Could you make your own homebrew? What have you heard about homebrew wine making and beer making? No doubt one of the stories will be exploding beer in the immersion cupboard!!!! Well I am pleased to tell you we have moved on from this. Homebrew is safe and if you simply follow the instructions you won't get disasters like you Dad did when he was doing it.
The type of homebrew you have available today is similar to what you would see on the shelves of your favourite off licence so whether its beer or beer you will have a great choice? You can even do liqueurs and if you're feeling really clever home brewed spirits. You don't need much equipment to homebrew and it's fairly cheap and that's one reason people love doing it. The hobby is also great fun and will save you money because home brew suppliesand wine making equipment are so inexpensive.
You can make homebrew beer from 15p per pint and wine from £1.00 per bottle. The home made liqueurs are a little more, about £2.50, but then the commercial equivalents are £20 plus a bottle so the savings on these are even bigger. Homebrew spirits are the best value of all the products and are about £1.60 per bottle. See we told you can save you money.
You need to work out where you are going to do your production and what size of homebrew kit you are going to purchase. A brewing bucket is the start for beer and a demijohn for wine (or for larger quantities a wine fermenter which hold 25litres). You will also need a beer brewing kit if making beer, some yeast, and malt extract (normally in the homebrew beer kit) and if you're doing a wine then you will need a wine kit, some wine yeast, some grape juice (normally comes with the homebrew wine kit) and water for fermenting. Some kits also require the addition of sugar.
When complete you will need some stabilising solution (or tablets) and then some finings. There are several types of homebrew finings like isinglass, gelatine, chitin (this is the dried fish shells so no good for vegetarians) and kieselsol. They all work really well on homebrew wine. Some are used on beer work just as well, although the label probably says for homebrew wine. Don't be worried home brewed beer works in just the same way as the home brewed wine.
Follow the instructions on your homebrew kit and you will end up with some lovely wine and beer. No one will know that its homebrew and you have not been to the local supermarket to buy it. The trick to really make people believe it's the real thing and not something you have done is to get a really professional presentation. Fancy labels and the shrink tops are available for you to buy so there is no reason why you cant get the job done properly.
Long live homebrew!