Homebrew Recipes.

Thought we could do with a thread for recipes. We all like to share our recipes and methods and there are so many ways and styles of home brewing. So, let's all have fun and share.

 

Ginger and lemon wine.

Large piece root ginger
12 lemons
2kgs sugar
Grape juice
yeast of choice

1. Slice lemons and ginger. Throw them into bucket. Cover with HOT water. Soak overnight.
2. Make up to 10 litres. I use half white grape juice, half water. You can use all water if you wish.
3. Stirring occasionally, leave for 3 days. Then remove the fruit and ginger, squeezing as much as possible from them as you can.
4. Add sugar and yeast. Ferment out. Add campden tablets. Bottle or drink.

This can be drunk very young or kept. Great for parties. The ginger flavour becomes stronger the longer it is kept.

 

You can get all sorts of yeast from low alcohol tolerance to stuff like Turbo yeasts which will ferment out to 30% in 5 days. The latter needs a charcoal filter to take the funny taste out.

I use Art of Brewing for supplies. http://www.art-of-brewing.co.uk/

Campden tablets are to kill the yeast off, finings are to clear the wine by flocculating the particles and helping them sink to the bottom

 

Any homebrew shop will have the yeast and Wilkinsons has some too. Ebay has a good range as well as equipment.
Campden tablets are potassium metabisulfite. Preservative, antioxidant, sterilant. Your equipment should be sanitised with it before use and it is used at various stages of wine making. It can be bought as the tablets or as a powder. Again, Wilkinsons often have it in their homebrew section.
Hope this helps.

 

Simple Wine for Simple People

I litre Apple juice.
I litre Pineapple juice
I Kg Unrefined Sugar

Heat up the juice, stir in the sugar, top up to a gallon with previously boiled water, add yeast when below 30c

 

I,ve washed pineapple wine off my ceiling more than once!

 

I normally add a couple of teabags for tannin which is supposed to improve the taste (take them out before putting in the yeast :-) ) and a couple of jars of blackcurrant jam for colour..

 

Not recipes, but some recipe tips:

1) Check whether online recipes are in US Gallons (1 US Gall = 0.832674 UK Gall) and if so add 20% to the fruit & sugar otherwise you'll end up with a thin tasting, low alcohol wine.

2) Watch out for anything that contains puree as it will rise to the top of your demijohn and spray out the airlock. Either start it in a bucket or hold back on some of the water or water/sugar until the head of gas filled pulp sinks and starts a lava lamp impression.

3) Never trust an online recipe that the poster has hasn't actually fermented out, left to mature and tasted.

4) Beware of 'one gallon' recipes using 1 gallon of water, 3 lbs of sugar, 6 lbs of fruit, cup of cold tea, 2 oranges and 1 lemon, etc. as there's no way all of that lot will fit in your one gallon demijohn after straining!

 

Tesco were doing Erotic Juice at 50p a litre to clear today.

Contains Pineapple, Apple, Orange, Passion Fruit, Banana & Mango.

Boiled a litre of that and a litre of Apple juice, added 1kg of sugar and stand well back

 

That's a good juice for homebrewing and one I use being 100% juice and not 'juice drink' stuff like other products that can only be 20% juice and 80% water, and if it was this one

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=252530666

 

This is the exotic pure juice I use in bought (with loads of sugar, etc. and topped up with some non-perishable basics) when 3 for £2.50 and there's a £15 off your first Click & Collect shop when it's free collection, working out at 62p per litre (and the sugar at 60p kilo) Plus I got 5p per litre off fuel vouchers. We've done so many 'first shops' with Tesco using multiple accounts/email addresses that I'm surprised we haven't been reported for overcrowding.



Ingredients - Pineapple Juice from Concentrate (37%),Orange Juice from Concentrate (34%) ,Apple Juice from Concentrate (25%) ,Passion Fruit Juice from Concentrate ,Banana Purée ,Mango Purée

I substituted some of that for part of the apple juice in an Easy White and the resulting wine (behind) was delicious and drinkable after only 8 weeks. If you have two 25 litre fermenters and a 5 gall bucket (for racking off sediment into, de-gassing and fining), keep starting another 6 gallons every month, then after only 2 months you'll have a bottle a day (costing about 33p) for ever.

Dangerously easy isn't it?

 

Yep, thats the one Scrunge

It's not tried to get out of the demi john like the pineapple did

 

@Zigs Why did you boil them? Cartons of both long life and chilled juices are preservative free.

 

So the sugar dissolved easier, I assume if they're pasteurised they won't have any wild yeasts in them.