As a kid growing up in the 80s my dad used to brew his own beer, and it was always put in the airing cupboard in my bedroom......I think I was the only kid in primary school whose bedroom smelt like a brewery 😂
Me too back in the 70s, I used to get a small glass of it occasionally, not sure if it was a punishment or reward as it tasted bloody awful...Mind you I drank it, I'm British I wasn't wasting alcohol.
@@paulhanson5164 the strange thing is I grew up respecting alcohol, I've always known when I've had enough to drink, and as I've got older I appreciate a good real ale.
My first Christmas in the UK (from America) my wife bought me a homebrew kit. I followed the instructions diligently, sterilized everything, waited the appropriate amount of time, and thought it was one of the worst beers I'd ever drunk! Long story short I've now been a professional brewer for the last 9 years. I'm sure you will get a surfeit of advice given, but if you want to do more of it and have any questions feel free to reach out.
If you struggle to keep it warm. when the heating is on put it next to the radiator, when it's off put a coat over it, to keep it warm longer. if you can't get it going, run a warm bath, and put it in the bath until it starts. If you run out of bottles, use pop bottles, they can hold the pressure of carbonated drinks. for the syphoning you can get syphoning valve, a valve attached to a long tube, to make it easier. The big thing is to have everything well sterilized, When I was in Saudi, in the mid 90s we used Milton tablets ( baby bottle steriliser), they work well and are quite cheap.
You normally use the boiling water to wash out the tins. You can put the hydrometer straight in the bucket. That narrow vessel is only needed if you don't have enough depth for the hydrometer to float.Also you can buy a heating band to go round the base of the bucket.
@@themagicmatt If you make a sulphite solution and put it in a spray bottle this will suffice for sterilising small stuff like spoons and hydrometers, or even the inside surface of buckets if you spray liberally enough to coat the whole interior surface. It will keep its sterilising properties for a couple of weeks.
I used a fish tank heater to keep the fermentation going. I did not bother with bottles, I put my beer in a 5 gallon plastic jerry can. The boys and me usually drank the lot in one go at a party.
Congrats Brewmaster Alanna! I'm glad you got the Butler seal of approval. As for your question about the pronunciation of sachet, the term is pouch. :)
If its a little weak, add less water to the brew, now you have the basic equipment you can make wine and cider. Definitely a cider video for the summer !!
I proposed cider too, since she likes it and is in orchard country - it’s a fall crop though - the apples you buy from the store are have usually been picked 1 or 2 years ago. I’m pretty sure in Kent you’d be able to go to a farm and buy some raw pressed apple juice.
@@adrianmcgrath1984 I've been making cider for years using cheap apple juice from a grocery store. 5 gallons of juice, a couple of pounds of sugar or other fermentables and a packet of champagne yeast. Leave it alone until it goes completely clear. It may not match commercial cider, but it's cheap and about 9% alcohol.
Again a brilliantly fun video, and well done. The only thing I would have done is stand the bucket near a radiator or even wrapped in a blanket with just the valve showing. A good indication the beer is ready for bottling is when it stops bubbleing.The longer it is left in the bucket determin how strong it gets as more of the syrup turns to alcohol. if you want extra strength, you could even add extra sugar to the bucket and let it continue to ferment longer. xx
As an experienced homebrewer from late 60's to 90's I can say with a bit of care and keeping equipment sterilised anyone should be able to make very drinkable beer or wine. I won't bore you to much but 1) you should have put your brewing tub on your work top on a folded towel and covered the tub in a blanket or towels to keep it warm.... That is why your initial fermentation took so long the tub was cold. Alternatively if you have an airing cupboard put it in there. 2) Having brewing tub on a high surface makes it easier to syphon initial brewing process off. 3) Purchase a 5 gallon plastic beer barrel with a tap to syphon into, you don't need loads of bottles then. All home brewing equipment available on line but way more expensive than it used to be.....home brewing was cheap sort of equivalent to 40/50p a pint today. Don't give up...need any advice just ask.
My old boss tried the home brewing; it did not quite go to plan for him. His first sign of disaster was coming home and seeing beer seeping out of his garage. When he looked inside his bottles of home brew had exploded 😂😂😂
I dappled in homebrewing in the late 80's and actually got quite good at it. The downside was that I conditioned it in a 5 gallon, (40 pint), plastic barrel, and had approximately a 2 week window in which to consume it all. I would give some away, but still never managed to finish it all in the time allotted. The sterilisation process isn't that difficult, really. I used to use Milton fluid, which is the stuff they sterilise babies bottles with. It smelt better than some of the sterilising stuff you could buy. Having somewhere warm for the brew to ferment was also a bit of a problem, during the winter months. It had to be placed somewhere high up to aid in syphoning into the barrel to be conditioned. Once it's in the barrel, you had to wait for any sediment that was in the beer to settle as well as condition sufficiently before drinking. Usually that took about a week. It should be self-evident why you need to stand the cans that contain the wort in hot water. It's rather viscous to say the least. Adding a little bit of hot water to the tin after the majority of it is out, helps to rinse them out. The fun part is adding in the cold water. I would traditionally use the same pint glass I would end up drinking it out of, just because. From what I remember, you don't stir the yeast in. You leave it on the top of the mix. Checking on it every couple of days until the bubbling from the air lock stops. That's when you know the fermentation period has finished. From the look of yours, when you took the lid off, it's still fermenting. With it being in a less than warm place, it will take longer to finish fermenting. Ideally, you should leave it for another few days, then check back again. If the frothing has gone, then you know the fermentation has finished. The hydrometer, (pronounced hydrom-eter), is there to tell you what the specific gravity is, i.e. how much alcohol is in the brew. The higher the value is above 1000 the greater the alcohol content. The second time you opened it, looked about right. You could have conditioned it, then. To be honest, you don't really need a hydrometer. I certainly didn't use one the first few times I made me own homebrew. It was only after I started getting into it as a hobby that I splashed out a bit on such stuff. I got to know by eye whether it was ready or not. When syphoning, always place the pipe somewhere toward the top part of the liquid to avoid getting any of the sediment at the bottom into the bottles. Although, it's going to be physically impossible not to get some particulates in the beer, (as some of the spent yeast is bound to be in suspension), but you don't want the thick stuff at the bottom. Putting half a teaspoon of sugar per bottle is known as conditioning the beer. It'll get rid of any remaining yeast and give the beer a bit of sparkle.. hopefully. The result looks fine for homebrew. You could leave it a bit longer to allow more of the sediment to settle, but seriously, it's not going to make a huge difference. It might be a bit weaker due to the amount of time it took to ferment, but generally speaking, if it tastes ok, then mission accomplished. 12 pint bottles is about a third of the potential amount you could get out of a 5 gallon bucket. Although, you'd probably get a bit less, say 25-30 bottles worth. But still a positive result! Well done. Now you've done one, you can do some cider!!
Rule of thumb, if it's still bubbling then it's still working. Best to try and keep it at a stable 20 celsius, if it gets too cold then the yeast stop working but often will start again when it warms up, if it gets too hot (late 20s celsius) then it can actually kill the yeast. Temperature fluctuations can cause problems too. You normally take a hydrometer reading at the start before you put the yeast in and another at the end before bottling and applying a calculation to the two figures will give you your alcohol %. The alcoholic strength is based upon the amount of soluble sugars in the liquid at the start and the amount of those sugars the yeast convert, putting less water in or adding more sugars will give you a stronger beer. Adding the sugar to the bottles at the end is to allow the yeast in the beer to continue working in the bottle (bottle conditioning), this will give you the CO2 fizz but will also allow the flavour and body of the beer to fill out over weeks or months, I normally leave my homebrews to condition in a cool dark corner for about 6 months before opening. Be careful, adding too much sugar to the bottle can result in bottle bombs. Well done with the sanitisation, it is the downfall of many first time homebrewers who don't appreciate that absolutely everything being clean is vital.
I as an old school mechanic used to use a Hydrom-eter (pronunciation) it mesures the specific gravity of a fluid 0 on it's scale is Pure Water like a litmus paper changing colour + or - on the scale registers Acidic or Alkaline a reading of 13. something ment the battery cell was charged if you had one cell out of 6 below that the battery was deemed un-serviceable Brewing took thousands of Generations to Perfect But thank you for allowing me too sit on your kitchen floor with you with a smile on my face
(1) the temperature of the fermenting bucket is very important. The yeast that comes with kits is usually quite tolerant, but it won't work below 18 deg C, and if you let it rise to over about 23 deg C there is a risk of killing it off altogether. 20 deg C is the usual ideal temperature. You can tell when fermentation is complete if you have kept to about the right temperature throughout when the bubbling in the airlock has substantially stopped. The hydrometer is an alternative way of determining this. Fermentation is complete when all the sugars have been converted by the yeast into CO2 and alcohol, so the fact that there is no more CO2 bubbling out shows fermentation has stopped. When the yeast has stopped working it goes dormant and sinks to the bottom of the bucket (which is where you want it), so you need to allow a day or so for this to happen before you syphon the beer off. (2) the hydrometer should be used to measure the gravity before you pitch the yeast, as well as when fermentation has stopped. This enables you to work out the alcohol content by volume. ABV(%) = (Initial Gravity - Final Gravity) x 131.25. (3) syphoning is easier if you get a clip to fix the solid tube that goes in the bucket to the rim, with the bottom of the tube just touching the sludge at the bottom of the bucket. The cup thing at that end is designed to help avoid sucking up the sludge itself. (4) usually you put one level teaspoon of sugar in each bottle as priming sugar. Half a teaspoon per pint will be undercarbonated for most tastes. (5) it is not necessary to buy bottles. Buy as many bottles of Aspall's cider as you will need for home brewing. They each weigh half a pound and are perfectly good for re-use. All you need to buy is a crown corker (about £15), and a new crown cork every time the bottle is re-used. Cheap as chips! (5) there will be sediment in the bottom of each bottle, so you need to develop a technique for pouring that leaves most of the sediment behind. You left far too much behind. Invariably, a bottle must be poured in a single operation, because if you don't, the beer will flow back into the bottle and stir up the sediment. It is a good idea to pour into a jug that is larger than the bottle, then pour the clear beer from the jug into a glass or glasses. This also allows for a head to form without spilling over the rim of a glass. The head will settle. Your beer had no head whatsoever, so I'm pretty sure there wasn't enough priming sugar. (6) I can't be sure, but you may have used too much cold water at the outset, which may account for the wateriness you described in the finished product. You seemed to state both that you needed to top the bucket up to 20·5 litres and that you needed to add 20·5 litres of cold water, which are different things. These kits are usually to make 5 Imp gal,, so your finished volume should be about 23 litres. You added 6 litres of boiling water to the malt extract (not sure what volume that occupied). You certainly should not have added a further 20·5 litres of cold water. An additional 15 litres would have been about right. Altogether, a very good first effort.
For anyone starting out in home brew - don't bother buying bottles - they're restrictively expensive at home brew or hardware shops, and you're much better off just buying lots of beers while your brew is fermenting, and then taking the effort to empty them all before it's ready! (Dedication to the hobby is the thing [hic!] )🤒then use the money you've saved on the bottles to buy a "crown corking tool" and a big bag of "crown corks" (beer bottle tops) I used to do a lot of home brewing back in the day, though I don't nowadays, but I do buy a fair amount of bottled beer to drink at home, and it feels like such a waste when I toss my empties away into the recycling bin!
@@aloluk But make sure the beer you buy comes in 'shouldered' bottles, rather than those sloping neck type - it's easier to pour bottle-conditioned beer from a shouldered bottle and still leave the sediment behind.
When I was homebrewing some years ago, I also had access to Grolsch which came in bottles with the swing top. (I've just checked online and Grolsch is now back in the supermarkets. It is still popular with homebrewers.)
Pretty much what I did when starting out. I had no bottles so had to get through 40 500ml beers first. In an ideal world there'd be a marketplace made up of those who need bottles and those who want to get rid of them! A similar thing happened when I moved on to wine...😁
You don’t buy empty beer bottles, unless you’ve got more money than sense. Buy them full, drink and re-use, over a period of months and years. And you should get close to 40 out of a bucket that size.
Now you are equipped, you could have a go at making cider? You can buy kits, but living in Kent you should be able to buy raw apple juice right from an orchard. You may have to schedule ahead, since some farms share a press and it goes from farm to farm at harvest time.
Interesting! I've been making my own beer for years, sometimes from kits and sometimes from more basic raw ingredients. In fact, the last batch (of 40 bottles) was also a St Peter's kit (but the ruby red ale), which is a lovely drink. You were doing well until you pushed the cap back on the bubble trap....that would stop the gas coming out through there (personally I don't use one, but it can help determine when the beer is ready...no bubbles coming through). Using a hydrometer is a real art in itself....I tend to just leave mine in the fermentation bucket, with a floating thermometer and check every couple of days. It is better if it is too cool rather than too warm (ideally around 18-20°C). If too cool it just takes longer. You did have me shouting at the screen when you tried to Syphon with the bucket on the ground....that was never going to work😊 I'm about to make my first batch of cider (a dark berry flavoured one, as that is what my wife drinks). Hopefully it'll turn out as well as the beers have.
My brother in law used to make his own beer, the concoction used to sit in their kitchen, I tried one of them, once, it was like pond water, he liked it. He used to work away during the week. One night, I think it was a Wednesday, a brew exploded, no major damage, but pond water ceiling to floor. He got home on the Friday to find all of his equipment outside, and my sister, waiting…..
Hey Great video! I’m a very experienced brewer but I’m not going to start listing off a bunch of comments about the process and such, I could talk for hours about brewing in general. What’s important is the journey you took and the learning along the way. There’s so much to learn and each brew you learn more. I started pretty much the same way you did. It was fun watching you brew for the first time. Brought back a lot of memories, oh the mistakes I’ve made. I wouldn’t change a thing as that’s how I learned.
I was absolutely certain, from the time you opened up the hydrometer, that you would drop it and break it LOL. Don't worry we have all done it, in the home brewing world it is a rite of passage. Most of us go out and buy two so we have a spare just in case. The temperature is only important in that it shouldn't vary too much. The yeast will have a range of temperature in which it works and should say so on the packet. There are many low cost ways of keeping the "mash" warm or cool. At a bare minimum you should wrap the fermenter in a blanket or other insulating material. Other ways are a heat pad, heat belt, or my favourite, an aquarium heater, for cooling a wet towel and a fan works well, but I doubt you will need to do that in the UK - all a relatively cheap to purchase and cost very little to run. Well done though, that was a good first attempt.
Airing cupboard is a good ace to put it during the winter. Just be careful, too hot and you can kill the yeast. As long as it's gurgling it's working, just might take longer if it's colder. Doesn't affect the finished article.
Most people who are not English most likely pronounce Sachet like they do Filet with a long A sound at the end. Good for you taking on this project. Having made my own Mead which was a very similar project I can commiserate. And I tell you that I will NEVER do that again 😂
I've been brewing beer for about 20 years, it's quite easy- but there is plenty that can go wrong.I don't sterilize everything- I've read and been told this means the beer will fail- but in 20 years it never has. Malt is very sticky- you need to keep it off everything- if you think stirring malt is gross, don't ever try to make bread! I don't use a lock (except for wine) I cover the bucket with bubble wrap and the lid-it's fine. Your beer may have suffered from cold shock- that's why I use bubble wrap, it keeps the initial warmth in, if it's particularly cold I'll warm it by putting it in a baking tray of hot water. It's hops and yeast on the top, I don't use a hydrometer- I bottle it when the ferment slows- I lift the lid and check every day, 6 days is average, if it's cold it will take longer to get to that stage- when you looked at it the second time you should have bottled because it had pretty much finished, if you want it quite fizzy, bottle before it has quite finished.I use 1.5l plastic bottles ,so there is no chance of them bursting if the secondary ferment is vigorous, and it's less fiddly. What did you do with the beer you didn't bottle? I keep the sediment and use it in my breadmaking. It doesn't look fizzy enough, for my taste anyway.Cheers!
Do you say 'sashays' or 'sashits'...? We say 'sashays'...'sashits' is probably what the beer will give you tomorrow! 🤣😂🤣 Excellently entertaining video as always, Alanna. 😀👍👏👏👏👍
As long as it's still gurgling, you leave it going. That means the yeast is still working on converting the sugar to alcohol and it will take much longer when it's cold. I can't say I'm a fan of hop essence powder, but it's been a long, long time since I brewed beer. Cleanliness is absolutely essential as stray organisms can turn the stuff into vinegar. Also, a tiny bit of sugar (maybe a quarter of a tea spoon) is a good idea in each bottle so it's properly carbonated as the yeast will get to work on it. Also, it's an extremely good idea to get a heated, insulated jacket for the fermentation bucket. They are not expensive and it means you don't have to wait forever to get your beer. nb. I'm fairly sure that we fermented wine at school. That will have been another long, long time ago...
I remember my mum making elderflower champagne. Unfortunately she didn't use the right kind of bottles and they exploded in the cupboard. Scary but hilarious.
The fermentation lock( air lock ) should be half filled and the CO2 produced will bubble through it without letting air in to spoil the beer! If you'd have measured the gravity before fermentation and again after, you could have worked out the strength in terms of percentage of alcohol! It has the appearance of a real ale and I imagine for, home made its great! Love the wild hair, by the way xx
This made me laugh! Many years ago, my dad made his own beer from a kit similar to the one in the video. He and a friend went for it and drank several bottles of his beer. He was so drunk, he crawled into bed and stayed there two days! My mum wasn’t impressed. 😂
Hi Alanna. I regularly make my own wine and you can use all the equipment you already have to make wine too, you will just need one extra bucket. I've found that wine kits really aren't that great and using your own recipe works better. Here is my recipe for a delicious TEA wine that works out at just 40p per bottle. For 5 gallons/23 litres :- 50 tea bags (any make is fine) 1 kg chopped raisins (preferably in a muslin/straining bag 1 Kg brown sugar 5.5 Kg white sugar 10 Tbsp lemon juice Optional 5 Tbsp dried Elderflower Wine Yeast as per instructions on packet Brew for a week, stirring daily then remove bag of raisins. Put lid back on and brew to 0.095 on your hydrometer (about 2 weeks) Stir until all CO2 bubbles stop appearing Clear with wine finings as per instructions on pack Syphon into other sanitised bucket, leave to settle again then syphon back into the original resanitised bucket, do this until sediment is removed. Bottle into 25-28 75cl sanitised bottles then leave for at least a couple of weeks before drinking, 6 months is best. Makes a great wine that honestly doesn't taste of tea at all, lovely drink for summer mixeed with a little lemonade.
@@RenaissanceEarCandy Use a big pan to make up the tea on a low heat, I do it in four batches. I boil up a kettle full of water, about two litres, put it in the pan with a quarter of the tea bags and a quarter of the sugar, stir occasionally for about ten mins. I then do another pan of water and soak the chopped raisins for a bit to make sure they're clean. Empty the pan each time into your sanitised fermenting bucket. Top up to 5 gallons with clean water (tap water is fine in the UK, you may want to use bottled) that you have shaken in a bottle to get it well aerated then add the lemon juice. Put on lid and airlock to stop anything getting in there and wait for the temp. to get down to at least 25 Celsius and then add the yeast Seal it up then stir once a day for a week then remove the bag of raisins,. Seal it up again and leave as long as it takes for the bubbles to stop. Follow the instructions in the previous post to clear the wine. Should end up with something around 13% ABV.
Hi If the temperature is low the yeast will take a long time to convert the sugar in the malt in to alcohol and carbon dioxide. The bubble trap on the lid is let out the co2.The faster it bubbles the quicker the alcohol is being produced. In the fermenting process some heat is given of by the yeast. I also wrap my brew bins with an old blanket.
That looks like a totally decent beer for a first go at homebrew. 👌 There's so much good info on UA-cam now about this stuff. So I won't add to the noise. I would just advise having another go at a different time in the year and keep being thorough with the cleaning like you were.
As mentioned in another comment, you can use boiling water to sterilize your equipment. You can judge when the beer is ready for bottling by watching as CO2 bubbling out of the airlock reduces. This indicates the yeast has consumed most of the sugar and is ready. Try making kombucha next. It's quicker, easier to make, and much better for you than beer.
DONT leaves the red top on your airlock. The airlock needs to breathe. If you have a lively brew, it could blow the Red top off followed by a stream of beer everywhere.
Canadian moves to the UK and documents her experiences. This includes a visit to Wetherspoons, several drinking videos, and making home-brew during a cold snap while not quite being aware of the passage of time. Personally, I'd say the alcohol videos make you British by default! No shade intended, I'm British-born and probably drink alcohol and tea in equal measures! 🤣🤣 Also the one time I made home-brew, a friend of mine took a bottle, drank it at his one-bedroom flat, then got lost looking for his own bathroom... tells you all you need to know about home-brew, me, my friend and home-brew in general!
Its surprisingly easy to make great bear. Clean, clean and clean again ( then clean some more). If you leave sterilising stuff in the barrel you'll kill the yeast
When it comes to doing science, you just have to remember that negative results are still data. Or as my late father used to annoy his grad students with; "that's research!" Great job, Alanna. You are Brit-wife material. Or specifically in Old English parlance, an Alewife.
Yeast feeds off sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide (the CO2 gas you get in fizzy pop) so if it is still bubbling it is still breaking down the sugar or has died, yeast does not like extreme heat as it gets sluggish and doesn't like cold and it goes to sleep so it might take longer when cold, so while it is still bubbling it is still working, albeit slowly but working. When the yeast has digested all the sugar it will die. The fermentation is what they call exothermic, (heat producing) so wrapping it up in a blanket or towel will keep it warmer for longer. Putting sugar in the beer bottles creates a secondary fermentation, this does but is not meant to increase the alcohol strength but produces CO2 gas in the bottle, called bottle conditioning, which allows a nice pint with a frothy head on it instead of a flat beer, simple but effective. When siphoning the bottom of the plastic bucket should always be higher the the bottle so it can find the lowest point, it is called gravity, additionally there is a special syphon tube that has a spring loaded stop on the bottom that automatically stop when you lift the tube out. St Peters Brewery do a nice range of beers. Just remember if it is a nice environment for yeast it is also a nice environment for spoilage bacteria.
Hi allanah,Love your enthusiasm cheerfulness and fun video on making 🍺 a willingness to give it a go well done. Just a very important point!, wear shoes,I noticed your wearing socks,when dealing and pouring moving boiling water it's easy to spill on your foot and get severe burn,plus wearing socks on floorboards easy to slip up your carrying boiling water be careful ok✌️❤️👍😊after sterilising utensils wash with water otherwise you'll get that in the beer and taste too. You can also buy beer labels to stick on the bottles 🙂 When's the tasting party?😜 I love the final.cooment does it taste good?... not really 🤣🤣🤣brilliant!you made a good effort!
Alanna this is one of your best videos ever and you NEVER EVER make a dud video 😊 I have brewed at several breweries around the country as well as brewing at home just as you have here, you did nothing wrong in any sort of big way, but brewing more will iron out the little hiccups (learning how to improve your method/s). The glass floaty thing which gave its life during the making of this episode of your life is called a hydrometer and pronounced as it is written and not with a hyphen as in hydro-meter, maybe try using a little less water to make it stronger 15 litres perhaps, (you should be able to get a good idea of the strength from the beginning reading and the end reading which you took, from what I saw it looks very clean and crisp which points to being well looked after, I imagine that will give you a giggle but there you go, the bottled beer should keep for maybe a couple of years if kept out of the light in the kitchen/under stairs etc, for a first attempt this is excellent and cider is easier than beer to make, and we know that you prefer cider, good luck with that and take care :)
I was pretty big on homebrewing for a few years, though ended up giving up in lockdown as I couldn't source the ingredients. Honestly, that was a really good first effort, its really clear, didn't gush when you opened, doesn't look like there are any infections and sounds like it tasted reasonable. There is a limit to how good its possible to make it with that basic equipment, and it seems like you got pretty close.
my dad use to brew 'home' beer' every Christmas, i remember it took at least a month, because there would be this massive beer barrel by the garden, (so it was cold UK), i also remember it not tasting very good, drinkable, didn't make you ill, but just not great, however maybe after the 5th pint, it didn't matter as much. I doubt if my dad used any sanitiser or analysis tools, this was the 70's, and just eyeballed it , if it looked like beer, it was beer. The beer 'barrel' also had a tap on it, so you would just fill a glass from it, seemed a lot simpler process than this method
Beer tips. You are using a airlock. So can use that to decide if you need to test. Seldom "gurgle", test. Fast "gurgle", not ready. I have made great beer, and undrinkable stuff. If your beer is "Weak" or "Watery", add less water next time and ignore the hydrometer. It measures a CHANGE in density and you are wanting something denser. I.E don't add the cold water, but use a thermometer and let it cool to the right temperature before adding yeast. Instead use the "gurgle" to judge when to bottle. Using the fridge caused your beer to clear, but I'd take it out of the fridge after as British beer shouldn't be that cold.
I've been wanting to make my own mead for years but honestly the whole process seems really complicated and overwhelming. You managed this really well so maybe I can too!
I’ve been making mead and cider and brewing beer for about a decade now. Mead is super simple, truly. It really is a leave it and forget type of beverage. Grab some honey, spring water, and some type of yeast nutrient; pitch yeast; close it and put it somewhere dark for at least a couple of months
I was once served a pint in a club in England, and realised that the week before I'd flushed away five gallons of homebrew I considered failed that was better than the pint I'd just been served and had paid for.
I make beer from scratch, not made any for a couple of years. With the kits you can add more sugar if you want it to have higher alcohol. I've got about 20 kilos of malted barley in the house, which I must chuck out.
Hi Alanna. Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this and I feel bad for saying it 😬. I'm sure that early in the instructions it states to add the cold water "to the level of 20.5 litres" on top of the stuff already in the bucket? You added 20.5 litres on top of the already mixed ingredients and that maybe why it tasted weak at the end? I'm usually wrong but just thought I'd pop my observations in 😊. Keep up the good work 👍🏻
Around eight or nine years ago I was a member of a home brew club. We would experiment with making different beers and wines, it was great fun but I stopped when I moved house as I was drinking much more than was good for me. I did make some really good brews though, I particularly enjoyed the wheat beers. Sometimes we would swap some of the brews with other members, some of them made crazy strong brews, like an 18% alcohol cider.
Temperature is important when home brewing, that's probably the only thing you didn't get right, it looks like the 2nd fermentation in the bottles didn't go right as it's flat, you need to store the bottles once filled at a temperature between 21 to 28 degrees usually.
My Dad did one of these once when he got one for Christmas one year. I think he tried again once, but then gave up. Don't think it ever went this well. My mum does do wine sometimes, which seems to tend to go well enough. I think you'd get more out of making your own ciders. Also with cider you can add stuff to flavour. And thank you for a very entertaining video. Hopefully there were no cut feet from the glass on the floor. Just be glad in that particular instance that you didn't have a dog.
I don't drink beer, but I have made both wine, and cider. My "bucket" had a place for a "brew band," sort of like the heat tape you use on pipes in Canada to keep the stuff warm while it was making itself. I am not sure my cider was as good as store bought stuff, but, I liked it (like you, I am a cider drinker). Maybe try cider next!
It's like 30 years since I used to make beer, and maybe things have changed since then, but I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to rince the equipment after sanitising it. Also, hot water or the oven are good alternatives for sanitising. I never measured whatever, alcohol level? before bottling. When the bubbling started to slow down to one per minute or something it was time. The beer I made was pretty ok, not top shelf, but better than the cheap stuff in bars.
Quite the emotional rollercoaster! It's very brave to a) do something you've never done before, b) on camera and c) with very minimal instructions. I don't know if I would have the confidence to attempt anything like this in front of an audience, especially without secretly watching a million how-to videos on UA-cam. I'm glad you got something palatable at the end of it all, I hope you got to put your feet up and enjoy your hard-earned beeeeeer 🍻
Great video. As a teenager I used to brew beer. In a big plastic dustbin (new and only used for brewing!). I kept in the dining room. Seeing you pouring malt brought back some memories. Lol In those days (1960's) we had bottles with screw tops that were great for allowing the final fermentation in the bottle to get a nice fizz. I used to sell it at school. We have a grape vine in our garden which produces very tasty red grapes. I've made wine with it a few times, up to 100 litres. Great for handing out at Christmas and to all our neighbours. The other thing to try in late May and early June is Elderflower Champagne. There's loads of elderflowers around at that time, free for picking.
Thank you, You just reminded me about the home brew I have conditioning in the cupboards and that I needs to do a taste test... 😜 Also that I need to get another batch on the go, cause if these are done, they won't last long once I start telling peoples, peoples can drink...! Lol There is one little bits of advice that I would give if you should do more kits, a tad of research can have you tweaking the kits to make ok beers into legendary beers... I do the kits myself, but I add dry malt extracts, and dry hop them too... I really lifts the kits to another level with minimal effort... The extra ABV is nice too... 😜
Well done on your first batch of beer! As Borat would say, "Great success, very nice!" My dad used to brew beer and from what I remember it wasn't great. A friend of mine did it for a while and it was pretty good. I was always put off by the amount of "faffing about" involved, so hats off for giving it a go! 👍
It is a lot of faff tbh. Takes the thick end of a day to mash, sparge, and boil forty pints. Then there's the bottling/kegging a few weeks later. i came to the realisation after a couple of years that I might as well put in some o/t at work and spend the money buying the ready made stuff from people who make it professionally!
A good attempt at home brewing. You really do need to find somewhere warm to place the container though for it to ferment properly. As for sachet - 'Sash hay', like that well known French singer 'Sachet da Stillery'.
Loved this episode! - I also laughed a little through the beginning section, because I know you are in Kent! No other County has ever been so intrinsically linked to the beer industry. My Grandfather in Folkestone would go in the kitchen twice a year. My grandmother would be banished. He would remove the door and set it up as an extra work surface then disappear to the car and come back with armfuls of locally bought hops. All of which had to be boiled to prepare. It was quite a ritual. So just tipping a packet of hops dust into a bucket seemed wonderfully sacrilegious. I also enjoyed the rest of the video though and admired your perseverance! It looked very good - if it’s weak, then it’s a good summer drink! Back when you were new to the island and discovering British slang, did you ever look into the different words used for taking (unofficial) time of school? Local areas often use the same words for taking time of work without a 'proper' reason. There are various slang terms used, in the south east it’s often 'skiving' in Manchester it’s ‘wagging it'. And in the East of London they say 'hopping it'. The hopping it reference comes from the days when families from the East End would come down and combine a holiday in the country with hop picking. Whole families would go, often back to the same farms every year, from babies to grandparents.
Thanks for the childhood memories. Lol. My parents used to make us forage for nettles and wild fruits for home brew. Hope you make a cider next so you can enjoy the results more. 👍
Hey Alanna, well done. One teaspoon of steriliser/litre of water is ample. Its the gas that stuff makes that does the sterilisation. Wrapping Pete in a blanket and having him on the bench not the floor works more better and will help fermentation in colder weather. Aim for 20C. You need a fermenter that has a tap at the bottom, it really helps when your bottling to syphon from one to the other and leave all the sediment behind. Rinsing the cans out with hot water at the start, gets all the malt out of the cans and that is a good time to add the hops to the brew. Tilt the fermenter and stir it as vigorously as you can to make it all nice and foamy is a good practice and helps the yeast. So is keeping your bottles warm and the older they are the better they taste. Keep a couple of them aside for late summer and you will be amazed at the difference in quality. Dave Bartlett is right about bottles. Get a capper. Congratulations you are now a brewer. Cheers
I loved this! 😊 And then I remembered that you live very close to a really old brewery......! 😆 Should they be worried about the competition? 🤔 I don't think so! 😂😂😂
My father told me he was woken up during WW2 by the sound of machine gun fire. Turned out his landlady had a cupboard full of homebrew beer that exploded like a chain reaction.
Excellent stuff. This takes me back! As a teenager my brothers and I made Elderflower wine, Blackberry wine, Rhubarb wine and Cider. Lots of free resources from the woods at the back of our home. Cheap sugar and yeast created some of the most disgusting alcoholic drinks one could imagine. A load of buckets and a dozen or more demijohns were permanently on the go. Fair Play to you Alana for giving this a go
I was so looking forward to the bucket exploding all over you!!! 😆 But I'm proud of you, trying something well out of your comfort zone and making a success of it!! On to the next project!!! 👏👏
You need to warm the malt extract because otherwise it's too viscous to pour. (If I'm brewing from a kit, I rinse the tins / bag out with some hot water from the kettle to get the most out of it.) Sounds like you had a successful brew. It certainly looked like beer. The first beer I brewed, I let it go rather flat while bottling it. I'm drinking this beer, not too bad to taste but flat as a pancake, and I'm thinking "if I had this in a pub, I'd probably drink it down and order something else next time, but I'd be far too English to complain about it." Then I said to myself, if my first ever attempt at brewing beer reaches the quality level of "not worth the bother of sending back", I'll take that as a win!
A great first go Alanna! your patience has to be commended but it's worth persevering. I used to brew my own booze back in the 1980's and 90's. It used to be pretty good although the method has changes a little. A whisker of advice though, when they state 0.5 teaspoon of sugar its probably better to under fill. Also don't let the bottles get too warm while the beer clears as the tops will pop off the bottles, literally the bottles will break if the top doesn't. To keep 'Bob' the bucket warm I used to use a belt heater around the bucket and leave him for 10 days. Definitely decant the bottled beer on one go and not pour to the end or some nasty stuff from the bottom of the bottle will land in the glass. Very well done and thanks for sharing.
reminded me of a bottle of home brewed carrot whisky (dated 1973) i think in my parents booze cabinet . it was there several years - don't remember it ever being totally finished lol, my brother had a go at lager once, i remember the exploding bottles under the kitchen sink :(
As a kid growing up in the 80s my dad used to brew his own beer, and it was always put in the airing cupboard in my bedroom......I think I was the only kid in primary school whose bedroom smelt like a brewery 😂
😂
@@AdventuresAndNaps could you imagine that happening now? Social services would be round in a flash 😂
Me too back in the 70s, I used to get a small glass of it occasionally, not sure if it was a punishment or reward as it tasted bloody awful...Mind you I drank it, I'm British I wasn't wasting alcohol.
@@paulhanson5164 the strange thing is I grew up respecting alcohol, I've always known when I've had enough to drink, and as I've got older I appreciate a good real ale.
My early attempts at home brewing ended explosively. You were lucky.
My first Christmas in the UK (from America) my wife bought me a homebrew kit. I followed the instructions diligently, sterilized everything, waited the appropriate amount of time, and thought it was one of the worst beers I'd ever drunk!
Long story short I've now been a professional brewer for the last 9 years.
I'm sure you will get a surfeit of advice given, but if you want to do more of it and have any questions feel free to reach out.
Your partner sounds like a keeper. Can’t say the same for the beer though. Next batch should be better. Don’t give up you are doing important work.😊
If you struggle to keep it warm. when the heating is on put it next to the radiator, when it's off put a coat over it, to keep it warm longer. if you can't get it going, run a warm bath, and put it in the bath until it starts.
If you run out of bottles, use pop bottles, they can hold the pressure of carbonated drinks.
for the syphoning you can get syphoning valve, a valve attached to a long tube, to make it easier.
The big thing is to have everything well sterilized, When I was in Saudi, in the mid 90s we used Milton tablets ( baby bottle steriliser), they work well and are quite cheap.
You normally use the boiling water to wash out the tins. You can put the hydrometer straight in the bucket. That narrow vessel is only needed if you don't have enough depth for the hydrometer to float.Also you can buy a heating band to go round the base of the bucket.
Good to know for next time!
If you’re going to put the hydrometer in the bucket then you need to sterilise it each time. Not ideal when taking multiple readings.
@@themagicmatt If you make a sulphite solution and put it in a spray bottle this will suffice for sterilising small stuff like spoons and hydrometers, or even the inside surface of buckets if you spray liberally enough to coat the whole interior surface. It will keep its sterilising properties for a couple of weeks.
@@AdventuresAndNaps A good English style golden ale is Sullivan’s gold
I used a fish tank heater to keep the
fermentation going.
I did not bother with bottles, I put my beer in a 5 gallon plastic jerry can. The boys and me usually drank the lot in one go at a party.
Congrats Brewmaster Alanna! I'm glad you got the Butler seal of approval. As for your question about the pronunciation of sachet, the term is pouch. :)
😂 cheers Andrew!
@@AdventuresAndNaps I'd say satch--it!
@@alanw8571 Silent T as French (Norman), Sa chay. Yes I know we pronounce the T in Fillet, just one of the many strange quirks of UK English.
What was most impressive was how you threw the empty sachet into the box without looking
If its a little weak, add less water to the brew, now you have the basic equipment you can make wine and cider. Definitely a cider video for the summer !!
I proposed cider too, since she likes it and is in orchard country - it’s a fall crop though - the apples you buy from the store are have usually been picked 1 or 2 years ago. I’m pretty sure in Kent you’d be able to go to a farm and buy some raw pressed apple juice.
You can make a decent white wine out of orange juice.
@@adrianmcgrath1984 I've been making cider for years using cheap apple juice from a grocery store. 5 gallons of juice, a couple of pounds of sugar or other fermentables and a packet of champagne yeast. Leave it alone until it goes completely clear. It may not match commercial cider, but it's cheap and about 9% alcohol.
Again a brilliantly fun video, and well done. The only thing I would have done is stand the bucket near a radiator or even wrapped in a blanket with just the valve showing. A good indication the beer is ready for bottling is when it stops bubbleing.The longer it is left in the bucket determin how strong it gets as more of the syrup turns to alcohol. if you want extra strength, you could even add extra sugar to the bucket and let it continue to ferment longer. xx
As an experienced homebrewer from late 60's to 90's I can say with a bit of care and keeping equipment sterilised anyone should be able to make very drinkable beer or wine. I won't bore you to much but 1) you should have put your brewing tub on your work top on a folded towel and covered the tub in a blanket or towels to keep it warm.... That is why your initial fermentation took so long the tub was cold. Alternatively if you have an airing cupboard put it in there. 2) Having brewing tub on a high surface makes it easier to syphon initial brewing process off. 3) Purchase a 5 gallon plastic beer barrel with a tap to syphon into, you don't need loads of bottles then. All home brewing equipment available on line but way more expensive than it used to be.....home brewing was cheap sort of equivalent to 40/50p a pint today. Don't give up...need any advice just ask.
My old boss tried the home brewing; it did not quite go to plan for him. His first sign of disaster was coming home and seeing beer seeping out of his garage. When he looked inside his bottles of home brew had exploded 😂😂😂
I dappled in homebrewing in the late 80's and actually got quite good at it. The downside was that I conditioned it in a 5 gallon, (40 pint), plastic barrel, and had approximately a 2 week window in which to consume it all. I would give some away, but still never managed to finish it all in the time allotted. The sterilisation process isn't that difficult, really. I used to use Milton fluid, which is the stuff they sterilise babies bottles with. It smelt better than some of the sterilising stuff you could buy. Having somewhere warm for the brew to ferment was also a bit of a problem, during the winter months. It had to be placed somewhere high up to aid in syphoning into the barrel to be conditioned. Once it's in the barrel, you had to wait for any sediment that was in the beer to settle as well as condition sufficiently before drinking. Usually that took about a week.
It should be self-evident why you need to stand the cans that contain the wort in hot water. It's rather viscous to say the least. Adding a little bit of hot water to the tin after the majority of it is out, helps to rinse them out. The fun part is adding in the cold water. I would traditionally use the same pint glass I would end up drinking it out of, just because. From what I remember, you don't stir the yeast in. You leave it on the top of the mix. Checking on it every couple of days until the bubbling from the air lock stops. That's when you know the fermentation period has finished. From the look of yours, when you took the lid off, it's still fermenting. With it being in a less than warm place, it will take longer to finish fermenting. Ideally, you should leave it for another few days, then check back again. If the frothing has gone, then you know the fermentation has finished.
The hydrometer, (pronounced hydrom-eter), is there to tell you what the specific gravity is, i.e. how much alcohol is in the brew. The higher the value is above 1000 the greater the alcohol content. The second time you opened it, looked about right. You could have conditioned it, then. To be honest, you don't really need a hydrometer. I certainly didn't use one the first few times I made me own homebrew. It was only after I started getting into it as a hobby that I splashed out a bit on such stuff. I got to know by eye whether it was ready or not. When syphoning, always place the pipe somewhere toward the top part of the liquid to avoid getting any of the sediment at the bottom into the bottles. Although, it's going to be physically impossible not to get some particulates in the beer, (as some of the spent yeast is bound to be in suspension), but you don't want the thick stuff at the bottom. Putting half a teaspoon of sugar per bottle is known as conditioning the beer. It'll get rid of any remaining yeast and give the beer a bit of sparkle.. hopefully.
The result looks fine for homebrew. You could leave it a bit longer to allow more of the sediment to settle, but seriously, it's not going to make a huge difference. It might be a bit weaker due to the amount of time it took to ferment, but generally speaking, if it tastes ok, then mission accomplished. 12 pint bottles is about a third of the potential amount you could get out of a 5 gallon bucket. Although, you'd probably get a bit less, say 25-30 bottles worth. But still a positive result! Well done.
Now you've done one, you can do some cider!!
Rule of thumb, if it's still bubbling then it's still working.
Best to try and keep it at a stable 20 celsius, if it gets too cold then the yeast stop working but often will start again when it warms up, if it gets too hot (late 20s celsius) then it can actually kill the yeast. Temperature fluctuations can cause problems too.
You normally take a hydrometer reading at the start before you put the yeast in and another at the end before bottling and applying a calculation to the two figures will give you your alcohol %. The alcoholic strength is based upon the amount of soluble sugars in the liquid at the start and the amount of those sugars the yeast convert, putting less water in or adding more sugars will give you a stronger beer.
Adding the sugar to the bottles at the end is to allow the yeast in the beer to continue working in the bottle (bottle conditioning), this will give you the CO2 fizz but will also allow the flavour and body of the beer to fill out over weeks or months, I normally leave my homebrews to condition in a cool dark corner for about 6 months before opening.
Be careful, adding too much sugar to the bottle can result in bottle bombs.
Well done with the sanitisation, it is the downfall of many first time homebrewers who don't appreciate that absolutely everything being clean is vital.
I as an old school mechanic used to use a Hydrom-eter (pronunciation) it mesures the specific gravity of a fluid 0 on it's scale is Pure Water like a litmus paper changing colour + or - on the scale registers Acidic or Alkaline a reading of 13. something ment the battery cell was charged if you had one cell out of 6 below that the battery was deemed un-serviceable Brewing took thousands of Generations to Perfect But thank you for allowing me too sit on your kitchen floor with you with a smile on my face
(1) the temperature of the fermenting bucket is very important. The yeast that comes with kits is usually quite tolerant, but it won't work below 18 deg C, and if you let it rise to over about 23 deg C there is a risk of killing it off altogether. 20 deg C is the usual ideal temperature. You can tell when fermentation is complete if you have kept to about the right temperature throughout when the bubbling in the airlock has substantially stopped. The hydrometer is an alternative way of determining this. Fermentation is complete when all the sugars have been converted by the yeast into CO2 and alcohol, so the fact that there is no more CO2 bubbling out shows fermentation has stopped. When the yeast has stopped working it goes dormant and sinks to the bottom of the bucket (which is where you want it), so you need to allow a day or so for this to happen before you syphon the beer off.
(2) the hydrometer should be used to measure the gravity before you pitch the yeast, as well as when fermentation has stopped. This enables you to work out the alcohol content by volume. ABV(%) = (Initial Gravity - Final Gravity) x 131.25.
(3) syphoning is easier if you get a clip to fix the solid tube that goes in the bucket to the rim, with the bottom of the tube just touching the sludge at the bottom of the bucket. The cup thing at that end is designed to help avoid sucking up the sludge itself.
(4) usually you put one level teaspoon of sugar in each bottle as priming sugar. Half a teaspoon per pint will be undercarbonated for most tastes.
(5) it is not necessary to buy bottles. Buy as many bottles of Aspall's cider as you will need for home brewing. They each weigh half a pound and are perfectly good for re-use. All you need to buy is a crown corker (about £15), and a new crown cork every time the bottle is re-used. Cheap as chips!
(5) there will be sediment in the bottom of each bottle, so you need to develop a technique for pouring that leaves most of the sediment behind. You left far too much behind. Invariably, a bottle must be poured in a single operation, because if you don't, the beer will flow back into the bottle and stir up the sediment. It is a good idea to pour into a jug that is larger than the bottle, then pour the clear beer from the jug into a glass or glasses. This also allows for a head to form without spilling over the rim of a glass. The head will settle. Your beer had no head whatsoever, so I'm pretty sure there wasn't enough priming sugar.
(6) I can't be sure, but you may have used too much cold water at the outset, which may account for the wateriness you described in the finished product. You seemed to state both that you needed to top the bucket up to 20·5 litres and that you needed to add 20·5 litres of cold water, which are different things. These kits are usually to make 5 Imp gal,, so your finished volume should be about 23 litres. You added 6 litres of boiling water to the malt extract (not sure what volume that occupied). You certainly should not have added a further 20·5 litres of cold water. An additional 15 litres would have been about right.
Altogether, a very good first effort.
For anyone starting out in home brew - don't bother buying bottles - they're restrictively expensive at home brew or hardware shops, and you're much better off just buying lots of beers while your brew is fermenting, and then taking the effort to empty them all before it's ready! (Dedication to the hobby is the thing [hic!] )🤒then use the money you've saved on the bottles to buy a "crown corking tool" and a big bag of "crown corks" (beer bottle tops)
I used to do a lot of home brewing back in the day, though I don't nowadays, but I do buy a fair amount of bottled beer to drink at home, and it feels like such a waste when I toss my empties away into the recycling bin!
Thats what i was thinking about the buying bottles. Surely if you like beer, just sterilize the bottles you've bought after drinking.
@@aloluk But make sure the beer you buy comes in 'shouldered' bottles, rather than those sloping neck type - it's easier to pour bottle-conditioned beer from a shouldered bottle and still leave the sediment behind.
When I was homebrewing some years ago, I also had access to Grolsch which came in bottles with the swing top. (I've just checked online and Grolsch is now back in the supermarkets. It is still popular with homebrewers.)
Pretty much what I did when starting out. I had no bottles so had to get through 40 500ml beers first. In an ideal world there'd be a marketplace made up of those who need bottles and those who want to get rid of them! A similar thing happened when I moved on to wine...😁
"SEE and again and again"
Don't look? It practically commands me to look!
You don’t buy empty beer bottles, unless you’ve got more money than sense. Buy them full, drink and re-use, over a period of months and years. And you should get close to 40 out of a bucket that size.
Now you are equipped, you could have a go at making cider? You can buy kits, but living in Kent you should be able to buy raw apple juice right from an orchard. You may have to schedule ahead, since some farms share a press and it goes from farm to farm at harvest time.
You could use an aquarium heater to keep the brew container at optimum fermentation temperature.
Interesting! I've been making my own beer for years, sometimes from kits and sometimes from more basic raw ingredients. In fact, the last batch (of 40 bottles) was also a St Peter's kit (but the ruby red ale), which is a lovely drink.
You were doing well until you pushed the cap back on the bubble trap....that would stop the gas coming out through there (personally I don't use one, but it can help determine when the beer is ready...no bubbles coming through). Using a hydrometer is a real art in itself....I tend to just leave mine in the fermentation bucket, with a floating thermometer and check every couple of days. It is better if it is too cool rather than too warm (ideally around 18-20°C). If too cool it just takes longer.
You did have me shouting at the screen when you tried to Syphon with the bucket on the ground....that was never going to work😊
I'm about to make my first batch of cider (a dark berry flavoured one, as that is what my wife drinks). Hopefully it'll turn out as well as the beers have.
My brother in law used to make his own beer, the concoction used to sit in their kitchen, I tried one of them, once, it was like pond water, he liked it. He used to work away during the week. One night, I think it was a Wednesday, a brew exploded, no major damage, but pond water ceiling to floor. He got home on the Friday to find all of his equipment outside, and my sister, waiting…..
Hey Great video! I’m a very experienced brewer but I’m not going to start listing off a bunch of comments about the process and such, I could talk for hours about brewing in general. What’s important is the journey you took and the learning along the way. There’s so much to learn and each brew you learn more. I started pretty much the same way you did. It was fun watching you brew for the first time. Brought back a lot of memories, oh the mistakes I’ve made. I wouldn’t change a thing as that’s how I learned.
Congratulations Alanna, I have to admit I didn't think you had the patience, but you proved me wrong 👍
Cider next?
I was absolutely certain, from the time you opened up the hydrometer, that you would drop it and break it LOL. Don't worry we have all done it, in the home brewing world it is a rite of passage. Most of us go out and buy two so we have a spare just in case.
The temperature is only important in that it shouldn't vary too much. The yeast will have a range of temperature in which it works and should say so on the packet.
There are many low cost ways of keeping the "mash" warm or cool. At a bare minimum you should wrap the fermenter in a blanket or other insulating material. Other ways are a heat pad, heat belt, or my favourite, an aquarium heater, for cooling a wet towel and a fan works well, but I doubt you will need to do that in the UK - all a relatively cheap to purchase and cost very little to run.
Well done though, that was a good first attempt.
Airing cupboard is a good ace to put it during the winter. Just be careful, too hot and you can kill the yeast. As long as it's gurgling it's working, just might take longer if it's colder. Doesn't affect the finished article.
Most people who are not English most likely pronounce Sachet like they do Filet with a long A sound at the end. Good for you taking on this project. Having made my own Mead which was a very similar project I can commiserate. And I tell you that I will NEVER do that again 😂
I've been brewing beer for about 20 years, it's quite easy- but there is plenty that can go wrong.I don't sterilize everything- I've read and been told this means the beer will fail- but in 20 years it never has.
Malt is very sticky- you need to keep it off everything- if you think stirring malt is gross, don't ever try to make bread!
I don't use a lock (except for wine) I cover the bucket with bubble wrap and the lid-it's fine.
Your beer may have suffered from cold shock- that's why I use bubble wrap, it keeps the initial warmth in, if it's particularly cold I'll warm it by putting it in a baking tray of hot water.
It's hops and yeast on the top, I don't use a hydrometer- I bottle it when the ferment slows- I lift the lid and check every day, 6 days is average, if it's cold it will take longer to get to that stage- when you looked at it the second time you should have bottled because it had pretty much finished, if you want it quite fizzy, bottle before it has quite finished.I use 1.5l plastic bottles ,so there is no chance of them bursting if the secondary ferment is vigorous, and it's less fiddly.
What did you do with the beer you didn't bottle?
I keep the sediment and use it in my breadmaking.
It doesn't look fizzy enough, for my taste anyway.Cheers!
Do you say 'sashays' or 'sashits'...? We say 'sashays'...'sashits' is probably what the beer will give you tomorrow! 🤣😂🤣 Excellently entertaining video as always, Alanna. 😀👍👏👏👏👍
As long as it's still gurgling, you leave it going. That means the yeast is still working on converting the sugar to alcohol and it will take much longer when it's cold.
I can't say I'm a fan of hop essence powder, but it's been a long, long time since I brewed beer. Cleanliness is absolutely essential as stray organisms can turn the stuff into vinegar. Also, a tiny bit of sugar (maybe a quarter of a tea spoon) is a good idea in each bottle so it's properly carbonated as the yeast will get to work on it.
Also, it's an extremely good idea to get a heated, insulated jacket for the fermentation bucket. They are not expensive and it means you don't have to wait forever to get your beer.
nb. I'm fairly sure that we fermented wine at school. That will have been another long, long time ago...
You're not an idiot! You're the best Canadian there is who has ever lived in Kent!
It's the best beer making video ever
from Kent.
Alanna teaching siphoning techniques to the uninitiated. Way to go, girl. 😀🇬🇧🇨🇦💜
I remember my mum making elderflower champagne. Unfortunately she didn't use the right kind of bottles and they exploded in the cupboard. Scary but hilarious.
You need sparkling wine bottles for that, though I think that plastic fizzy drinks bottles would work as well.
My hall of residence when I was a student was kept at a constant warn temperature. Ideal for brewing.
The fermentation lock( air lock ) should be half filled and the CO2 produced will bubble through it without letting air in to spoil the beer!
If you'd have measured the gravity before fermentation and again after, you could have worked out the strength in terms of percentage of alcohol!
It has the appearance of a real ale and I imagine for, home made its great! Love the wild hair, by the way xx
You are clearly a brewing genius to take a golden ale 00:34 and turning it into a Ruby Red beer.
Alanna, congratulations on a highly entertaining video and I’m glad your partner enjoyed it!
Thank you so much!!
This made me laugh! Many years ago, my dad made his own beer from a kit similar to the one in the video. He and a friend went for it and drank several bottles of his beer. He was so drunk, he crawled into bed and stayed there two days! My mum wasn’t impressed. 😂
Many beer moguls started on the kitchen table and you’re on your way! Good luck🎉😅❤
You are British! Brewing your own, you are one of us!
"It tastes like beer !" I'm so happy for you !
'Edenbridge Brewery'? Great effort, glad it all turned out ok Alanna, ready for the sunny weather now! 🙏🙏
Hi Alanna. I regularly make my own wine and you can use all the equipment you already have to make wine too, you will just need one extra bucket. I've found that wine kits really aren't that great and using your own recipe works better. Here is my recipe for a delicious TEA wine that works out at just 40p per bottle.
For 5 gallons/23 litres :-
50 tea bags (any make is fine)
1 kg chopped raisins (preferably in a muslin/straining bag
1 Kg brown sugar
5.5 Kg white sugar
10 Tbsp lemon juice
Optional 5 Tbsp dried Elderflower
Wine Yeast as per instructions on packet
Brew for a week, stirring daily then remove bag of raisins.
Put lid back on and brew to 0.095 on your hydrometer (about 2 weeks)
Stir until all CO2 bubbles stop appearing
Clear with wine finings as per instructions on pack
Syphon into other sanitised bucket, leave to settle again then syphon back into the original resanitised bucket, do this until sediment is removed.
Bottle into 25-28 75cl sanitised bottles then leave for at least a couple of weeks before drinking, 6 months is best.
Makes a great wine that honestly doesn't taste of tea at all, lovely drink for summer mixeed with a little lemonade.
When you say brew for a week, what are three instructions to get to that point? How long do I need to boil everything together and in what order etc?
@@RenaissanceEarCandy Use a big pan to make up the tea on a low heat, I do it in four batches.
I boil up a kettle full of water, about two litres, put it in the pan with a quarter of the tea bags and a quarter of the sugar, stir occasionally for about ten mins. I then do another pan of water and soak the chopped raisins for a bit to make sure they're clean.
Empty the pan each time into your sanitised fermenting bucket. Top up to 5 gallons with clean water (tap water is fine in the UK, you may want to use bottled) that you have shaken in a bottle to get it well aerated then add the lemon juice.
Put on lid and airlock to stop anything getting in there and wait for the temp. to get down to at least 25 Celsius and then add the yeast
Seal it up then stir once a day for a week then remove the bag of raisins,. Seal it up again and leave as long as it takes for the bubbles to stop. Follow the instructions in the previous post to clear the wine.
Should end up with something around 13% ABV.
@@RenaissanceEarCandy Btw you throw the tea bags away, don't put them in the fermentation bucket.
Hi If the temperature is low the yeast will take a long time to convert the sugar in the malt in to alcohol and carbon dioxide. The bubble trap on the lid is let out the co2.The faster it bubbles the quicker the alcohol is being produced. In the fermenting process some heat is given of by the yeast. I also wrap my brew bins with an old blanket.
It tastes like beer 😂 classic Alanna👍
Mr Naps survived 🍺 😎
That looks like a totally decent beer for a first go at homebrew. 👌
There's so much good info on UA-cam now about this stuff. So I won't add to the noise. I would just advise having another go at a different time in the year and keep being thorough with the cleaning like you were.
As mentioned in another comment, you can use boiling water to sterilize your equipment. You can judge when the beer is ready for bottling by watching as CO2 bubbling out of the airlock reduces. This indicates the yeast has consumed most of the sugar and is ready. Try making kombucha next. It's quicker, easier to make, and much better for you than beer.
DONT leaves the red top on your airlock. The airlock needs to breathe. If you have a lively brew, it could blow the Red top off followed by a stream of beer everywhere.
You can get heating jackets for home brewing, which you wrap around the fermentation vessel
I`ve brewed a lot over the years and temperature control is the key to good beer and wine.
Be careful with those glass bottles.
I used them and two blew up in my garage. I'm still finding glass shards 2 years later.
Canadian moves to the UK and documents her experiences. This includes a visit to Wetherspoons, several drinking videos, and making home-brew during a cold snap while not quite being aware of the passage of time. Personally, I'd say the alcohol videos make you British by default!
No shade intended, I'm British-born and probably drink alcohol and tea in equal measures! 🤣🤣
Also the one time I made home-brew, a friend of mine took a bottle, drank it at his one-bedroom flat, then got lost looking for his own bathroom... tells you all you need to know about home-brew, me, my friend and home-brew in general!
Alanna’s Bakewell Pie was an absolute triumph too!
Its surprisingly easy to make great bear.
Clean, clean and clean again ( then clean some more). If you leave sterilising stuff in the barrel you'll kill the yeast
When it comes to doing science, you just have to remember that negative results are still data. Or as my late father used to annoy his grad students with; "that's research!" Great job, Alanna. You are Brit-wife material. Or specifically in Old English parlance, an Alewife.
Yeast feeds off sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide (the CO2 gas you get in fizzy pop) so if it is still bubbling it is still breaking down the sugar or has died, yeast does not like extreme heat as it gets sluggish and doesn't like cold and it goes to sleep so it might take longer when cold, so while it is still bubbling it is still working, albeit slowly but working. When the yeast has digested all the sugar it will die. The fermentation is what they call exothermic, (heat producing) so wrapping it up in a blanket or towel will keep it warmer for longer. Putting sugar in the beer bottles creates a secondary fermentation, this does but is not meant to increase the alcohol strength but produces CO2 gas in the bottle, called bottle conditioning, which allows a nice pint with a frothy head on it instead of a flat beer, simple but effective. When siphoning the bottom of the plastic bucket should always be higher the the bottle so it can find the lowest point, it is called gravity, additionally there is a special syphon tube that has a spring loaded stop on the bottom that automatically stop when you lift the tube out. St Peters Brewery do a nice range of beers. Just remember if it is a nice environment for yeast it is also a nice environment for spoilage bacteria.
So it's on to the cider next!🍺
Looks OK, tastes OK, gets you pissed......it works !!
My mate used to make home brewed beer for Christmas and New Year in the early 90s.
Hi allanah,Love your enthusiasm cheerfulness and fun video on making 🍺 a willingness to give it a go well done.
Just a very important point!, wear shoes,I noticed your wearing socks,when dealing and pouring moving boiling water it's easy to spill on your foot and get severe burn,plus wearing socks on floorboards easy to slip up your carrying boiling water be careful ok✌️❤️👍😊after sterilising utensils wash with water otherwise you'll get that in the beer and taste too.
You can also buy beer labels to stick on the bottles 🙂
When's the tasting party?😜
I love the final.cooment does it taste good?... not really 🤣🤣🤣brilliant!you made a good effort!
Omg I made my first brew in 1980 "double barrel lager" and finished it in a barrel instead of bottles.
Great vid
Alanna this is one of your best videos ever and you NEVER EVER make a dud video 😊
I have brewed at several breweries around the country as well as brewing at home just as you have here, you did nothing wrong in any sort of big way, but brewing more will iron out the little hiccups (learning how to improve your method/s).
The glass floaty thing which gave its life during the making of this episode of your life is called a hydrometer and pronounced as it is written and not with a hyphen as in hydro-meter, maybe try using a little less water to make it stronger 15 litres perhaps, (you should be able to get a good idea of the strength from the beginning reading and the end reading which you took, from what I saw it looks very clean and crisp which points to being well looked after, I imagine that will give you a giggle but there you go, the bottled beer should keep for maybe a couple of years if kept out of the light in the kitchen/under stairs etc, for a first attempt this is excellent and cider is easier than beer to make, and we know that you prefer cider, good luck with that and take care :)
ST.PETER'S BREWERY!!! That's 2 miles down the road from me in South Elham, Suffolk !! ❤
Thanks
I was pretty big on homebrewing for a few years, though ended up giving up in lockdown as I couldn't source the ingredients.
Honestly, that was a really good first effort, its really clear, didn't gush when you opened, doesn't look like there are any infections and sounds like it tasted reasonable. There is a limit to how good its possible to make it with that basic equipment, and it seems like you got pretty close.
A farmer friend of my dad used to brew 400 gallons of windfall scrumpy every year. A half pint knocked me out.
Hic, hic hooray. You might have discovered a new fragrance for your Edenbridge collection...or maybe not.
If it's clear and isn't vinegary, then it's a homebrew win!
my dad use to brew 'home' beer' every Christmas, i remember it took at least a month, because there would be this massive beer barrel by the garden, (so it was cold UK), i also remember it not tasting very good, drinkable, didn't make you ill, but just not great, however maybe after the 5th pint, it didn't matter as much.
I doubt if my dad used any sanitiser or analysis tools, this was the 70's, and just eyeballed it , if it looked like beer, it was beer.
The beer 'barrel' also had a tap on it, so you would just fill a glass from it, seemed a lot simpler process than this method
Looks great Alanna! I've never tried brewing beer, but I had a go at cider many years ago. Maybe that could be your next brewing project?
Yes please. But might be later in season.
Beer tips. You are using a airlock. So can use that to decide if you need to test. Seldom "gurgle", test. Fast "gurgle", not ready.
I have made great beer, and undrinkable stuff.
If your beer is "Weak" or "Watery", add less water next time and ignore the hydrometer. It measures a CHANGE in density and you are wanting something denser. I.E don't add the cold water, but use a thermometer and let it cool to the right temperature before adding yeast. Instead use the "gurgle" to judge when to bottle.
Using the fridge caused your beer to clear, but I'd take it out of the fridge after as British beer shouldn't be that cold.
I've been wanting to make my own mead for years but honestly the whole process seems really complicated and overwhelming. You managed this really well so maybe I can too!
Thank you! You should give it a try!
@@daveycr0ckett thanks I will!
I’ve been making mead and cider and brewing beer for about a decade now. Mead is super simple, truly. It really is a leave it and forget type of beverage. Grab some honey, spring water, and some type of yeast nutrient; pitch yeast; close it and put it somewhere dark for at least a couple of months
I did my first mead brew in a jug with some high alcohol yeast. It doesn’t have to be hard.
There's a reason why its best to go to the pub!
Well done Allana!
Not sure I could be bothered with all the faff
Cheers!
I was once served a pint in a club in England, and realised that the week before I'd flushed away five gallons of homebrew I considered failed that was better than the pint I'd just been served and had paid for.
I make beer from scratch, not made any for a couple of years. With the kits you can add more sugar if you want it to have higher alcohol. I've got about 20 kilos of malted barley in the house, which I must chuck out.
Hi Alanna. Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this and I feel bad for saying it 😬. I'm sure that early in the instructions it states to add the cold water "to the level of 20.5 litres" on top of the stuff already in the bucket? You added 20.5 litres on top of the already mixed ingredients and that maybe why it tasted weak at the end? I'm usually wrong but just thought I'd pop my observations in 😊. Keep up the good work 👍🏻
oh the best way to brew beer in the bucket was fine , but then get a barrel to finish it in and not bottles, its so much easier and a lot less risky.
Around eight or nine years ago I was a member of a home brew club. We would experiment with making different beers and wines, it was great fun but I stopped when I moved house as I was drinking much more than was good for me.
I did make some really good brews though, I particularly enjoyed the wheat beers.
Sometimes we would swap some of the brews with other members, some of them made crazy strong brews, like an 18% alcohol cider.
Temperature is important when home brewing, that's probably the only thing you didn't get right, it looks like the 2nd fermentation in the bottles didn't go right as it's flat, you need to store the bottles once filled at a temperature between 21 to 28 degrees usually.
Fantastic video Alanna😃
Loving the Lancashire, Bowland brewery glass👌🏻
My Dad did one of these once when he got one for Christmas one year. I think he tried again once, but then gave up. Don't think it ever went this well. My mum does do wine sometimes, which seems to tend to go well enough. I think you'd get more out of making your own ciders. Also with cider you can add stuff to flavour.
And thank you for a very entertaining video. Hopefully there were no cut feet from the glass on the floor. Just be glad in that particular instance that you didn't have a dog.
I don't drink beer, but I have made both wine, and cider. My "bucket" had a place for a "brew band," sort of like the heat tape you use on pipes in Canada to keep the stuff warm while it was making itself. I am not sure my cider was as good as store bought stuff, but, I liked it (like you, I am a cider drinker). Maybe try cider next!
Good fun, Alana! Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
(Add some more sugar to up the "octane")
It's like 30 years since I used to make beer, and maybe things have changed since then, but I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to rince the equipment after sanitising it. Also, hot water or the oven are good alternatives for sanitising.
I never measured whatever, alcohol level? before bottling. When the bubbling started to slow down to one per minute or something it was time.
The beer I made was pretty ok, not top shelf, but better than the cheap stuff in bars.
Quite the emotional rollercoaster! It's very brave to a) do something you've never done before, b) on camera and c) with very minimal instructions. I don't know if I would have the confidence to attempt anything like this in front of an audience, especially without secretly watching a million how-to videos on UA-cam. I'm glad you got something palatable at the end of it all, I hope you got to put your feet up and enjoy your hard-earned beeeeeer 🍻
Great video.
As a teenager I used to brew beer. In a big plastic dustbin (new and only used for brewing!). I kept in the dining room. Seeing you pouring malt brought back some memories. Lol
In those days (1960's) we had bottles with screw tops that were great for allowing the final fermentation in the bottle to get a nice fizz. I used to sell it at school.
We have a grape vine in our garden which produces very tasty red grapes. I've made wine with it a few times, up to 100 litres. Great for handing out at Christmas and to all our neighbours.
The other thing to try in late May and early June is Elderflower Champagne. There's loads of elderflowers around at that time, free for picking.
Thank you,
You just reminded me about the home brew I have conditioning in the cupboards and that I needs to do a taste test... 😜
Also that I need to get another batch on the go, cause if these are done, they won't last long once I start telling peoples, peoples can drink...! Lol
There is one little bits of advice that I would give if you should do more kits, a tad of research can have you tweaking the kits to make ok beers into legendary beers...
I do the kits myself, but I add dry malt extracts, and dry hop them too...
I really lifts the kits to another level with minimal effort...
The extra ABV is nice too... 😜
Well done on your first batch of beer! As Borat would say, "Great success, very nice!" My dad used to brew beer and from what I remember it wasn't great. A friend of mine did it for a while and it was pretty good. I was always put off by the amount of "faffing about" involved, so hats off for giving it a go! 👍
It is a lot of faff tbh. Takes the thick end of a day to mash, sparge, and boil forty pints. Then there's the bottling/kegging a few weeks later. i came to the realisation after a couple of years that I might as well put in some o/t at work and spend the money buying the ready made stuff from people who make it professionally!
A good attempt at home brewing. You really do need to find somewhere warm to place the container though for it to ferment properly. As for sachet - 'Sash hay', like that well known French singer 'Sachet da Stillery'.
Loved this episode! - I also laughed a little through the beginning section, because I know you are in Kent! No other County has ever been so intrinsically linked to the beer industry.
My Grandfather in Folkestone would go in the kitchen twice a year. My grandmother would be banished. He would remove the door and set it up as an extra work surface then disappear to the car and come back with armfuls of locally bought hops. All of which had to be boiled to prepare. It was quite a ritual. So just tipping a packet of hops dust into a bucket seemed wonderfully sacrilegious.
I also enjoyed the rest of the video though and admired your perseverance! It looked very good - if it’s weak, then it’s a good summer drink! Back when you were new to the island and discovering British slang, did you ever look into the different words used for taking (unofficial) time of school? Local areas often use the same words for taking time of work without a 'proper' reason. There are various slang terms used, in the south east it’s often 'skiving' in Manchester it’s ‘wagging it'. And in the East of London they say 'hopping it'. The hopping it reference comes from the days when families from the East End would come down and combine a holiday in the country with hop picking. Whole families would go, often back to the same farms every year, from babies to grandparents.
Thanks for the childhood memories. Lol. My parents used to make us forage for nettles and wild fruits for home brew. Hope you make a cider next so you can enjoy the results more. 👍
Thanks for watching!
Hey Alanna, well done. One teaspoon of steriliser/litre of water is ample. Its the gas that stuff makes that does the sterilisation. Wrapping Pete in a blanket and having him on the bench not the floor works more better and will help fermentation in colder weather. Aim for 20C. You need a fermenter that has a tap at the bottom, it really helps when your bottling to syphon from one to the other and leave all the sediment behind. Rinsing the cans out with hot water at the start, gets all the malt out of the cans and that is a good time to add the hops to the brew. Tilt the fermenter and stir it as vigorously as you can to make it all nice and foamy is a good practice and helps the yeast. So is keeping your bottles warm and the older they are the better they taste. Keep a couple of them aside for late summer and you will be amazed at the difference in quality. Dave Bartlett is right about bottles. Get a capper. Congratulations you are now a brewer. Cheers
I loved this! 😊 And then I remembered that you live very close to a really old brewery......! 😆 Should they be worried about the competition? 🤔 I don't think so! 😂😂😂
Thanks for a fun video Alanna !!😄
My father told me he was woken up during WW2 by the sound of machine gun fire. Turned out his landlady had a cupboard full of homebrew beer that exploded like a chain reaction.
Excellent stuff. This takes me back! As a teenager my brothers and I made Elderflower wine, Blackberry wine, Rhubarb wine and Cider. Lots of free resources from the woods at the back of our home. Cheap sugar and yeast created some of the most disgusting alcoholic drinks one could imagine. A load of buckets and a dozen or more demijohns were permanently on the go. Fair Play to you Alana for giving this a go
@@TrickyDicky2006 Beautiful.
Another great video Alanna, thanks
Thanks for watching!
Our county Kent is famous historically for growing hops used in beer making. It less well known for Canadians brewing beer. Nice try though.
I was so looking forward to the bucket exploding all over you!!! 😆 But I'm proud of you, trying something well out of your comfort zone and making a success of it!! On to the next project!!! 👏👏
Thanks so much! ☺️
You need to warm the malt extract because otherwise it's too viscous to pour. (If I'm brewing from a kit, I rinse the tins / bag out with some hot water from the kettle to get the most out of it.) Sounds like you had a successful brew. It certainly looked like beer. The first beer I brewed, I let it go rather flat while bottling it. I'm drinking this beer, not too bad to taste but flat as a pancake, and I'm thinking "if I had this in a pub, I'd probably drink it down and order something else next time, but I'd be far too English to complain about it." Then I said to myself, if my first ever attempt at brewing beer reaches the quality level of "not worth the bother of sending back", I'll take that as a win!
A great first go Alanna! your patience has to be commended but it's worth persevering. I used to brew my own booze back in the 1980's and 90's. It used to be pretty good although the method has changes a little. A whisker of advice though, when they state 0.5 teaspoon of sugar its probably better to under fill. Also don't let the bottles get too warm while the beer clears as the tops will pop off the bottles, literally the bottles will break if the top doesn't. To keep 'Bob' the bucket warm I used to use a belt heater around the bucket and leave him for 10 days. Definitely decant the bottled beer on one go and not pour to the end or some nasty stuff from the bottom of the bottle will land in the glass. Very well done and thanks for sharing.
reminded me of a bottle of home brewed carrot whisky (dated 1973) i think in my parents booze cabinet . it was there several years - don't remember it ever being totally finished lol, my brother had a go at lager once, i remember the exploding bottles under the kitchen sink :(