

20 litres of San Miguel done.

 

Forgive my ignorance as I've never brewed beer, how do you get the 'recipe' to brew San Miguel????

 

"I learn it from a book"

But seriously that's the answer, people must look into what goes into the recipies and copy them. I have a book that gave me a recpie that was part kit and part using certain hops and golden syrup the combination gets you something close to San Miguel (Spanish version) it's supposed to 5.5% at the end so should be a good brew.

It was surprisingly easy to do.

 

How much room do you need to be able to brew properly then?

Full garage? Shed?

 

It's just just 2 containers on a small table in the garage, I did all the prep in the kitchen and now it's in the garage doing it's thing. You don't need a lot of space.

I'm lucky as the Father in law has given me all his old stuff so I haven't had to fork out much at all, my main cost is going to be bottles which are 6 for £4 but of course I'll reuse them for my next batch.

 

I say this as I was walking through town (where I work, not live) and there was this very interesting looking brewing shop.

Think I might do a bit while I'm here. Would go for ale or porter rather than a lager but it does sound interesting, must say.

 

Went for the lager as it will brew at a colder temp than ale or porter and I didn't want the containers in the house.

Using a kit and hops combination like I have just done is fairly easy but the more complicated the brew then the more time it takes, it took me about an hour to do it all and then all I had to do was wait for it to cool and add the yeast.

My father in law is retired and he does it all from scratch, it takes him all day to do a batch.

 

So I'm looking at about a week before transferring it to a container ready for bottling and then 2 weeks in the bottle to finish.

 

Was looking at kits today.

I'm going to do it. Where did you get your gear from?

 

From my father in law, so got lucky with the initial cost.

@Stan has just bought a kit online.

Amazon will do it though, they do everything.

 

They do, yes. Already looked there.

Probably the cheapest bet too but was looking for a tip on quality as well.

 

http://www.home-brew-online.com/

 

The advice I got was that a kit by itself will bring you an average result but following a recipe that uses the kit but also other ingredients will get you much better results.

I've got two tubs one is a boiler with a tap to make the initial brew, it's then transferred to the other tub and once nearly ready to bottle back into the one with the tap so that it's easy to bottle up.

The process of making the brew was easy enough.

Kit I have is...

1 brewing tub
1 boiler with a tap
Hydrometer
Bottle caper
Hose for syphoning
Carbonation drops
Bottles
Bottle caps

I've started keeping the bottles from the supermarket but they all need to be the same size at 500ml for the carbonation drops to be right.