Home made beer, wine and preserves
Many men will at some stage want to try their hand at home made wine or beer, or make
jam or chutney to preserve summer fruit for the winter. It’s easy enough if you follow a few
rules.
Alcoholic drinks consist of water, alcohol and flavours; the alcohol is made from
sugar by yeast, with carbon dioxide (CO2) as a by product. To make an alcoholic drink we
add live yeast to a watery solution of sugar and flavour compounds, let the yeast work,
allow CO2 to exit the fermenting vessel while keeping flies and germs out, then clarify and
bottle the final product. That’s it bar the details.
Home made wines from kits
Couldn’t be easier, just buy a kit and follow the instructions! There’s a good shop in
Fareham, or buy mail order (see below). The more expensive kits are better. Avoid the
duffer’s mistake of adding more sugar than advised to try for a higher alcohol level. The kit
was designed to give a balanced wine of normal strength.
Home made wines from raw ingredients is more effort, but can be rewarding. It is worth the
price of this book for my advice NOT to attempt potato, rhubarb, carrot, pea pod,
dandelion, rose hip or other such ‘country’ wines. Stick to fruit, although elderflower can be
nice if done well. The recipe below will let you find out if you want to go further.
Blackberry wine
2 kgs blackberries picked from late summer hedgerows
4 litres water
1 kilo white sugar
1 tsp wine yeast
Crush the blackberries in a 2 gallon stainless steel or polythene vessel, using a bottle or
potato masher. Pour over 2 litres of boiling water, stir and cover. After 5 minutes during
which any germs will have died, stir in the sugar. When it’s dissolved, add the rest of the
water. When cooled to 40C, add the previously prepared yeast culture (read the
instructions on the packet) and cover.
Fermentation should start within 2 days. Allow to ferment for a week or until the vigour of
the ferment subsides, then strain off (using only wood, plastic or stainless implements-
other metals cause a nasty taste) into clean 1 gallon glass demijohns. Use clean cotton
wool or a fermentation lock to let gas out and exclude flies. When fermentation stops,
siphon off with polythene tubing (pour carefully if you have no siphon) into another
demijohn. When it drops clear, bottle in clean re-used wine bottles, cork or seal with plastic
caps.
The wine is ready to drink as soon as it is clear but will improve over 2 or 3 months, don’t
keep it too long as it loses fruitiness and can oxidise.
Mixed hedgerow wine
Use the same technique with elderberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, strawberries,
damsons, or a mixture of the above. Elderberry is traditional but has a very ‘dark’ flavour. I
caution against pure elderberry wine, but blending some with other berry fruit is good. Pure
blackcurrant wine is too acid but blending with a less acid wine can lift the blend. I had
good results mixing blackcurrant, elderberry and blackberry. A can of grape juice
concentrate from the home brew store added to the ferment after the initial straining will
improve the wine, as will a handful of sloes. If you get some cheap brandy from France and
your hedgerow berry wine is OK to start with, you can make a ‘sherry’ style drink by adding
20% brandy to the wine once it is finished. This will keep for years, if you let it. Bet you don’
t. Label everything.
To measure the exact alcohol level, you need a hydrometer and chart: beyond the scope
of this brief overview.
Sloe Gin
Picking this bitter little black hedgerow fruit for sloe gin is a nice seasonal task for
September, and looks forward to the miserable days of midwinter when you will appreciate
something to cheer you up. We planted several hundred metres of hedgerow in our
orchard with many sloes; we picked 3kg this year in an hour but left 10 times as many for
the birds. Anyone from Botley, Curdridge or Durley producing a copy of this book who
approaches me next year can come to our orchard and pick some for free, let’s have a
sloe picking party if we get a nice September Saturday afternoon.
There are many recipes for this old country drink; basically pick as many sloes as you can,
soak them in gin for 2 or 3 weeks, then strain the liquid off, add sugar and bottle. You can
drink it straight away but it’s better to keep it until Christmas. Suggested quantities are
about 500g of sloes to a 70cl bottle of gin and 150g sugar, you may prefer more or less
sugar. Some people add vanilla essence. Economy tip-it stands to reason that the sloes
will soak up a lot of gin- you can’t just throw this expensive and highly taxed stuff away. I
chuck the leftover gin-soaked sloes into half a gallon of dry cider or white wine to leach out
more of the flavour and lovely colour. Watch out when you’re picking sloes, the blackthorn
bush they grow on has an extremely evil thorn which can cause infections if you spike
yourself on one.
Here’s to good old beer, drink it down
Beer from kits as per wine kits, read the instructions. Basically, dissolve the warmed
contents of the tin (malt extract with hops) into the correct amount of water, add sugar and
yeast as directed, and ferment. It is quicker than home made wine and can give good
results in a few weeks. The best (and, obviously, most expensive) kits have a higher malt
content and no need to add extra sugar.
Beer from malt and hops is more challenging, but the product is superior and you can
design your own recipes. Read Graham Wheeler and Clive la Pensee; there’s bags on the
web about home brewing. The simple recipe below will work well enough to give you an
idea whether you want to be your own micro brewer.
5 gallons English best bitter
3 kilos crushed pale malt
250g crushed crystal malt
500g white sugar
5 gallons hot water (see below for how hot)
60g hops (Goldings hops are reliable, experiment later with others)
1 sachet English ale yeast
2 large or 1 very large boiling pans
These ingredients can be obtained by mail order from www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk,
who I find very reliable. Try army surplus stores for cheap large boiling pans.
Put the crushed malt in a 23 litre polythene fermenting bin and pour over 2 gallons of hot
water to achieve a temperature of 65 Centigrade, it is important not to go above 70 or the
enzymes will fail. If you have no thermometer you can add 2 litres of cold water to 4 litres of
boiling water which should give 75C which will drop to between 60 and 65 when you add to
the malt, which is near enough dead right. Stir well with a big wooden spoon, insulate with a
blanket or pullover and leave for 90 minutes, then strain off and reserve the liquid, and add
2 litres fresh hot water to the malt. Repeat 3 times, using boiling water to finish with. You
should now have about 3 or 4 gallons of ‘wort’ which is dissolved barley malt sugars and
flavours. Strain into a boiling pan, add half the hops and bring to the boil, take care not to
let it boil over. After an hour, add most of the rest of the hops, then after 90 minutes add
the last pinch of hops and turn the heat off after one more minute.
With great care (I use a 1.5 litre saucepan as a ladle) pour the hot liquid from the boiling
pans through a sieve into the 5 gallon polythene fermenter. Wash the hops with water to
get the last goodness from them. Add the sugar and dissolve it, then add cold water to
make up to 5 gallons (23 litres). Cover and leave to cool overnight. When the temperature
has dropped to 40 centigrade, add the ale yeast, prepared according to the instructions on
the packet. Gervin® English ale yeast is extremely reliable and clears well. Stir thoroughly
to let some air in- air must henceforth be excluded but the yeast needs some dissolved
oxygen to start. The original gravity should be 40-45, which should give beer of about 5%
abv. If you don’t have a hydrometer you’ll be guessing, but this recipe works OK anyway.
It should ferment out in about a week. Siphon into glass demijohns, then after another
week the yeast will pack out solidly on the bottom and you can siphon into bottles or
polythene kegs. It will be ready to drink in 2 weeks and will keep for 3-6 months. Bottle
when clear in previously used clean screw top bottles or other suitable glass or polythene
containers. Invite the lads round to drink some with curry.
It stands to reason that if you use half the water or twice the malt you will have stronger
beer, up to 10-11% abv. This ‘barley wine’ is great after 3-6 months maturation in
champagne bottles for special occasions but PLEASE treat with respect and serve it in
wine glasses. Likewise, if you bung in a kilo of sugar to get super strength beer, don’t
blame me for the result.
Mashing the malt can be made very much easier with a contraption made from 2
fermenting bins and a tap, for directions and more advice re home brewing, see Graham
Wheeler’s extremely detailed and enjoyable book ‘Home Brewing- the CAMRA guide’.
As Basildon brewmeister Ken Shales said, ‘At this stage you may get someone
complaining that the house smells like a brewery. Well you just tell them it IS a
brewery.’ You have the right to brew beer at home, as long as you don’t sell any, but be
sure to clean up afterwards and don’t take it all too far or your wife will be cross with me.
Preserves
Jam is just fruit and sugar boiled up until it sets, and fruit jellies are just fruit boiled in water,
strained on to some sugar and reduced by boiling. Redcurrant or sloe and apple jelly (you
don’t get the volume from straight sloes so must add apple) are very good with roast meat.
There are plenty of jam and jelly recipes online to use up garden fruit surplus.
Chutneys can be as hot and spicy as you like and go well with curries, cheese or cold
meats. They are a good way to use surplus plums and gooseberries. Basically you boil
down your fruit with sugar, vinegar, salt and spice and bottle it. Sound chutney improves
for months and keeps for years. Here are 3 chutneys I make with success.
Plum and ginger chutney
2 kilos ripe Victoria plums
500g white sugar
500ml cider vinegar
100g of ginger, shredded finely
3 finely chopped red hot chillies
1 tsp crushed cloves
3 tsps crushed Sechuan pepper
2 tsps paprika
25g salt
Wash, halve and stone the plums (using the paring knife with a fresh edge on it, or the
serrated vegetable knife) and cook to a pulp slowly with frequent stirring. The less water
you add the less you have to boil off. When the plums have melted, add the other goodies.
Stir with great care or it will stick and burn. Spoon a bit off, cool on the side of a plate and
taste every now and then to check progress and adjust if necessary. Bottle into previously
used pickle or curry paste jars which have been washed and warmed in metal trays in the
oven. Pour in carefully using the 1 pint Pyrex jug (a jam funnel helps), place sterilised tops
on full jars lightly, then tighten once the heat of the chutney warms them through, grip with
tea towels to avoid burning yourself. If you like solid bits of fruit in your chutney, add some
plum quarters 15 minutes before the end of cooking.
Gooseberry chutney
1kg gooseberries, topped and tailed
1 medium onion chopped fine
250ml cider vinegar
250g sugar
50g shredded ginger
3 tsp white mustard seeds, whole
2 tsp allspice berries, crushed
Same technique as plum chutney, add chilli or oriental spices if you like. Very good with
cheese or smoked mackerel.
Apple chutney
Same technique again, use Bramley apples (peeled, cored and chopped) with a tiny
amount of water to start with. They melt to make a good base, add some dessert apples
chopped to 5mm cubes for flavour and texture. Melt the Bramley in a little water, add
vinegar, brown sugar and salt as above, plus a teaspoon each of powdered cloves,
allspice and cinnamon. Raisins or sultanas roughly chopped and added are good. Finely
chopped onions give a more savoury feel. Great with cheese, bread and beer, this is the
most ‘typical’ of the chutneys.
Pickles
Pickles are basically suitable fruits and/or vegetables plus sugar, spice and
vinegar, combined together in a way that at the same time both preserves them
and improves the flavour. For pickled onions or shallots, top and tail 2-3cm diameter
onions and soak in brine, a solution of 100g salt in 1.5 litres of water is about right. After a
day or 2, remove and peel them, then bottle in sound, vinegar-proof pickle jars in cider
vinegar in which you lightly simmered some garlic, chilli, whole mustard seeds, cloves,
allspice, cinnamon to taste with 100g sugar to the litre. Simmer it gently for half an hour
with a lid on. The pickles improve for 6 months and keep for several years.
Again, this is a brief overview aimed at the absolute beginner. Forgive me if you have
surfed n here expecting something more sophisticated. And if you think this is light on
detail, check out Deliaonline where precise step by step recipes are offered!
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