The making of home brew!

Up Date: This is the second recipe that Teru has sent over for beer making! Its a Fullers ESB clone.

Add crushed grains to 67C water and mash for 60 minutes. Drain and sparge, with enough water to bring total liquid collected up to 23 litres. Boil for 20 minutes. Add centennials hops and boil for 45 mins; add fuggles and boild for remaining 15 mins

Cool to about 21C and strain into primary fermenter with yeast. Ferment for 5-7 days. Transfer to secondary fermenter and add the Goldings (this is called dry-hopping). Ferment for another 10-14 days. Strain into keg. You may wish to add some priming sugars to make sure it carbonates. One easy way to have some extra sugars is to leave aside some of the wort after you have boiled it. Just keep it in the freezer and bring it up to room temperature (or boil it and cool it back down) and add it with the beer to the keg.

Listener Teru, from Boston, USA, sent me a whole load of beer making ingredients, after hearing that the Vobes was interested in having another go at home brew. Well, the cost of buying is so expensive with the govenerment adding all their tax to it, that it must surely be far more worthwhile doing it yourself.

I have other listeners that successfully make their own beer on a regular basis, including the awarding winning Dave G who has a garage full of serious brewery kit. Even Jimmy and Phil Clark have had a go, albeit with tin kits of malt. In the past, Jimmy and I did have a go and produced the Happy Horn Home Brew which was a strange connoction, although we had problems with air leakage on the barrel due to a faulty valve.

May 2nd, 2009 has been designated National Brew Day in America and if home brew guys in other countries pick up the challenge then it becomes international. That's the the gaunlet that Teru has thrown down to the Vobes when she sent all the barley and cystal malts, hops and yeast to the Beach Hut. So my plan is to start brewing on that day and filming the whole process on video and let you see how I get on. Should be fun!

Its been forteen days since the brew day and now it was time to barrell the brew. I syphoned off the clear part of the fermented ale straight into the barrel leaving the remaining hops and yeast gunk. It now has to sit in the Beach Hut for 30 days to mature. I am hoping that it will be better than the Happy Horn Home Brew that we made a couple of years ago.

There is a video of the making of the beer in the Vobes Vault for anyone that is interested and you can see the exact care and attention that went into making this usual beer! :)