People drinking less ..

[Smolley]

Vinegar

[maus]

People are polite.

[maus]

To be serious.

There are secrets to beer making, and the most important, IMHO, is cleanliness. Everything sealed from outside air, ubends, all. My late wife made it (non-alcoholic), her friend, and my son,

>

[Rod Speed]

These aren't. I had to refuse to make their beer. I told them that I would teach them how to make their own, but I wasnt going to make it for them.

[JNugent]

I believe that it is usual to use either grapes or substances derived from that fruit.

I have also heard of various wines made from parts of plants usual regarded as flowering plants. The one that springs readily to mind is elderberry.

Quite a few years back (when a bottle of Bordeaux was still priced at under a pound in the UK), we used to make wine. We had all the equipment. But I didn't care for the finished product and we ceased production.

[Joe]

Give a man a fish...

...and he'll be back in the same place the next day waiting for *his* fish.

[Joe]

Also, oddly, stinging nettles. We made some from our own rhubarb and sugar, which when fermented, would probably have etched glass. The fruit itself was too sour to eat without a lot of sugar. So we left it, and after three or four years tried it again, when it was reasonably good.

We tried making 'proper' wines from grape juice, but could never make anything approaching the real thing. However, grape juice and fruit juice produced some pleasant drinks. We had one grape and orange fermentation 'stick', it just stopped fermenting and we couldn't make it start again. So we stuck it in bottles, a rather sweet, weak drink, and again forgot it.

One day, under the stairs, there was an odd, orangey smell. One of the corks had blown out of the bottle, and a couple of others were partway out. So I wired all the corks down and we left them another couple of months, the opened our first orange Champagne. One of the others, when I removed the wire, fired the cork about ten feet in the air (I opened them outside in case of serious frothing).

But yes, too much trouble for what we got out of it.

[Ottavio Caruso]

Am 16/02/2024 um 17:29 schrieb JNugent:

Wine is not grape juice. You need to ferment the wort and you can't do it at home or in a cellar. You need climate-controlled large areas to do that and they cost millions.

[SteveW]

Wine has been around for millenia - well before climate controlled, commercial operations. It is more arguable whether the modern stuff is real wine.

[JNugent]

REALLY?

Who knew?

[Yes, that was mild sarcasm.]

Nevertheless, plenty of people make wine at home. They must find it palatable. I didn't.

[alan_m]

Does modern wine or beer have much to do with that produced more than a

100 to 200 years ago? Historically beer was drunk because it was safer that the water - in times before they realised that boiling water would make the water safe. But did the beer taste the same to our sophisticated taste buds of today? I very much doubt. Brewed from the local river water and possible to a much higher ABV so it could be watered down before serving. Very cloudy (no clear glass pint containers) and possible without the use of hops. No real hygiene standards and frequent yeast contamination. Each batch probably tasted different.

[Rod Speed]

Both do.

It does anyway with the best of the older beers.

Mine still is, tho the local river water is chlorinated and filtered.

Fantasy.

Nothing to do with the container.

There are various types of beers.

Who needs standards ?

Fantasy.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think it was fairly low alcohol, as people are recorded to have drunk gallons of the stuff at a time.

Hop free certainly in the middle ages, but I think there was drive to get it consistent.

No reason to be cloudy, if left to settle

[alan_m]

As its still a potential problem with modern brewing pray tell how they avoided it in the past.

[alan_m]

In my experience a lot of people who home brew, wine or beer, attempt to get the ABV too high and for me a beer with a decent taste without too high an alcoholic kick is pleasant but as soon as the alcohol dominates it becomes more unpleasant.

In the UK and for people of a certain age I think the experience with home brewing beer comes from those kits which used to be on sale. They often mimicked some of the mediocre brands of the time and produced a very malty beer (which is style I don't particularly like).

[Paul]

For home brew beer, you "decant" while serving.

This leaves any debris at the bottom of the bottle, in the bottle.

An experienced home-brewer, will serve your pint, decant slowly (not tip the bottle over and let it "glug"), and then the silt at the bottom, you don't serve that to your visitor.

Obviously, home brew beer is missing some steps.

Commercial beer is filtered and pasteurized.

"After maturation, most of beers are filtered and pasteurized. Such processes aim to purify the beer, clarify, and reduce total microorganism count. Filtration with diatomaceous earth (DE) and pasteurization (slow or fast) are usually performed."

The "fast" refers to flash pasteurization. The commercial beer industry, shares tech discoveries with the dairy industry.

Craft beer ? No idea. Craft beer ls like commercial beer, but it's on a smaller scale, and "it's actually beer" :-) A craft beer doesn't usually taste like commercial swill. But commercial swill is very consistent. Exactly the same yellow piss from one bottle to the next.

Paul

[alan_m]

Some of it is pasteurised in the UK especially by some of the USA brewery owners but a lot of beer sold in the UK (under the general banner of "real ale") is not pasteurised and is still a living and changeable) product whilst in the cask.

+1

[Jethro_uk]

When I home brewed, I settled on a "Canadian Blond" from Coopers. A kit that made 40 litres. They had quite a range.

There were 3 home brew shops within a 30 minute drive back in 2017. One went bust in 2017 because he was a nob (as soon as I saw a brand new van in their car park, I knew they would go bust). One close in 2019 as the landlord wanted the premises back after 30 years and they wanted to retire. And the last and nearest went bust in 2020.

All of them had the raw ingredients for the real nerd to make their own wort from scratch, etc, etc. I would have though such shops would be a source of fascination to the average uk.d-i-y-er

I stopped brewing because at a single pint a day, it was a lot of faff. And then I removed that from my diet to enjoy spirits more :)

For wine, we take 4 days to finish a bottle - we just have a small glass with dinner - so the faff of making your own isn't worth the effort.

If we were more sociable, it might make more sense.

Also I like cold, lager type beers. Which means an extra step of bottling (unless you go OTT and build a kegirator) whereas aley types can leave a barrel on a counter and just pour from that.

[SteveW]

One shop on Gorsey Lane, in Warrington, used to be half plumbing and half brewing - I always thought it was an invitation to make your own copper still.

My son and his fellow students, recently made a variety of ciders and meads.

[Rod Speed]

alan_m [e-mail]> wrote

That was a comment on the last sentence.

That doesnt happen even if you are careless about contamination.