Selfsufficientish.com

just started another gallon of ginger beer.

just bottled
5 gallons of dry Irish stout
5 gallons lager
5 gallons mild
5 gallons bitter
5 gallons pineapple blush wine
2 gallons rhubarb wine
2 gallons orange wine

on the go
15 gallons fruit tea wine
5 gallons peach wine
1 gallon apple wine
1 gallon cabernet sauvignon


starting
5 gallons lager tomorrow
5 gallons turbo cider on Tuesday

Blimming hell - either you lot all have an alcohol problem, or you are planning on opening a pub!

I'm just working my way through last year's gallon of rhubarb wine. As I can't find the bottling equipment (it came with me into this house - but where the heck is it ), I'm having to take it straight from the demijohn...

And then there's raspberry, red currant, and raisin. 5 gallons in all.

just done carrot whisky(juliesherris`s recipe)with i little tinkering of my own and camomile wine,nettle and ginger beer,first time for all of these,

Blimming hell - either you lot all have an alcohol problem, or you are planning on opening a pub!

Myself, my wife, my daughters and their boyfriends and husbands all like different things, hence the variety. We often meet and when we're all together it really is like a full pub ... hence the quantity. You have given me and idea though ... now I wonder where I can find a free till!!!!

I've got 3 gallons of elderflower (mixed with various spices, which will either improve or ruin the taste) fermenting.

Just finished fermenting my broom flower wine - not sure how safe it will be to drink though.

Also got some rhubarb fermenting although someone told me I should have used cold water when extracting the juice. I used boiling water and this will apparently cause me to have a very bad stomach in the future (something to do with oxalic acid?).

Broom is toxic - but only marginally so (like rhubarb, in fact). People used to pickle the flower buds to use as capers. Mind you, they're all dead now.

However, your broom flower wine should be safe. Just don't drink more than a gallon or so at your first tasting.

Mike

EDIT: Incidentally, the hot water/rhubarb story is a complete fallacy. Lots of older recipes actually demand hot water. It will extract more of the oxalic acid, but only a miniscule amount more. Let's face it, no-one ever died from eating a rhubarb crumble.

Rambling Rob wrote: Also got some rhubarb fermenting although someone told me I should have used cold water when extracting the juice. I used boiling water and this will apparently cause me to have a very bad stomach in the future (something to do with oxalic acid?).

Just finished drinking a gallon of rhubarb wine - still alive and well! Nobody told me that about the oxalic acid... In fact, when I was a kid we were told never to eat rhubarb raw because it's poisonous - and then I come to Britain, and they all have lovely memories of eating rhubarb raw, dipped in sugar... So what!

Oh, and we also never picked rhubarb after midsummer, because the acid content is much higher then - I don't know, maybe British rhubarb is different to German...

I have 2 gallons of rhubarb wine fermenting. This is the first time we are making it so I hope it works out fine.

Hokay, my treacle stout is almost ready to bottle, brewed from a Coopers beer kit and treacle tastes good - ive been tasting when i test the SG.

I started a lager today - double hopped with our own hops as well as the hop in the malt extract because i like a bitter beer (no idea the variety of hops unfortunately)

When i bottle the stout tmrw or the next day i will then start off either an oatmeal stout or a chocolate stout (using cocoa) again with the treacle rather than sugar, or possibly brown sugar rather than white.

Yay for beer making

NB: each brew 18 L - says to make up to 23L but i like a stronger flavour

We started making our own wine from scratch several years ago. At first it was OK-ish, but it took us a while to get used to it tasting a bit different from shop-bought stuff. Then we had a few disasters in a row. I think that was because I took on a full-time job and so we were both working full-time and were not really taking too much care when it came to brewing - it was all a rush-job. Also, we had plenty of money and could afford to buy whatever we wanted (in terms of wine and beer). Once we started drinking the shop wine again, our homebrew just seemed too unpalletable.

How things change! Now I'm at home all day looking after LO (the reason I packed in my job) and doing Ish things, and OH has had to go part-time for health reasons. So when we had to cut our spending, we of course looked into homebrew again, but decided to just use kits. The kit stuff is nice, and we're quite happy with it. But I have fruit bushes, and they are very productive, so we've decided to give homebrew-from-scratch another try. So at the moment we have on the go

one batch of red wine from a kit (equiv. 30 bottles)
3 demijohns of blackcurrant wine

We've just bought another mash bucket and this evening we're going to start some gooseberry wine as well, and in a couple of weeks or so another blackcurrant.

Bit nervous about what it's going to taste like

Edit: Ooh! Just remembered that last year I made a tiny batch of rhubarb wine (from scratch), bottled it (2 bottles), and put them in the shed and forgot all about them. I found them the other day when I was tidying up in there and it's lovely.

This is making me thirsty!

I bottled some Damson wine that i made nearly 2 years ago. It tastes like a fine port. must make more, a lot more

I got some windfall apples from my allotment so i now have a gallon of apple on the go.

I started 5 gallon of blackberry wine on sunday.