Selfsufficientish.com

Hi,

For my first self-sufficiency project I'm choosing one that may be the most fun, brewing beer. Using the ' Simple (and cheap) beer made with real hops'

I've found a site that does a starter kit for £15.99

http://www.art-of-brewing.co.uk/acatalo ... .html#a308

Is this a good buy? I'm concerned that buying it is taking away the savings from making the beer, but then again if its everything I need and I make a number of brews, its a good investment. Is there a better to place to buy it from?

Secondly the hops, is this a good place to buy them from? Where do you get yours from?

And most importantly which hops do you like?

I don't know the simple beer recipie you refer to, but that kit's not a bad place to start (with experience at beer making you will learn what you need and what you don't). However, you will either need a kit or the ingredients to make beer. And making from scratch can be a quite involved process (tho as I said I don't know about this "simple" recipie). You will also need either bottles or a barrel to store the beer in.

its from the selfsufficientish home brew section, its just hops, malt extract, yeast, sugar and water.

i've got some barrels for storage, i'm glad you think the kit is ok, it looked it but wasn't sure

You mean [quote=http://www.selfsufficientish.com/index. ... -real-hops]this one [/quote]

I grew my hops, obviously no help if you want to make a brew now. I have really gone off kits, not because of the cost but I don't think they taste as good as sourcing each ingredient yourself. That simple beer recipe is just a simple as from a kit and cheaper too.

You can get dried hops from most homebrew shops. As for the type well it depends on the beer that you want, I use golden hops for my beers. In the new year I am going to make a selection of beers from all sorts of wild herbs and I won't be using hops at all. I will keep you informed.

thanks for the advice

We've made a brew from both a kit and similar to the simple beer recipe, although we got our recipe from a CJJ Berry homebrewing beer book.

The simple beer recipe was infinitely tastier than the kit!