WINEWORKS
Home Brew Specialists

What about beer brewing? What do we need for brewing at home? It can be great fun - and can help you meet people.

Home brewing can save you money and is a great hobby. However brewing is smelly and it might make you drink too much.

Brewing is bad if you need to watch your weight as beer brewing is full of alcohol and increases your calorie intake so watch the pounds go on.

For some beer brewing equipment you will need to find a specialist home brew shop who will supply all the home brew supplies you need. The starting point is a bucket to do the fermentation - this is 25 litres in size and made from plastic. The next item is some steriliser and some beer brewing ingredients. The ingredients needed are hops and malt extract.

Some shops will recommend grain which can be crushed to extract the flavour. They will also recommend brewing yeast which ferments the malt grains and hops. The products usually take 7 days to ferment in the bucket. After this time you will need to purchase either a barrel or some bottles.

The beer will rest in these containers until it has cleared and is conditioned and ready to drink. The shop will also give recipes to match a favourite commercially produced product. This can be real fun trying to use the ingredients to match that beer you so love. You can then get advice from the shop to find out what else you will need to add to make the difference. This might need to be some hops or some more grain to increase the body and the alcohol strength to get it spot on with the commercially brewed one you are trying to match. This might take a few goes to get it right using the beer brewing ingredients but when you do get it right make sure you make a note for next time of all the ingredients and the exact amounts used.