Homebrew
I am constantly surprised why people buy beers, wines and spirits when you can make this yourself. The Scottish parliament is introducing a minimum price per unit, and the rest of the UK could follow. A unit of alcohol is 1/100 of a litre (8 grams), so a standard bottle of wine of 75CL at 12 % is 9 units. If they press ahead with its plans for 45 pence per unit, a horrible bottle of wine will cost £4.05 and a bottle of spirits £13.50. Even without the minimum price being introduced you are still paying duty and VAT of £2.40 per bottle of wine and £7.41 per bottle of spirits. On top of this if you subtract the cost of advertising, manufacture, transportation, the bottle, the label and the cap. It does not leave a lot of money for the actual product. So don’t be surprised if it’s horrid.
Wine kits
A good midrange kit is the cantina. These work out as £1.10 per bottle. The generic "red" is good. If you prefer white the frascati is my favourite (the generic "white" is a bit thin). They cost £32 ish and produce 21 litres in a week. You can drink it straight away but better in three months. You will need to invest in some brewing hardware. Personally I think it is unfair on your local homebrew shop to buy items online and then expect them to provide their expert knowledge later.
Alcohol can degrade plastic bottles with unknown effects. Thin walled bottles are worst in my experience. I made some fruit vodkas and did not bother labelling them because the flavour was obvious. A few months later and I could not tell them apart! It is probable that oxygen had passed through the plastic and caused some kind of chemistry thing that I don’t understand. Plastic is good in the short term but get your good stuff in some glass ASAP.
Pictured is the ken ridge at £80, a cantina at £32 and a wine buddy at £23 + £4 for sugar. They all make 21 litres which 28 bottles. You can buy a bladder for the cantina box and use it as a wine dispenser.
The highest compliment you can receive is "liar". As in : "I made this wine myself". Response: "liar". It’s a backhanded compliment.
Cheaper homebrew kits require you to add your own sugar. Remember this when you choose. For me it is cantina all the way.
Some drinkable wines can be made from cordial as long as they don’t contain preservatives that kill the yeast. Preservatives may be described on the ingredients as: potassium sorbate (E202) and sodium benzoate (E211).
Try a good quality elderflower or blackcurrant cordial with a kilogram of sugar. For extra body and a litre of grape juice or minced raisins before topping up to a gallon with water and adding yeast.
Country Wines AKA Hedgerow Wines
Please start making wines with a kit to build up your confidence but later your "food for free" homebrew almanac could be:
CJJ Berry (see further reading) has recipes for dandelion, elderberry, apple, plum, damson, blackberry and sloe wines.
Birch trees seem to be rarer than before. If you have some trees or someone allows you use theirs birch sap wine is worth a try. It involves drilling a ¾ inch hole and draining into a demijohn for a week and then returning to collect the sap.
www.winemaking.jackkeller.net/request133.asp
Dandelions are traditionally harvested at noon on St George’s day (23 April, but you knew that). In 2013 they have been late because of the extra long cold spring. The time of day is important because of rising sap. All the recipes mention a volume of flower heads which is nonsense because the petals can be crushed down to virtually any size. In 2012 I made a gallon of dandelion wine by picking petals for three hours. After three months I was told it tasted soapy. After six months I was told it tasted oily. After fifteen months I was told it was lovely. Unfortunately it was too late to make a "dandelion 2013" .
Elderflower is very popular now. Nothing tastes like elderflower. The precious flavour is in the pollen which can be dispersed in one single day. A quick sniff should tell you if the flower head is of any use.
Unlike fruit wines the flavour of flower wines can be unpredictable I haven’t made this exact recipe but I have a few bad experiences with recipes that involve steeping the whole head in water for days. Some of the wines have had a vegetation taste, which is not great. I have got round this by putting the flower heads in a clean plastic bag in the freezer. The petals and any pollen come off very easily when rubbed through some chicken wire or an office fan grilles.
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/visit-woods/for-nature/Documents/elderflower-wine-recipe.pdf
Elderberry wine takes about two years to mature. Worth waiting for those with the space and time. See food for free for how to harvest elderberries.
CJJ Berry (see further reading) lists seven elderberry recipes.
Apples are more difficult to process than people think. For cider they have to be scrattered before they are pressed. A scratter and a press aren’t cheap and you only use them once a year. Cider is very popular though.
Sloes are better used to make sloe vodka than wine. This can be made into sloe gin later if you prefer it to sloe vodka.
It took me about 15 hours of picking sloes from black thorn bushes to get this bucket full .
Some wine recipes are available for anything. Do you really want to drink parsley wine? Some things are avoided.
Unpleasant tasting fruit such as pithy plums and over-ripe blackberries with no flavour will make rubbish wines. It sounds as if I am stating the obvious but when people know you have a use for their fruit they offer it to you to make wine. Tell them to put it on their compost heap.
I have a jam making book that say "inferior fruit should be used for making wine" and a wine making book that says "inferior fruit should be used for making jam". The battle lines are drawn! Pristine fruit is best for both. Under-ripe vegetables can be used for piccalillis and chutneys. Overripe fruit may have lost some of its flavour and smell. Whatever you make will be inferior.
2012 was a great year for Britain. The Jubilee, The tour de France, the Olympics and the parallel Olympics. Wow! For fruit it was terrible. I have some sources of fruit that I like to think are secret to me. The apples, pears, plums and damsons were all affected by the very rainy April. All the insects were too busy trying not to drown and very little fruit got pollinated. Somehow the sloes, elderflowers, elderberries and blackberries were near normal.
I usually leave rosehips until they have had a frost and changed from orange to reddish. That did not work in 2012, probably because hungry birds eat them before usual. A friend of mine has a rowan tree. Normally they are left to rot. In 2012 a flock of hungry birds eat the lot in two minutes. The rosehips probably went the same way whilst I was waiting for the first frost.
Interpreting your country wine recipes
Fruit recipes tell you to heat the fruit to 70C. They might not explain that this stupefies any bacteria and natural yeast. Then you are told to add the sugar. This is because sugar is dissolved more easily in hot water than a greater quantity of Luke warm water. Then dilute it to one gallon and wait until it cools to 30C and add the yeast. There are some important things to note. All the existing yeast and bacteria has been stupefied so your yeast can have a field day. Don’t exceed the 70c as this causes the pectin in the fruit to be activated. Pectin is what makes jam thick. The wine will never clear and hazy wines give you a disproportionately large hangover.
If the recipe tells you to add sodium metabisulphite (SMBS) and leave it for a day. This achieves the same ends. SMBS releases sulphur which stupefies any microbes.
Juice Wine
You can make wine from fruit juice if it does not contain the dreaded preservatives. I would only ever do this if the juice was reduced in price though. You will need at least 4 litres to make a gallon. You can boost this with grape juice if you haven’t enough. Start in a brew bucket because the initial fermentation might push the fruit fibre through the fermentation lock if you start in a demijohn. The alcohol content of the final wine should match the strength of flavour. So a robust juice should start off with more sugar. Adjust the initial gravity to between 1080 and 1100 . Then adjust the temperature to about 28 centigrade and add the yeast. You should always have a selection of yeast handy. White wine, red wine, champagne, burgundy etc.
When the fermentation has died down syphon it into a demijohn and proceed as with any other wine.
Interpreting juice descriptions
A juice described as “grape juice" is usually OK. “From concentrate" may mean that it was concentrated, for cheaper transport and storage, and then watered down. Possibly to such an extent that it is weaker than it was originally. The word “drink" as in “grape juice drink" may contain very little except flavouring and sugar. The word "flavour" is similarly concerning.
Homebrew hardware
Most recipes tell you to take the original gravity of the wine. This is done with a hydrometer that shows readings between 990 and 1110. Plain water is 1000, sugar is heavier and alcohol is lighter. Taking the reading once fermentation has started is pretty meaningless. To calculate the percentage of alcohol once fermentation has finished subtract the final gravity from the original gravity and multiply by 0.131. So if the OG is 1080 and the FG is 998 the equation is ( 1080 - 998 ) * 0.131 = 10.7% .
The alcohol meter only works when fermentation has stopped and the brew passed through a still. That way it’s pretty much just alcohol and water.
An alternative use for an office fan grille is as a massive sieve. They can be used for anything from rubbing frozen elderflower petals through to sieving out plum stones
If you haven’t got a place in your home that is constantly 23 centigrade but have electricity a brew belt is handy. It is just like the cable in an electric blanket but wrapped around a brew bucket. If other conditions are right beer can be fermented in three days and wine in a week. They cost £23.
Campden tablets are just a measured amount of SMBS. Everybody uses SMBS powder now. Old supplies may have lost their efficacy so they should be binned.
Some recipes include minced raisins. They were written before grape juice was available at supermarkets. Grape juice is less messy and achieves the same ends. Check that it hasn’t got preservatives.
Please shop at your local home brew shop where possible . If you make a mistake with you wine the owner will be happy to advise you.
Beer
Beer is good but I live in a motorhome so the sheer quantity of water and bottles required is a problem for me. Barrels are an alternative to bottles but I have to move occasionally so the barrel gets stirred up. Another problem is the cost of the ingredients. Beer kits have a fixed price so you cannot take advantage of cheap or natural ingredients. The best kits make 56 pints for £23. That’s 41 pence per pint.
Some people use raw ingredients which are cheaper. It is best to start with a kit.
Spirits
Concentrating alcohol is a crime in the UK but owning the equipment is not. The police have to actually catch you at it and if they do they don’t seem particularly aware that it is a crime. To be fair the police have a lot of higher crimes on their mind. Most coppers really do want to catch proper criminals.
There are two types of still, reflux and pot. The bottom is the same as the photograph of my reflux still. The difference is in the riser . In a pot still this may be as short one foot, whereas in a reflux still its three feet or more. It’s also stuffed with "scrubbers". Both have a condenser that turns the gaseous alcohol back into a liquid. Pot stills need to be run at a slow rate to allow the flavours pass through. Reflux stills can be run as fast as you like.
Whichever type of still you use the first 5% has methanol and acetone which is very unpleasant. This should be thrown away or used with caution to light your solid fuel stove.
Air stills need 320 watts of electricity for three hours and are functionally the same as pot stills except that the methanol is evaporated away. They process four litres over three hours. You can buy them from your local homebrew shop for under £200. They are excellent I would use one if I had electricity.
People usually divide up pretty soon into pot or reflux stillers. If you think that you might want to make quality brandies, rum and whiskey "Making fine spirits" is very good. If you think you might want to make vodka and perhaps flavour it later “The Compleat Distiller" is highly recommended.
I wanted to make vodka and flavour it with fruits ETC. I also have trouble running a still slowly because it’s sitting on a wood burning stove so it’s a reflux still for me. Some vodka makers pass their vodka through a carbon filter to make it extra smooth. Don’t pass flavoured vodka through a carbon filter. It will remove the flavour and ruin the Carbon.
Stills vary but most produce vodka at 50% - 70%. I don’t dilute mine until I know what I am going to use it for. If I was making vanilla vodka where there are no fruit juices to be extracted and not much sugar to add. I would dilute the vodka down to 40% before starting. When making fruit vodka the juice that is extracted by osmosis and the sugar dilute the vodka. No one appreciates vodka that is stronger than they are used to. It gives them a hangover and guess who gets the blame.
It is important that the condenser runs downwards for its whole length. This is to stop a pool collecting from the previous run and mixing in with the heads of the current run. Pictured is my own , homemade, condenser . I used it when I had running water as a coolant. The coolant goes in at the lower opening and out at the top. Counter flow to the condensing liquid. My friends has a still is in his garage. His condenser is about 20 meters of 15mm copper tube running over the garage door and slightly downwards all the way around his garage. No coolant is necessary for a run this long.
Distiller’s glossary
"Scrubber" is a term from chemistry. It means something like encouraging the gases to condense in the riser and drip back down and get boiled again. As the alcohol gets boiled off some water evaporates too. You don’t want very much water and no flavours if you are making vodka. Vodka is just alcohol and water. The higher the concentration the better. If your reflux still has a copper riser your scrubbers should be stainless steel pan scrubbers.
Ethanol is the chemical name for alcohol. Its boiling point is 78C.
Methanol. Whoops this is "bad" alcohol. It tastes the same and has the same effects but it will turn your skin yellow and make you blind then kill you over time. Its boiling point is 64C. Americans use methanol as antifreeze. In the UK we used glycol which will kill you within hours!
Acetone. Your objective is to make "smooth" alcohol. If someone says "it's got quite a kick to it" you have failed. The methanol comes though the still at the same time as the acetone. If you want to know what acetone tastes like try the smallest amount of nail varnish remover. Some still operation manuals tell you to fill little cups from the still and keep them in order. Then taste them in reverse. And throw them away when they start to taste nasty. This is because acetone numbs your taste buds.
Turbo yeast
This claims to produce a 23% alcohol although I have my doubts about that. My best is probably 19%. Obviously this is meant to be run through a still to produce vodka. Customs and excise have given up chasing home distillers so get cracking. Your local homebrew shop will sell you an air still for less than £200. The poisonous methanol is evaporated off. Don’t believe the horror stories. It’s fine. You can also buy flavours in little essence bottles. A lot of the products you buy are just flavoured vodka.
The only words that carry any legal meaning are: whiskey, whisky and bourbon. Everything else might just be flavoured vodka and you can buy the flavouring at your local homebrew shop. They come in little essence bottles that are added to vodka, sometimes you have to add some sugar. Some taste vile initially and need to stand for a week.
Flavoured vodkas have become trendy recently. I went to a food festival at Easter. There were three stalls selling flavoured vodka. Lovely bottles and labels but not so different to what I make.
To make fruit vodka you put the fruit in the vodka. No surprise so far. Then you need add sugar. This causes the fruit juices to be extracted by osmosis. Too much sugar and it tastes like jam. Not enough sugar and you have wasted some fruit juices. If you have any doubts split it into separate vessels and vary the ingredients. In the worst case scenario you will have to run it through the still to get the alcohol back. Not the end of the world. It is important to understand that the flavour of a fruit is in the juice not the remaining fibre. So the fruit that is left is useless. Except when it isn’t. Damsons can be retrieved. Remove the stones by pushing it through a colander with the back of a serving spoon and serve on ice cream or rice pudding. Sloes can be reused to make a second vodka which is more earthy but still good. Grape vodka is nice. You can eat the grapes after too. Strangely they taste of alcohol.
Your fruit vodka recipe may specify one pound of fruit to a bottle of vodka and an amount of sugar. If you get a glut of fruit there is no problem with putting it in the freezer until you have worked out what you want to do with it. If you are sure you want to make fruit vodka with it you can ignore the recipe and submerging it in vodka and continue with your recipe when you have enough vodka.
Gin is vodka flavoured with juniper berries. Botanical gin has other flavourings too.
Bombay sapphire is wonderful and the ten ingredients are depicted on the bottle, unfortunately the quantities aren’t specified and you can’t get half of them. Tanqueray is very popular too I detect a heavy influence of alligator pepper which you can buy online. I have suggested that you buy your homebrew equipment at your local shop. I don’t feel the same about spices. These are best bought online as freshness is important and health food shops and supermarkets don’t seem to understand this. Homebrew shops simply don’t have the turn over.
Whether you have your own source of cheap vodka or not you can always flavour some bought vodka. Try crunching up two tubes of werther's original and putting them in a wide mouthed bottle with a bottle of with the vodka and sugar to taste. Keep shaking every day until the toffees are dissolved. It will separate into two layers after a few days. Line a funnel with a coffee filter and siphon the clear layer into the funnel. The thick layer will block filters but this need filtering too.
Some people just add a clearing agent to the finished turbo, siphon it off and add ribena or another cordial and drink it. Not for the Connoisseur!
It’s always good to have some nice drinks at home. Guests are impressed and you can trade them with friends for other things.