A Home Brew Journey

 I thought I would have a stab at making a Turbo Cider. It gets the name because its fast and easy to do, although the fact that you can make it like rocket fuel also adds to the theme. I am finding that doing the 40 pint brews are good if they turn out ok but if its a failed or just a bad brew its a waste. I mean who really wants to pour away beer.

So I went and invested in some small 1 gallon demijohn's as its my turn this year to host the Halloween party these brews should be easy in time for that.

New bit of kit

I also made a trip to the local Lidl's for the juice and picked up some Cider yeast at my local home brew store

All ingredients and gear together

I will be brewing 3 different types of cider on this run. There is a plain apple juice that i will be adding black current juice to creating a pre mixed Diesel. There is a apple and cranberry juice and a pear juice.


 First job is to rehydrate the yeast. As it will only be 12L in total one packet spit between all 3 brews is more than enough.

Filled with juice

While everything was sterilising I measured and poured around 170g of sugar into each demijon. This is where a funnel would come in handy but as per I did not have one so a make shift one was made out of a leaflet that was lying about. Not really all that sterile but I am sure it will work out ok.


I could only take original gravity readings for the two apple based brews as the pear one was a denser liquid in fact it was more like a pulp. Perhaps I should have strained this through a muslim bag first of all but I did not have any so that idea was a bust.

All that was lest to do was to add the yeast to the demijons give it a quick stir and job done. In total it only took about one hour to do all 3 so jobs a good un.

Ready to ferment

After only two hours you can see the fermentation process has already started by the layer of scum forming on top of the juice. It will be left in there for about a week before bottling.

All that is required now is patience and some luck

Well I finally got round to making use of my BBQ and as far as I know there was no outbreak of E-coli or food poisoning so I am happy with that. As there was plenty of folk round it was a good chance to off load my slightly disappointing last 2 brews.

The Geordie Lager was just not as good as my last brew of lager. Once you has a couple down your neck it was perfectly acceptable but there was none of the instant tastiness of the last batch. To be honest it tasted like a watered down lager. Now I don't know if it was my fault for leaving it in the fermenter to long but that should really have made that much of a difference. Or it could be that I previously used a mixture of light spray malt and sugar and that's what I think gave the dryness of the previous brew.

I may have mentioned that I used Fining's in the last to brews and to be honest I just wasted my time. Fining's are used purely for aesthetic purposes but to be honest they did not clear the beers as well as I thought they would. So I have a couple of packets left and I think that will be the last I will be using it.


So sadly I will need to do another batch  just to try and get the perfect pint. I think that a brew of alcoholic ginger beer might be in order as I had a taste of some and it was very very tasty. I have heard that it can be quite volatile when bottling so that should be fun.

Well I thought I would crack open one of my home brews after a hard shift and I need to clear some space in my fridge. I just got one at random and got one of the heavy bottles.

First impressions were not great to be honest but the taste is growing on me, I am only half way thought the first one. It is a little bit too heavy for my taste I am not quite sure if it is to much hops or what as I am not that clued up on what tastes I am looking for. As it was one of the bottles it was chilled as well so I will be able to compare better once I open the keg with the heavy.

As you can see from the picture the finnings didn't clear the beer as much as I thought it would so I don't think that they will be used again. I will maybe just use them in the lagers. Perhaps it is just me but I think that getting the fizz balance is crucial in a beer, this time I have used less sugar in the carbonating process and it certainly is less gassy than the last time but still a little to much. Ahhh well these things are all trial and error and I am quite happy to keep on brewing and tasting till I get it perfect.

I had some time to spare today so I had a crack at making some labels. I wont win any prizes but at least I will know what I am getting before I pour

Well saying that this is Scotland not 2 months ago there was snow on my door step and now there is a great big warm thing in the sky. I have heard its called something like the sun but that has yet to be confirmed. Not that I have seen much of it due to work commitments leaving me on constant night shift of late.

So during the winter months I was having trouble keeping my beers warm enough to ferment this problem is now solved. Now I just need to find somewhere cool enough to let the beer clear after it has carbonated. Who said this home brewing malarkey was easy.

Thanks to my working away/night shift I have only just bottled my Lager after it fermenting for almost 3 weeks but I think it should be ok. Although I have used beer finnings on these last two batches so I should produce a less cloudy beer / lager but it was over a week between adding them to the fermenter and bottling / kegging so hence why I think it should be ok.

The majority of the beer is in the keg with some being in the red capped  bottles this will let me fire them in the fridge and see if there is a difference between the beer at room temp or chilled. The lager is in the blue capped bottles and they will all be in the fridge, well as many as I can fit in anyway. So all going to plan a Beer tasting BBQ should be in order by the end of the month

Lately I have been really busy at work and have hardly had a minute to get anything done, you know the basics like eating and sleeping (hence writing in a blog at 7AM on a Sunday). So when I had the bank holiday Monday off at the beginning of the week I thought that it was time to get another brew on the go. Unfortunately for me the staff at my local home brew shop also had the day off. So I had no beer kits, no brewing sugar or malt extract left over from my previous brews.

All was not lost though I had heard a rumour that Tesco in Glasgow had homebrew products in. As I was also needing food I thought it would be worth a trip in anyway. After 20 minutes of looking up and down the beer aisle I was beginning to think that I was having my leg pulled so I had to ask one of the staff. As I stood there waiting for a puzzled look from the guy I got a shock when he told me it was down the same aisle as the car care stuff.

All they stocked was Geordie kits and Youngs UBrew kits and products , definitely not as much of a selection as you would get online or at a home brew store but it did in a pinch. The prices were on a par with most places as well so I went on a little shopping spree

Finally got round to having a beer tasting evening and the last brew was an all round success. Although we all need to brush up on our poker skills. But back to the beer, for some reason it was still a little cloudy even though it was in the fridge for about 4 weeks so I will need to refine that a little. After much sampling by all it was decided that it went down far to easily up to the point that we even got some manky shop bought beer in just in case we ran out. I must admit I was slightly proud of myself (even though it was a kit) everyone was impressed with the lager being in the glass bottles and at how it was not flat.

I think the thing with homebrew is that people are so used to commercial beers and lagers that it takes a while to appreciate the taste of a good brew. On a side note because it was looking as if we may run out I had an early sample of my pear Cider and it looks like it may be a bit of a dud brew. Its not that its bad but I think it could be better.

So I now have a list of requests/suggestions to carry out for my next batch of home brew like make more and creating labels for my bottles. So as soon as I have finished constantly working nights I will be right on it.