Xmas Cheer with Xmas Beer!!!

Christmas Day's drinking.. 13 bottles of beer all drunk on the day.

Had quite a few nice commercial beers during the day. Some of the highlights of the days drinking where a bottle of Extreme Chilli Beer from Debenhams, very hard black pepper kick with a little chilli afterburn, a very pleasant pint if you like a bit of chilli heat. The other mentionable beer was a Chocolate Porter from Hotel Chocolat, lovely smooth porter, and a mild smell and taste of chocolate.

All in all a good few pints consumed over the whole day. I had a very Merry Xmas...

Drinking the brew

Well freed up six more bottles last night, couple of pints of Coopers IPA from a kit, and a few of my Pumpkin beers, getting low on BIAB brews now, in fact getting low on beer full stop. 

Got 10 left in the store room and 9 inside the house. Plus a few store bought Xmas brews. Should see me through to the new year at least. Still have 12 litres in my no-chill cube ready to ferment of Pumpkin Beer, can't wait to get mashing again once these festivities are all done.

Andy Hamilton's African Ginger beer

Nice post on Andy Hamilton's blog if your a ginger beer fan as I am. It's a nonalcoholic ginger beer but as Andy suggested once run through a soda stream will be ace as a mixer.

http://www.theotherandyhamilton.com/2013/12/18/quick-and-easy-african-ginger-beer-part-five-in-the-12-drinks-for-christmas/

Made this ginger beer up today and it's come out very good. Very very gingery and has a great kick to it. I made it up a little different to Andy but the ingredients are the same.

Peeled and beat the ginger to death with a rolling pin in a freezer bag, brought 500ml water to the boil in a pan.

Added the beaten ginger root to the pan. Left to steep for 30mins.

Put 125g of honey in a jug, added 140ml (125g) of lemon juice, two cloves and 1\2 a cinnamon stick, topped up to 600ml of boiling water, stirred until the honey is dissolved and added to the pan with the steeped ginger.

Left the whole lot to cool and strained through muslin into one of our Sodastream 1 litre bottles and is now chilling in the fridge.

When it's nice and cold I'll blast it with some bubbles.

Got the Ginger root from Aldi for £0.31 and the lemon juice from Co-op for £0.61. We had some honey in the house so all in all the ginger beer worked out quite inexpensive to make. At a guess it works out at about £0.60 per litre bottle and that includes the honey and spices.

Christmas Veg!

Down to the plot today to pick some veg to go with Christmas dinner.  Christmas sprouts STILL arent ready yet however there were enough of the earlier ones left for us to pick.  Got two heads of kale, picked the whole plant so it stays fresh through to Christmas day.  Some leeks, only small ones but you pay a fortune for baby leeks in the shop so they look a bit posh!  Little carrots.  And of course, a load of chard for the chickens.  Cold down there today, particularly in the wind but at least the sun was shining.  Couldn't see anyone else down there today, all a bit deserted.

 



 

Hope everyone has a happy Christmas and a successful new year in all their allotment endeavours, best wishes from Jane & Simon xx

GIFTS : Little Bottler & Country Wines by Mary Aylett (1953)

Received two lovely gifts from my Amazon Wish List this week, Thank you so much Emily.

Little Bottler : Product Description (Youngs)

The Little Bottler is designed to swiftly and efficiently fill your bottles from your fermenter. The Little Bottler consists of a dispensing tap which can be used as usual, plus a detachable filling tube. When the filling tube is fitted, inserting it into a bottle will result in the brew flowing and filling the bottle. Taking the bottle away will result in the flow automatically stopping. Ideally this should be used over a drip tray as, inevitably with this sort of product, small drips will occur.

I have one of these on my 25 liter fermenting bucket and they are great, really does make things nice and easy when it comes to filling up your beer bottles. This new one has been fitted to my smaller bucket (15 liters) for when I make my BIAB beers.

COUNTRY WINES MARY AYLETT

Product Description

This a fascinating and informative book on the age-old and delightful rural art of wine-making includes a very extensive collection of recipes for traditional country wines and many absorbing stories about wine-making and wine drinking through the ages. Full of wine making recipes, which include country wines, beer, cider and mead making. A useful book for the amateur wine maker.

London, Odhams Press, 1953 . First edition illustrated by line drawings throughout. Chapters on Raisin and Dried fruit wine, Currant wine, Elderflower and elderberry wine, plum port and beetroot wine, several fruit wines, parsnip and vegetable wines, flower wines, wines from grains, herb wines mead and metheglin, cider and perry and so on. Mrs Aylett hopes that "the book will bring afresh to many the joys of "a simple valuable and once widely practised art, which can be a source of pleasure to all, a wholesome addition to a woefully depleted diet and a new stimulus to a sadly waning hospitality" possibly just as true today as in 1953. 8vo., pp192 

I have already read through this whole book, it reads just like a novel, Even if you don't make home brew it's a great read. There are quite a few things I might make from this old book, but maybe not the wine the Manchus made from the flesh of sheep!!!

Brewday : Elderberry + Mixed fruit wine

Had 1.5kg of frozen elderberries in the freezer taking up space that need to be used for Xmas food, also had a ice-cream tub of allotment mixed fruit, jostaberries, gooseberries, strawberries, black and red-currents, raspberries. Not enough to make much with but came to 0.5kg in weight.

I make Elderberry wine every year and is a favorite of mine for drinking. So I have made it up again but added the 0.5kg of mixed fruit to use it all up.

The Recipe is from How to Make Your Own Drinks: by Susy Atkins page 70.

The only things that have been done different to the book is the addition of the 0.5kg of mixed fruit and I boiled the Frozen elderberries up with the water and mixed fruit for 15mins and added 2tsp of  Pectolase just in case when the Must had cooled to 20'c.

Today I strained the Must onto the sugar in the demijohn for it to ferment out. Used 1/2 a packet of Youngs champagne brewing yeast that I had left over. So I hope these changes don't change the wine to much.

Tasting : Homemade Ginger Wine

Ginger Wine: Reviewed By Jane

As a lover of Stones Ginger wine it was a little courageous of Simon to make me some from scratch.  However, I am more than pleasantly surprised at just how good it is.  I would even go as far to say that I prefer his.

It is lighter and more refreshing and is not as heady as Stones, with a lovely strong ginger tang that warms the stomach and a very pleasant citrus aftertaste.  It certainly is as strong as Stones, one glass is enough to put a little colour in the cheeks and a smile on your face.  Beautiful golden coppery gingery colour as well.  All in all, a great success and one I hope Simon will repeat.

                                    

Recipe was the one on page 31 from Favourite Country Wines and Cordials  and uses 3 oz of root ginger a few lemons and 1lb of rasins and made 4 x 750ml bottles with a bit left over for sampling.

I made this wine on the 12th of August 2013 and was bottled on the 7th of November so it's still a young wine but very good.