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    #26
    Brewing beer

    I used kits from Boots the Chemist to make beer and wine. The results weren't great. The wine seemed to make me spectacularly pissed in minutes only for the effect to wear off shortly afterwards.

    My beer-making went some way to me failing at college (I woke up every day with a blinding headache due - I eventually discovered - to me not having cleaned my beer bucket out properly after using it. Consequently I was breathing in the fumes as I lay asleep in my room).

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      #27
      Brewing beer

      My old man too--he used to go picking wild fruit to make into wine (or if he couldn't be bothered he'd nip down the wholesalers). The wine was okay from what I remember, but it used to take an age to ferment. There were demijohns all over the house, including under my bed and in the bottom of the wardrobe. It was a bastard when you couldn't sleep and all you heard was the glug-glug of the pigging airlocks.

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        #28
        Brewing beer

        The kits I bought were just made up by the beer supply place. They'd send you the recipe with the ingredients, but you could also by the ingredients seperately. I used malt extracts instead of the actual grains. I don't know if that makes a huge difference.

        Either way, I imagine you get what you pay for.

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          #29
          Brewing beer

          I think malt extract is a good compromise. Otherwise you essentially have to germinate a load of barley, which is a bit impractical.

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            #30
            Brewing beer

            In line at the deli today, some guys behind me were talking about brewing and some event they were going to. One guy was talking about how he planned to "ale" some beer and then "lager" it so that it would be sort of a hybrid. He said it would be a little crisper than ale but have more flavor than lager.

            I didn't get how that works, but I was jealous.

            I'd like to really get better at it so I can be creative, but I think the only way to do that would be through constant trial and errors. My main problem is space. My kitchen is so small that I really don't have space to have more than one batch going at a time nor do I have the equipment or wherewithall to buy a lot more equipment and a lot more ingredients. And, like I said, I don't go through beer very fast. I'm trying to cut down on my carbs.

            I wish I had a garage. I don't want a house, just the garage part.

            I went through a bunch of my failed beer by baking into beer bread. That was ok but I still have the hassle of getting the highly pressurized contents into a bowl without spraying beer all over myself and the kitchen.

            I think I'm just going to have to take the case I have left into the shower, close the door, and open them all up and dump them.

            I'm not discouraged, mind. That was my third attempt at making beer and the only failure of the three. But I'm not really "advancing."

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              #31
              Brewing beer

              You can also sterilize the bottles by just baking them (after a good rince) in the oven for a while, and putting the grolsch caps in boiling water (they do come out, right?) That's much more convenient than boiling the bottles. I do it this way for sterilizing glass jars for making berry jams and marmelades.

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                #32
                Brewing beer

                You don't have to boil beer bottles to sterilize them – just wash them normally after you use them, then use chemical sterilizers before you fill the bottle (I used to use either sodium metabisulphate plus citric acid, or proprietary chlorine-based sterilizers).

                But it's the same issue – most beer kits make 25 litres (40 pints), which usually means sterilizing forty pint bottles. Then you have to crown cork them all and then you have to store them somewhere. That was why I was recommending getting a pressure keg.

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                  #33
                  Brewing beer

                  The downside of pressure kegs is that they need somewhere reasonably cool to keep them (whereas of course you can shove a bottle in the fridge).
                  In addition, the colder the temperature, the more carbon dioxide your beer will hold.

                  (I knew all that geeky microbiology and chemistry I did at university would come in handy for something.)

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