Do you Home Brew?

Drinking home brewed beer used to be a good pathway to becoming an professional actor - pretending that nothing tasted so good whilst at the same time banking such phrases as "and it only costs 40p per pint" incase anyone dared to make a passing comment about it!

But no longer...

For many, them gateway to home brewing is the kit in a can - you get malt extract inside a large can and a yeast packet under the lid. All you have to do is heat up the can a bit, pour it into a fermenting bucket, add hot water, add sugar, top up with cold and add the yeast! Around 1-2 weeks later everything is ready! Can kits can actually taste pretty good and many avoid that 'home brew' taste.

The next natural step is to create your own 'wort' (sugars extracted from grains) by heating up your own grains - once cool, then the process is very similar to the 'chuck it in the bucket' method above, i.e. just add yeast. There are many ways to heat up your own wort - some people do 'BIAB' (brew in a bag), others heat up the grains in a large pan before siphoning off to ferment. There are also a variety of 'home brew machines' out there which have interactive menus for programming timings, temperatures etc and many have the ability to store recipes for future use (see reviews at the bottom of the page).

With home brewing, it really is up to you as to how much time, money and effort you are willing to put in versus the potential trade off in flavour. In some upcoming articles we'll be looking at equipment and the various options available for use during the individual stages of home brewing. For now, here are some links to home brew machine reviews that Pub Sheds have carried out recently: