Exploding Beer Bottles

One of the bottles of home-made beer exploded in the kitchen, and made a hell of a mess. I hope it was just a one-off. Maybe we did something wrong (added too much sugar at the bottling stage, for example) which will cause more of them to go. I'm moving them out of the kitchen and into the shed, anyway.

Gottle of Geer

Ed and I bottled the beer we made from a kit last weekend. It's quite a lengthy process - you have to wash and sterilise 50 or so bottles, carefully tip a spoonful of sugar into each one, fill it with beer using a siphon, and the put the metal crown cap on. Our crown capper is old and seized up, which made the process even tougher than it needed to be.

Ed says I should go back to the home brew shop and buy a pressure barrel because it's a lot less bother. Oh, and another beer kit.

Piece of Cake

I set a competition on Thursday, asking "How can you cut an apple pie into eight pieces with three straight cuts?". The answer was:

Cut the pie in half with one vertical cut through the centre (that is, how you would normally cut a cake in two). Then cut it into four with a further vertical cut through the centre, at right angles to the first (again, all normal so far). Then stack two pieces on top of the other two, and make one further vertical cut through all four pieces, making eight pieces.

Some people offered a slightly different solution, cutting the pie horizontally after cutting it in four. I don't think I'd be pleased to get a piece of apple pie with no crunchy piecrust on top. But I didn't specify "eight equally appetizing pieces" so I accepted this solution.

There were seven correct answers in all, and the winner (pulled out of a hat this morning by Eleanor) was Matt Shacklady of St. Helens. Congratulations, Matt. I gave the books to your mum and sister as as I passed through St Helens today. They seemed really nice. Say "hi" to them for me.

Win Cider Making Books

As it happens, I had just bought a copy of "Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale" for myself when another arrived with my new crusher and press. What is more, both new bits of equipment came with a booklet entitled "Basic Cider & Juice Making" by Alex Hill. If you'd like to win the book and the booklet, email me your answer to the following riddle:

How can you cut an apple pie into eight pieces with three straight cuts?

UK residents only please (think of the carbon released in airmail!). Don't forget to send your name and postal address along with your answer.

Review: Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale

Michael Pooley and John Lomax's Real Cider Making on a Small Scale came with my apple crusher and cider press. I have read the book, but have not yet tried the all techniques described. I have followed the directions for extracting apple juice, but I'm still collecting enough to make a batch of cider. Perhaps in the future I will write another review "Real Cider Making - One Year On" and will be able to tell you whether it really does do exactly what it says on the tin.

At a glance I can see that it's my kind of book. It's not one of your coffee-table books with glossy full-page photos and barely any text. It's black and white only, with hand-drawn diagrams showing you what to do, and grainy photos of people with beards and hand-knitted jumpers making cider out-of-doors. The text is detailed, with practical instructions of what to do and explanations of why. The science is also explained, from choosing the right mixture of apples to the biochemical process of what yeasts are and what they do, and what other bugs can do if they get into your brew, and so on.

The book includes a plan for building your own cider press. Alternatively you can buy one, for example from Vigo, or if you join your local homebrewing association you may be able to borrow one, or perhaps join in a communal cider-making day. There are also details on making and storing apple juice, making cider vinegar, and making perry (which is the same as cider but made with pears instead of apples).

It's a good book, and as soon as I had finished it I felt eager to start gathering apples and making cider myself. If you want to follow my experiments, watch this space.

Picking Apples

After asking around I found two neighbours with apple trees who didn't want their apples. So at about half past nine I walked up the street with a ladder in one hand and a plastic trug in the other. It was a glorious autumn morning, bright and clear. I thought it was quite warm, but someone nearby was obviously feeling the cold and had lit a coal fire, so the smell of smoke pervaded the crescent.

I picked about 120lbs of apples from this one tree. There are more apples but I thought I had enough work to do processing this lot, so I'll come back for more later.

I took them home in a borrowed wheelbarrow and washed them. Then, just as yesterday, I set up in the garden to quarter, crush and press the apples. What none of the books tell you about cider making is that you'll soon be surrounded by more wasps that you have ever seen in your life. So I beat a hasty retreat to the house, and will have to retrieve my apples and equipment later, when it gets cold and the wasps go away.

Plan for tomorrow - cider making, indoors.

Apple Time

"Who wants to help pick some apples and make them into apple juice?"

Eleanor, Sam and I headed next door with my longest ladder, a broom and a large bucket to collect apples. We were soon joined by some of the local urchins who were keen to catch the apples I was knocking down, and offer some tips of their own.

"Yes, chucking your tennis racquet into the tree is an effective way of bringing down the apples. I remember from when I was ten. But it runs the risk of damaging the tree, and then the people who live here won't let us pick their apples any more."

I had some strange conversations with my helpers.

"Why are you collecting all these apples? You can't eat them."
"Yes you can eat them. Who says you can't?"
"They're not the same as real apples from the shops."
"They're exactly the same as that"
"But they're not from the shops"
"Where do you think the apples in the shops come from?"
"They come from the shops"
"Yeah, but where do the shops get them from?"
Silence
"I dunno"

Once we'd cleared that up we weighed the apples with an antique brass spring balance Steph gave me (thanks Steph - it beats standing on the bathroom scale whilst carrying the apples, then subtracting your own weight from the results) and found we'd collected 19lbs (about 8.5kg) of apples.

The urchins joined in with cutting the apples into quarters and tossed them into the crusher. More odd conversation occured at this stage.

"Why do they have sweetcorn in them?"
"Let me have a look - oh, you mean the pips"

Then we had a go at running the crusher, after I had given them a graphic description of what would happen to any body parts that entered the hopper.

The crushed apples then went into the press, and again we took turns at operating the press whilst we all watched the brown cloudy juice run into a bowl.

The labourers were rewarded with a drink of apple juice. Just a small one though as the bulk of the juice went straight in the freezer. They all declared it delicious. With any luck I can scrounge up more apples in the coming weeks until I have enough for a batch of cider. You never know, my own army of scrumpers, armed with tennis racquets, might bring me some.

Cider Press

Christmas came early to Bean-Sprouts this morning, with the delivery of an apple crusher and 9-litre cider press. I must have been an awfully good girl this year. Thanks Santa.

Smells Like A Brewery In Here...

Steph's here (I know she was just here a fortnight ago but she liked it so much she came back), so we've been busy as usual. Steph instructed Ed to make a shelf to store preserves and things, which he did (I'll show you pictures another time). We made five gallons of tea wine, five gallons of beer (from a kit, I don't know how to make beer from scratch yet but I'd love to learn). We sorted all the stored potatoes out and removed those which had become rotten. Let me tell you, rotten potatoes smell really foul. And we picked about ten pounds of mixed hedgerow fruit - damsons, elderberries, blackberries, sloes, haws and apples - to make 5 gallons of hedgerow wine.

We met our new neighbours, who told us to help ourselves to all the apples, pears, damsons and greengages we want from their garden. Another neighbour provided some empty beer and wine bottles from her recycling bin (we had to do some fancy footwork to explain why we were eyeing up her bin - she initially thought we were accusing her of crimes against recycling, or perhaps of having a drink problem). And we had a gorgeous lamb casserole with our own pink fir apple potatoes and roasted mystery summer squash, and drank lots of beer - well we'll need the bottles to bottle our own beer when it's ready!


Cartoon from climatecartoons.org. Click on the picture to enlarge.

Alun's Tea Wine

I have to give credit for this recipe for a university friend of ours called Alun. It's quick, easy and cheap, even to make big 5-gallon batches. If you let it ferment out and bottle it properly it's very nice, but when we were students we just used to dip a jug into the bucket and filter it through a coffee filter as and when we needed it.


Alun's Tea Wine


For each 5 gallons -make 40 cups of strong tea, 12.5 lbs of sugar, 2.5lbs of raisins chopped, 2 lemons sliced. Make up to 5 gallons with boiled water. When cool, add wine yeast, following instructions on the packet.

On our recipe it says "ready in 4 weeks", but I think that's only for students. My dad used to say "Not a drop is sold 'til it's 7 days old". Nowadays I'd ferment it out, rack it twice and bottle it properly. But if you want to do it the "gut rot" way, be my guest.

Wine in Progress

The damson wine is now in a five-gallon fermenting bucket with an airlock fitted. It's tucked away in a corner of the living room going blup occasionally.

I've got more damsons left. I think I'll make another batch.

Review: First Steps in Winemaking

In the past I've referred to certain books as "the bible", the final word in their field. Well C.J.J. Berry's First Steps in Winemaking is undoubtedly the home winemaker's bible. I first started winemaking as a student, to knock up large batches of cheap falling-over-juice, and I've had this book ever since then. The pages are heavily annotated (and stained) and there are other recipes scribbled on scraps of paper stuffed between its pages.

The book has hundreds of recipes, organised by month. This is a really neat feature because if the winemaking mood takes you, you can easily look up what is in season at the moment. In the winter months it gives recipes for things like wheat, tinned fruit, and Ribena wine. If you're searching for a particular recipe there's an index in the back.

Berry (who in life had a really impressive moustache) teaches you not only how to make wine, but also all the "whys". By following the book I developed an understanding of winemaking which allowed me to experiment with my own brews. I think my all time top success was a 5 gallon batch of "everything the greengrocer was chucking out on Saturday afternoon", which resulted in a fabulous wine very like a good Cabernet Sauvignon. Sadly I never wrote down the proportions and so the recipe was unrepeatable. But then again Berry advised me to always keep scrupulous records for this very reason, so the fault lies with the student, not the master.

I don't have any other winemaking books and I don't feel I need any. First Steps in Winemaking has everything I need.

Sloe Gin

At the bottom of the freezer we found a bag of sloes and a bag of blackberries we picked last year. So we defrosted them and popped them in clean bottles, until the bottles were about 1/3 full. Then we covered them in sugar until the bottles were 2/3 full. Then we labelled them.

I've put them by the kettle so every time anyone makes a pot of tea they can give the bottles a shake over the next few weeks. The flavours from the berries will infuse into the sugar and result in a thick syrup which can be blended with cheap gin or vodka (the berries can be discarded - or made into fruitcake). After a few months the liqueur will be ready, but it will be even smoother if you can wait another year.

Winemaking Supplies

Joanna said:

I used to make my own wine, and would like to make some this year (plum, do you think? If damson is good, why not plum?). But I no longer have any equipment, and the shop I used to go to is no more, there's a huge shopping mall where it used to be ... any ideas where I can get the stuff I need??

I'm lucky to have a fantastic winemaking and homebrewing supply shop just a few miles away - The Brew Shop. But I don't get all my supplies from there. For example, you can scrounge 5 gallon buckets from chip shops and take aways. They get their oil delivered in them and are happy to give them away. You can sometimes find demijohns in charity shops and on Freecycle.

Big branches of Boots sometimes have a homebrewing section, and so does eBay.

If all else fails you could try one of the online winemaking suppliers, such as:

Art of Brewing

Brew It Yourself

North Devon Homebrews

If you Google you'll find many more. Good luck with your home winemaking - plum wine sounds lovely.

Now Drinking...

Westons strong organic cider. I'm still trying to find somewhere near me I can buy proper cider - cider with bits in, cider you can't see through. I may have to make my own. But until I get round to it, this will do nicely.

Kettle campaign

I'm really pleased by how many people have voted in my challenge to only boil as much water as they need in their kettles. I've been trying to do this all this month, and I've noticed as a side benefit that the herbs on my kitchen windowledge are looking healthier. If I accidentally put too much water in, I pour it over the plants.

I've been looking up some facts about the benefits of not filling the kettle each time you boil it. In a speech by the Rt Hon David Miliband MP at the National School of Governance conference, Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London - "Public services and public goods: lessons for reform" - 6 June 2006 he said:

"If everyone boiled only the water they needed to make a cup of tea instead of filling up the kettle every time, we could save enough electricity in a year to run more than three quarters of the street lighting in the country."

And a press release from the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) said:

"Each time we boil the kettle we use more water than we need, we also waste valuable energy and contribute to climate change. On average, we could all save 90 seconds each time we boil a kettle - by putting in only the amount of water we need. Such a simple action would also cut household electricity bills -
overfilling each time we boil wastes enough energy in a week to light our house for a day or run a TV set for 26 hours."