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Roger

Roger Davies


Last Updated: 7/12/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Single
Age: 28
Sign: Taurus

Country: UK
Signup Date: 4/19/2006

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Thursday, September 04, 2008 
Well, I've just aquired my dream domain:

Roger Davies
1:04 AM 
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Monday, June 30, 2008 
6:15 AM 
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Saturday, September 08, 2007 

Current mood:  cheerful
Hello everyone!

Some people have been asking me about the wine/beer/alcohol brewing process, and I thought I'd just post some very basic guidelines for anyone interested! I'm going to do this in a couple of posts, because I'm quite wordy and probably quite a boring read! LOL  Lately I've been scaling back the quantity I'm brewing in because my housemate is no longer here to help me drink it LOL, so I'm thinking of selling off/donating some of the equipment.  If anyone needs supplies I can set you up with a small, fairly-well self-contained kit rather cheaply.

Brewing alcohol is relatively straight forward, but getting it perfect is an art form that I never could master LOL I mostly made wine, which will probably be reflected in the way I wrote this guide.  Beers/ales and largers and such are very similar though there will be some slight differences in how you go about it. (and I didn't brew much of them! LOL)

How does it work?
Bollocks knows, but if you put some yeast - any kind, even the stuff you buy from the supermarkets, together with sugar, water (and something to give it flavour) in a sterile condition for about 2 to 3 weeks you'll get some kind of alcohol.

What you put with the mix will determine what you get.  Grapejuice will give you wine, applejuice will give you cider, etc

Things You Will Need (for the brewing phase!)

(1) Demi-Johns!

A Demijohn is a glass vessels used for brewing which holds 4.54 Litres (1 UK Gal.) of liquid.  This is a nice quantity, because it should (if you are careful!) yeild around 5 or 6 bottles of wine.

(2) Rubber Bungs
The bits you see in the top are rubber bungs with a water lock (a plastic S-bend with water that sits in the bend, and helps keep the vessel airtight...prevents bacteria, air and foreign objects from getting in and harming/contaminating the brew.  But, they also let gas escape OUT, as the brewing process produces gas (mostly CO2?) which can escape, by bubbling through the water in the S-bend of the water lock.  Gas goes out, but cannot come in!  If the gas had nowhere to escape, the vessel would simply EXPLODE!!! LOL

(3) Ingredients
These will vary widely depending on what you hope to make! Any kind of juice (so long as it is clean, and does not contain too many preservatives/chemicals which could be harmful to the yeast will work).  We made a lot of mead (honey wine) because the cheif ingredient, honey is relatively cheap for the quantity it produced and is readily availble in most supermarkets.  But you can use anything from grape juice to jelly or jam!  I'm told even applesauce works in the right conditions.

You will need sugar (probably somewhere between 100g and 700g per gallon depending on what you are making.  And probably a few grammes of yeast.  Oh - and STERILIZING TABLETS! to use on your equipment before you begin!
Method

You can find your own way that works best for doing things, but here is how we did it! 

(1) Clean everything
Firstly make sure everything is very very very VERY clean. I can't stress that enough!  If it's not, you'll be making vinegar within a week! LOL as kewl as that is, it's not as much fun to drink if you don't get pissed off it.  LOL You can never be sterile enough.  I recommend sterilizing tablets... like the kind you buy for babies at supermarkets or such.  You want to be sure to leave a tablet sitting in the demijohn for a few hours before washing the vessel out at least twice to ensure traces of the sterilizing tablet have not been left behind, because this can kill the yeast!

(2) Disssolve some sugar (I recommend somewhere between 250g to 400g) in 1 litre of boiling water.  Stir until the sugar has dissolved completely!

(3) Now add about 2 litres of juice to your CLEAN demijohn (I strongly recommend a filter funnel ... it gets messy out there, people!!! You can buy wine kits cheaply in shops like Wilkinsons which come with ready made grape juice concentrate.  If you are using honey, it helps to boil another litre of water and stir to dissolve about 350g of honey in!  (Yes, honey DOES dissolve... but requires a lot of persuasion!).  The same goes for Jelly (Jello?) or Jam (Jelly?) and many other things. 

(4) Now add your hot sugar water into the mix (be sure to add this after the juice (see step 3), as the demijohns are not pyrex glass and will likely crack and/or explode with the heat.  Which looks cool but doesn't help the brewing process much LOL)

(5) Give it a swirl to ensure you have a nice luke-warm mix of diluted juice and sugary water.  You will notice that the demijohn is fairly full, but not completely full! (there is a reason for this!)

(6) Add the yeast into the mix!  This is the magical step!  I strongly recommend waiting about 5 to 15 minutes until the yeast has realized a party is going on in the demijohn, then giving it another swirl to ensure the yeast mix and mince with all the other party guests LOL.


Over the next 24 hours, you should hope to see some bubbles start leaving the demijohn through the water lock.  This is a sign that the yeast is very much alive and enjoying your offering of sugar LOL 

(7) On the third day of the brewing, I recommend take out the bung and top up the demijohn to the very top with luke warm water.  Try not to leave the bung out for any longer than necessary and (as always!) I'm going to nag you to try keeping everyrthing as clean as possible! LOL After coming this far, you wouldn't want to risk contaminating it now!



The speed of the fermenting can be seen from the speed of the bubbles leaving the airlock.  After about 2 weeks you will probably notice them slow right down! This is an indication that the brewing is coming to an end.

The yeast produce alcohol from the sugar as a by-product of the fermenting process.  BUT alcohol is actually quite toxic to yeast, so when the brew gets to around 11 to 14 percent strength, the fermenting stage will naturally start to come to an end as the yeast begin to die. (which is why most wines are around this strength!)

All you need then, is a dark place to leave the demijohns.  You can buy fancy heating pads which warm the mix and excite the yeast to finish quicker (usually about 5 days to a week instead of 3) but I'm not a big fan of that idea, because it achieves very little except costing money and could adversely affect the flavour.
_________________________________________________
Anyway, that's probably all I'm going to write just now.  I promise another installment about how to deal with the stages AFTER fermenting has finished at some point in the future.

Brewing alcohol is an absolute pleasure and I really hope I can encourage others to find their own pleasure in making their own brews too! :)

Take care everyone!

x
2:55 PM 
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