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