ARmy Rumour SErvice

Ask Kirkz for his recipe.

Have looked into it for the same reasons but haven't actually taken the plunge yet. From what I have found you can buy a kit online for about £50 which is reusable and will cost about £15 a time after that for 30 odd pints.

You can also just buy "turbo yeast" fire it into whatever you want to ferment, fruit juice for example and let it do it's thing releasing the pressure every couple of days. Or same thing with champagne yeast. Apparently bakers yeast dies when it gets to 2-3% abv.

Also saw Hugh produce cider by pressing a load of apples mixing with water and sugar and sticking it in a pastic bin to let natural yeast in the air do its thing.

There is a home brew thread on here somewhere as it featured heavily in my "research"

I don't think 2 days would give you a brew to get pissed on, it would be a pleasant fizzy pinic tipple for all the family.

you need to google 'Homebrew' to get your potent stuff.

There is a thread on here which points you to Echt Deutsche kits

Hells Bells ... reminded me of the " Ginger Beer Plant " which was all the rage , many moons ago , when I was a lad . IIRC based on yeast , ginger and lemon and fed daily on sugar ... the mix was bottled into screw top pop bottles ... left to " mature " during which time bottle tops would be blown out with the contents sprayed everwhere . One of the great things was that after bottling you split the " Plant " in two and could pass half onto your mates .

Originally Posted by Border_Reiver

Hells Bells ... reminded me of the " Ginger Beer Plant " which was all the rage , many moons ago , when I was a lad . IIRC based on yeast , ginger and lemon and fed daily on sugar ... the mix was bottled into screw top pop bottles ... left to " mature " during which time bottle tops would be blown out with the contents sprayed everwhere . One of the great things was that after bottling you split the " Plant " in two and could pass half onto your mates .

I remember doing that as a kid!

B and T: Home Brewing is one of the best hobbies ever to take up. It's sounds difficult and can be a bit labour intensive BUT the results are well worth it. (About 60 - 90 minutes to Brew and about the same to bottle it all) We prefer to call it Craft Brewing nowadays, due chiefly to the negative conotations of the term 'Home Brew' which are based largely on the 1970s student attempts which were invriably f*cked up due to poor hygiene and impatience. Capital outlay will be about £90. Go to www.homebrew.uk or Google Jimsbeekit.co.uk/forum.

I've made 38 batches over the past few years with only 1 failure which was my fault for taking a short-cut on sanitation. Rsult was 20 Litres of, stinking liquid. My Stouts, Bitters, IPAs and Dark Ales are top notch and have many admirers. For my kids I even put on a lager ( yeah I know, absolutely no finesse - my kids). All brews work out at about 35 - 40p per pint and a batch is 5 Gallons.

All of the above drinks made from Beer 'Kits', but now I've pregressed to grain brewing and have a micro brewry in the sh*d and though Grain is even more labour intensive, the smell of beer in the making is simply heaven. The results are very satisying too.

Started growing my own hops and should have the first of the crop in Sep 13.

So, crack-on. I think there's a thread on the subject on ARRSE as well.

Good luck.

I've got a couple of demijohns of cider bubbling away happily in the kitchen as we speak. What I'm absolutely not going to do is put it all through the still that I haven't made out of an old pressure cooker to make some particularly vicious applejack. Oh no. Not me.

Scabbers, since you seem to be the man in the know. How much space, roughly, do the home brew kits for IPAs and such like take up? I've been toying with the idea for a while but space is a premium and my missus would kill me if I set up a load of kit that takes up half the kitchen.

Originally Posted by Koschei

I've got a couple of demijohns of cider bubbling away happily in the kitchen as we speak. What I'm absolutely not going to do is put it all through the still that I haven't made out of an old pressure cooker to make some particularly vicious applejack. Oh no. Not me.

What was your address again?..........