Quick update

Ok so I know I'm not posting regularly enough to keep you following however I do get the odd new person coming along to check out whether I lost the plot with champix or actually manged to kick the cigs.  The good news is that I didn't get all suicidal, have a heart attack or attack any loved ones and I did kick a 40+ habbit.  The bad news is that I do still treat myself to an occasional cigar and when on holiday that 'occasionaly' translates to five or six a day.  My recomendation is to not do the cigar thing.  Because I gave up more than a year before I tried a cigar I can sort of switch it on and off but it's a bit like old Alan Carr says:  people who switch on and off are just good at abstaining and torturing themselves for weeks between caving to the addiction.  I wouldn't even begin to compare my struggles with actually giving up but I struggle for about three days to actually quit each time I give in.  On the plus side not smoking at work ever is the one rule I stick by and it makes life a lot easier.

If I can be a phone bore for a moment I'd also like to say that I have got rid of the evil iPhone and am now about one month in to loving an HTC.  I don't have to follow the internet or spend hours jailbreaking and all my apps work without the phone crashing.  It's fantastic to be back to using a phone that both promises and delivers.  Incredibly the iPhone 4s still advertises its SIRI voice function in the UK even though it's been proved on several occasions to be useless.  I'll never convert the iPhone faithful but if your on the fence then trust me, iPhone is all mouth and no trousers as we say here.   It's incredible to me that people put up with apps crashing or just not delivering and a signal that is so poor that the mobile internet is almost unusebale but still stick with their phone because they think they would lose something by changing.

On the subject of things that should be brilliant but aren't:

I gave up the jeep last year in favour of a Mitsubishi Lancer.  Now I really have gone for something that is all mouth and no trousers.  The lancer looks like an evo sports racer but is actually just a reliable family car.  Is it reliable?  Yes.  Can it go fast on demand?  Yes.  Is it a sports car?  Probaly not.  You can get a fair kick out of it though.

So why get rid of the jeep?

The Jeep in question was a patriot.  Look for a forum on wranglers and you'll find a million satisfied customers telling what new and unusual thing they've done or what customisation they are saving for.  Look at the grand cherokee and you'll see stories of how they can move mountains.  Look at the patriot and you'll see complaints about water penetration from about six points, ball joints failing almost annualy and a variety of electrical faults (probably partly due to the water penetration).  Add that to oxidising alloys and poor break/tyre longevity and it's a pretty sorry story.  Jeep have decided to discontinue the range but still deny all the above faults and are selling off their reserve stock.

I wanted to love that car.  I did love that car.  When working it was faster than expected, more comfortable than expected and you could just about move a house with it.  It had great road presence, fantastic creature comforts and no little amount of power.  Strange then that I would actually consider it my duty as a friend to prevent anyone buying one.

The mistubishi is slightly less luxurious but just as fast and twenty to thiry times more reliable.  I just don't love it as much.  In fairness though I leave the house each morning expecting that it will work and have yet to be let down.

Saving money is still happening big time.  The biggest change has been that I'm getting clever at the home brewing and that that now accounts for about 95% of my alcohol consumption.  On the downside I'm now having to cut back a bit because I'm never short of drink and I don't need much excuse to drink it.

Sorry it's a short update after such a long time but I promise I'll be back with avengance soon.  I'm just waiting till the end of August and the the darker nights.  In the meantime, if you're wondering about phones cars or fages (that's cigarettes to our american friends) post a question or stay tuned.

T

Ginger is the new beer

Actually Ginger is a very old beer.  In fact according to some research it was the most popular drink in British Inns and taverns up until the first world war.  I presume that those brave young men discovered the joys of Stella Artois and maybe even Budvar whilst being massacred in foreign fields and thought, "why don't they do stuff like this at home?".  It's like anything else the beer you can't get is the one you want and our returning heroes shunned Mead, Cider and Ginger beer in favour of more complex stuff and rightly so.

In fact some will tell you that we have actually lost the art of ginger beer making all but completely now and point to the fact that the sweet sugary, fizzy drink that you get at the supermarket is actually pretty far removed from what ginger beer tastes like.  I actually quite like the sweet, sugary fizzy drink but I'd still agree with the purists that it bears no resemblance to real ginger beer.  It also lacks the 4.5% alcohol of the stuff that I'm going to recommend you make (unless you don't do alcohol).  Unfortunately however the purists aren't going to love my version either.

Let's get some history first.  I was watching a program called River Cottage on channel four in the UK.  It's a great show where this accomplished cook makes you wonder why you ever settled for a hot dog or a burger, why your garden isn't bursting with herbs and spices and why you ever need to purchase vegetables.  It kind of washes over me to be honest and I love nothing more than to settle down with a hot dog and cheese toastie in front of the TV and watch this guy tell me what life could be like.  Anyway one day he really grabbed my attention.  As part of a seasonal summer menu he declared that he was going to make an alcoholic ginger beer in just two days.  Two days....  I practically hid behind the sofa to watch excitedly.  Why had no-one told me that ginger beer could be alcoholic?  Two days....  Why the hell had I ever paid for beer?   Two bloody days...Alcohol....good stuff and in just two days.  My world collapsed around me.  This guy had truly discovered the true meaning of life and it didn't involve preaching or fighting Romans.  Nobody was beheaded and nobody even needed to feel guilty.  Screw making bread and fish for the masses or turning water into wine (actually keep the water into wine bit) we are talking two days for 4% ginger beer.  I watched in quaking awe.....

The recipe involved ginger and lemons and lime and sugar (a lot of sugar) and yeast in an empty two litre bottle that you left to ferment for...you guessed it....two days (maybe I made that up maybe it was four but whatever).  I followed the recipe.  Something definitely happened in the bottle.  I tried it.  A bit powdery but gingery.  Problem.... no alcohol.   Less than 1%.  Since there had been a reaction in the bottle I decided to try again but leave it for two weeks.  Not bad tasting but still I'm afraid untroubled by alcohol.

I had the bug now however and had started searching the web for recipes.  I came across the recipe that the purists probably long for me to print here (although there are some purer than pure purists who still say even that isn't right).  I made what is called a ginger beer plant.  Search ginger beer plant on wikipedia and then follow the link to the H2G2 site and you'll get instructions on how to create and share a ginger beer plant.  Apparently according to the purer than purist ginger beer experts it isn't possible to make this at home but the recipe I tried made an effort to work.  The plant involved all the ingredients of the two day recipe but, made in a jar, fed daily with sugar and ginger and then diluted after seven or eight days.  I followed the recipe.  Whilst brewing the 'plant' is interesting to watch as things float to the surface and back down again.  I felt a bit at one with nature as I created this natural gem of a recipe.  I diluted it.  I released the pressure in the 2l bottles every couple of days and tasted every so often (let's be honest I tasted daily).  I learnt to use something called a hydrometer (more on that in a future post) to test the alcohol.  It took six weeks to reach 2.7% proof.  Properly chilled it actually tasted fantastic.  Like nothing I've tried before.  Cool, crisp and fresh with a bit of a bite that caught your breath with every gulp.  If I could just get this to be a bit stronger and a bit quicker we would be in business.  It tasted so damn good that my resolve became stronger than ever.  I wanted ginger beer that tasted this good but was properly (4% or above) alcoholic.

More research and my success with wine mentioned below spurred me on.  This time I upped the ingredients, put them in a five gallon bucket and added a sachet of brewers yeast from a local home brew shop.  Bugger me but ten days later it was 2.7% proof and it had been that way since about day six.  What was going wrong?  It wasn't helpful to read forums where people claimed this worked because it didn't.  In desperation to see if the experiment could be saved I added a couple of t-spoons of wine yeast to the 2.7% brew.  It started brewing again.  4 days later and we had a four percent brew.

Problem....  The above brew didn't taste great.  Not bad but, you have to be honest with yourself about these things, not great, be even more honest, below average.  Now I was getting beat. 

Because it didn't taste great I didn't drink much of it after the first week but, once the wine stock started getting low, I chilled another bottle about two weeks later.  No way!!!!!  It tasted great and had achieved the glory of 4% proof.  Now all that had to be done was to refine the recipe.  I'm not going to go through all the successes and failures but below is the key to making a superb 4-5% ginger beer that tastes truly great.

You need for 5 gallons/ 22 UK litres:

4-5 lemons

4-5 limes

About ten knuckles of ginger or two 200ish gram jars of 'easy ginger' (ready chopped ginger in oil).

2 kg sugar (normal shop bought sugar is fine and no, 2kg is not a mistype)

2 t-spoons of cream of tartar (apparently this might be optional but I've never tried it without)

2 t-spoons of wine yeast

Equipment you need:

A five gallon, food safe bucket (they call this a fermentor).  Food safe is important buy one from a brew shop or maybe ask your local bakery to give you one of the ones they get supplies in.  Don't use the bucket you use to wash the car.

A lid for the bucket with a hole pierced in the middle

A bubbler that goes in to the hole (brew shops sell these for pennies)

A length of tube to syphon off the beer (future post for syphoning or google it now)

11 empty and clean 2l fizzy drink bottles.  (They must be fizzy drink bottles not still drink bottles as they need to be able to handle pressure)

Method:

Zest the lemons and limes (the peel has a strong flavour, get a zester or use a grater on the skin)

Half the lemons and limes and stick in the microwave for a minute (this makes them easier to squeeze

Grate your ginger finely or...open the jars of grated ginger

Boil a kettle (approx 2litres) of boiling water.

Pour the boiling water in to the bucket (avoid inhaling the vapour it's apparently bad for you)

Add the 2kg of sugar and stir till dissolved

Squeeze the lemons and limes into the water

Add the other ingredients and stir

Add two T-spoons of cream of tartar

Top you're bucket up with 20 litres of tap water (the guide on the bucket I bought from the brew shop was wrong.  The only way to know you're topping up exactly 20 litres is to top up using ten two litre bottles.

Stir

If you have a hydrometer it's time to take a sample and record the opening reading.  If not go to the next step.

Add two t-spoons of wine yeast.

Put the lid on, put the bubbler in and leave in a place that's as close to room temperature as you can get.

7-10 days later  (If using a hydrometer you want a read below 1006, if not wait 10 days):

Clean and if possible sterilise the 2l bottles (google it if unsure or ask a parent with a small child, they are forever sterilising things)

Add a tablespoon of sugar to each empty bottle (that's four t-spoons or 2 desert spoons)

Syphon the liquid into the bottles leaving about 2.5cm gap at the top

(Don't worry if it tastes slightly flat and odd at this stage.  There's still magic happening)

Cap the bottles tightly and store somewhere where it wouldn't matter if they exploded (hasn't happened to me yet but apparently it probably will)

Leave for ten days. (Patience, patience, patience)

Refrigerate a bottle for at least one hour

Pour out a pint glass and marvel at you 4-5% stroke of pure home brewing genius.

By all means you should now pat yourself on the back.  You are a true brewer and, let's face it, apart from the bucket this stuff was way cheap.  You now have 10-11 2l bottles of heaven.  It tastes much nicer and fresher than shop bought ginger beer but beware...It's 4-5% proof.  It gives you a headache and shaky hands if you over indulge.  It would be illegal to drive in the UK after just one pint. 

Drink sensibly, improve the recipe and then let me know how you got on.

There is no better way of saving money and making yourself happy than to create your own alcoholic home made fizzy drink.

Go for it

TQ

Rose tinted recepticles

Ok so wine will be my first brewers blog.

It may help to know my wine credentials however before we start.  I have liked red wine for about twenty years now.  So your maybe thinking that in that time I've become a bit of a connoisseur.  Well not really although I have tried some truly gorgeous wines.  Like most people my wine shopping habits started out based on price rather than any real taste or quality.  I liked a good £3.99 vintage whilst anything above £5.99 seemed to be strictly the reserve of gifts for people who knew their wines.  The problem is that I've never really changed.

I don't know about the the rest of the world but wine is something that has effectively got cheaper as I have aged rather than dearer.  When I was trying to impress a girl in my teens and early twenties it seemed to cost about £4 or £5 pound for the cheap stuff where now it can be as little as £3.  What's more when I was a lad the cheap stuff was truly cheap and a bit nasty.  Now supermarkets here promote some pretty strong brands with a price point under £5.  When I was young Paul Massons Californian was a wine from a far fetched region and le Piat Dor was for those who couldn't stretch to french wine.  Nowadays there's wines that I can't afford coming from south America and Australia.  At one time a screw top wine bottle was just beyond the pale where now it's the norm. 

The upshot of all this is that I've actually managed to develop a taste for wine and different grape varieties without ever having had to stretch the budget.  The problem is, as readers of this blog will know, that the budget as far as wine is concerned disappeared about two years ago.

Imagine just how thrilling it would be then to make wine at about 75pence per bottle.  How rough must that taste?  Well surprisingly I've discovered at least one wine kit (maybe beginners luck) that produces a wine that I would seek out in the shops that costs precisely that.

After a show about cooking that involved an alcoholic version of ginger beer (I tried it, it tasted great and contained almost no alcohol) I told my wife that I would like to try home brewing.  Try as I might and work hard as I do we just can't seem to afford the luxury of beer or wine with any regularity and it annoys me.  I don't want lots (well actually I do) but I used to have a couple of beers in the pub on the way home of a night and then maybe two or three cans.  By the end of 2007 I was celebrating if I could have two or three cans a weekend.  I miss beer and wine.

My wife obviously also misses beer and wine as she come home one night from the supermarket quite excited to tell me about a kit she'd seen that promised 30 bottles of wine for about £70.  £70 would buy a kit with everything needed including the ingredients and, even more exciting, once you bought the kit you could make wine even cheaper in future by just buying the ingredients.  The idea seemed good.  I liked it but I had reservations.  £70 was a damn good amount of both wine and lager made by experts and drinkable today at supermarket prices.  Also I reasoned that, easy or difficult, the wine would have to sit for months before we could drink it or we'd end up ill.  Well actually this stuff claimed to be ready in seven days.  I looked at reviews and they seemed average.  Believe it or not I saw this as a plus because I would have thought that the reviews would have said it was appalling.  There's a home brew shop close to us so I suggested we look and see what they had.  I expected again to be told to avoid the seven day stuff and go for something decent that would take months to brew but no!  Apparently there's even five day stuff that tastes quite good.  Still £70 is a lot of money.

I started to research this and couldn't find much bad about it.  People kept saying it was simple but used terms like gravity, mash, krausen and fermentors.  Well maybe it is easy but I wasn't a million percent convinced.  Thirty bottles though....That's a lot of wine and, from what I read, beer wasn't that much more difficult.  Could it be true?  Could you actually make palatable stuff at home?  I had doubts but decided to give it a try.

I think the money came more out of desperation rather than us being able to afford it but I researched the kit I needed and bought it from Tesco's (a major supermarket chain in the UK) for about £30 rather than just buying a ready made kit.  I bought a Young's, seven day, thirty bottle kit of Cabernet sauvignon.  I followed the instructions to the letter and......

A passable wine.  Thirty bottles of a slightly Rose looking red from a kit that cost about £22.  What's more it wasn't evil.  It wasn't a wine I'd rush to buy again but it was actually quite tasty.  Also now that we had the kit it would be criminal not to use it.  I was off to the brew shop for some Shiraz.  With my £30 I couldn't afford the £35 Shiraz they had so I took a gamble on Solomon Grundy Medium Dry Red.  I knew the wife would be unhappy even as I handed the £22 over.  This wine kit didn't even claim to be a specific wine.  It must be awful.  But I didn't want to come home empty handed.  I boiled my water, put 4kg of sugar in the tub along with the mix and enough water to make to 22l.  Having learnt how to use I hydrometer I tested it the added yeast.  It brewed for seven days and I tested again.  To my surprise it had reached exactly the gravity that it said on the can.  I began to bottle.  I got the surprise of my life.

Lt's deal with the downside first.  I'd say that this Medium Dry Red was actually quite a sweet jammy, plummy red.  Given my £3.99 expertise I would compare it with a ruby Cabernet.  Thing is I really love ruby Cabernet and....this was a good one.  Good enough that, were it a shop bought example, I would seek it out.  What's more at 10.5% proof it was none to shabby at getting you drunk.  Even better I had thirty bottles.  I had no kit to buy for this one and that means that it cost me less than a pound per bottle.  This could represent extreme savings and extreme quantities of alcohol.  Better still I hadn't had to do anything clever.  I needed the kit: a barrel, a bubbler and stopper, a bucket, a syphon and  a hydrometer but, once bought they pretty much last forever.  For all future wine kits I just needed £22 and I could have thirty bottles.

Of course now your thinking that, like all alternative types, I was giddy at making something that anyone else would have said was rubbish.  Not so.  I've had no bad feedback and even get requests for bottles. (Of course free booze is always popular).  So go on, give it a try.  Risk a few pounds on the equipment and try Solomon Grundy Medium Dry Red.  What's more, let me know how you get on.  I've got lots more to try but, as a starter, it's turned my head.

Now of course the wine story won't finish there, there's beer and ginger beer still to discuss but, that should do you for now.  Follow this and you may not feel as poor as you used to....You'll be too drunk to care.

Hope the new years resolutions are still going well

T

Jesus! I can turn water in to wine

It's true you can actually turn water in to wine if you buy the right kit.  I'm not just talking about a bottle either, no, we're talking 22 litres, 5 UK gallons here.  That must be good.

First let me say hello, I'm back and especially thank you to the loads of people who have viewed this blog for one reason or another since I last updated nearly a year ago.  I haven't been away anywhere or anything like that I just haven't been blogging.  Sorry.

The blog has also seen a recent upsurge but I assume that that's probably got more to do with people making their new years resolutions to stop smoking and finding me through some sort of Champix search.  If that's the case welcome, stick with it and good luck.

Anyhow, related to all the saving money stuff in my 2011 blogs I decided to have a go at home brew.  Remember homebrew?  If you were around in the seventies or the early eighties then you would probably have come accross homebrew.  If you were around at that time and did come accross homebrew you've also probably resolved to never look at the stuff again.  Watered down dubious looking lager that presented a valid excuse for a week off work with food poisoning and/or a brain disorder and flashbacks for years to come.  Either that or some new age hippy that could make quite a pallatable wine out of hedge clippings but it took eight years to mature that one special bottle.  Homebrew it seemed was not a viable alternative to the pub.  Well the homebrew I'm going to talk about isn't like that at all.

My dad did a home brew in the late seventies or early eighties and, even though he died an alcoholic, vowed never to touch the stuff again.  He suceeded in making several litres of  foul tasting vomit inducing brew and invited all his mates around to try it.  None came back for a second helping.  Most of them, even the hardened drinkers, weren't capable for at least a week.

In spite of all this I have always had the feeling that brewing could be done at home.  What put me off was patience.  Had my dad left that brew in the bottle for about eight weeks or longer it probably would have been a good brew.  The whole process is just chemistry afetr all.  The reason I've never tried it up until now is that, like my dad, I lack patience and I know that I would be trying to drink the stuff long before it was ready.  I had mentioned to my wife however (as we cut back on the amount of beer and wine that we could buy for monetary reasons) that I might look in to home brewing.  This must have planted a seed because a few weeks later she came back from the supermarket to tell me about some homebrew kits she had seen.  On a seperate trip I had seen them too, noted the details and done a quick google search on what was available.   It seems that home brew has moved along in the past few years and, whilst it is still a bit like keeping pigs or growing your own vegetables, it can produce a decent alcohol and, more importantly, in a short period of time.

Almost completely seperately I was watching one of those lifestyle chef type programs that you can't avoid these days and one of them claimed to brew a 4% proof ginger beer in just two weeks.  Who knew ginger beer could actually be potent?  Well probably everyone did but I didn't.  4% is practically the same as the lager I buy in the shops.  Also although I'm not famous for soft drinks one of my favorites is ginger beer.  Even better if it could be alcoholic.  So I'm going to return to blogging for a while and let you know about my beer projects.  I'm not going to tie myself down to a blog a week or a blog a month, but I'll update on the various things I try.

Who knows you could save money and get drunk in to the bargain.

Keep watching

T