Homebrew update

I have decided to write a blog to update a few of the brews I have going at the minute. I currently have a batch of cider, elderberry wine, blackberry wine and my batch of porter I wrote a blog about a few days ago.

Homemade demijohn

First off is the cider I started brewing in late October. Once the fermentation had run its course, which took about a week I moved the cider from the fermenters into demijohns. I have a few demijohns which my dad had from his wine making days. I needed more for this batch of cider though so I used some 5 litre water bottles to make my own demijohns.

The cider went into these under airlock to allow them to ferment out without the dead yeast cells and general sludge left after the first fermentation, affecting the flavour. I stored the bottles beside a radiator to allow them to ferment out all the sugars so I could then store them without fear of the bottles exploding.

Cider transfered into the demijohns

Lined up beside the radiator

Once the bubbles had stopped coming through the airlocks I knew fermentation was finished. I then waited for the cider to clear. For this they need somewhere cool. I moved them away from the radiator and they cleared in about 2 weeks.

Cleared cider

Once clear I moved them to the attic. They will be kept cool there and they will age for a few months. I had a sneaky taste and it was very bitter. This may lessen with aging. If it doesn't mellow by the spring I will sweeten the cider using an unfermentable sugar. I had expected the cider to be quite bitter as I used mostly cooking apples so I am not too worried about that.


Next up are the blackberry and elderberry wines which I started in early October. After 4 days both wines were strained and transfered into demijohns to finish fermenting without the fruit and pulp. They both bubbled away for a few days in the demijohns. I'm not sure quite how long as I left them to ferment and clear for about a month. When I came back to check them I had two very different results.

The blackberry wine had stopped fermenting before all the sugars had turned to alcohol. This left me with a "wine" with about 7% alcohol and it was very sweet. This is a problem with some brews known as a stuck fermentation. It has a few fixes like shaking up the brew, adding yeast nutrient and moving to a warm place. I tried all these and it had little or no effect. Sometimes fermentation stops due the high level of alcohol killing off the yeast. I had a packet of Turbo Yeast. It says it can ferment up to 20% alcohol so I have added that to the wine to see if it can ferment out the last of the sugar and give me a 13% wine with no sugar left. It is quite expensive as yeast goes. I think it cost 6 euro or so.  Finger crossed it gets the job done.

The elderberry wine was much more successful. I tested a sample of the wine and it had zero sugar left in it. The percentage alcohol is about 12%. I had a sneaky taste (as I like to) and it was nice. A bit like a light red wine. Apparently elderberries have a lot of tannins in them which benefit from aging. So going by that reasoning the wine should improve with time in the bottle. That's if it lasts that long. I transfered it into wine bottles and put plastic stoppers into them. I was considering blending some of it with the blackberry wine so I haven't put proper corks in the bottles yet. Having tasted it I will definitely want to keep some unblended to age so I will be putting proper corks in some of these bottles.

That's most of the homebrew taken care of. Today I took a sample of the porter and it has pretty much fermented out and cleared so it will be ready to bottle soon. I also had a sneaky taste (have you noticed a pattern?) and it tasted lovely. Not just as a homebrew, it tasted like a good craft beer. So I am feeling optimistic about this batch. I will put up a post about bottling it when the time comes.

Until Then.

Porter Brewing

My brewing delivery

Nothing says Christmas like a nice pint of porter. So I have decided for the second year in a row to try and brew my own. (The less said about last year's batch the better) I bought a part grain brewing kit online and after my Pilsner success a few months ago decided to give it a go again this year.


The kit I bought involves steeping some grains in warm water for a while and then adding some malt extract to create the wort. This is somewhere between extract brewing, in which you add boiling water to a syrup and add yeast and away you go, and all grain brewing in which you use a large quantity of grain soaked in water to create the wort without any extract being used.


First things first I set my grains to steep in the water as in the instructions. I added a little more water to make sure the grains were covered. That just meant I would add a little less water later. I left this for about an hour and poured the mixture into my brewing pot.

The soaking grains

The liquid added to the brew pot

I then added my 2 cans of extract into the brew pot and topped the pot up with cold water. The kit was to be made up to 25 litres but my pot can only hold about 20 litres without boiling over so it meant this batch will be smaller than it could have been. A new brewing pot/kettle is being planned but more about that when I have worked out what I am going to do.

Adding the malt extract

Topped up with water

Once topped up with water I then turned on the gas stove and waited for the mixture (wort) to come to the boil. I but a brewing thermometer into the mix to monitor the temperature to see how it was going. It wasn't rising very quickly so all I could do is wait, and wait . .

The waiting game

And wait . . .

After about 40 mins with had a rolling boil. This is another reason I want a new brew kettle as this takes way to long to come the boil.

Adding the hops

Once the boil started I set my timer for an hour and did a little more waiting. After 15 minutes I added the first batch of hops. I then waited until 45 minutes into the boil to add a whirfloc tablet. This tablet helps in the clearing of the final beer if I remember correctly. And then just as the boil comes to an end I then added the second batch of hops. The earlier hops add a bitterness to the beer and the later addition adds flavour and aroma to the beer.

After boiling it is important to cool the beer as quickly as possible so bacteria has less time to get in and spoil things. There is a special piece of equipment which is basically a coil of copper pipe which you run cold water through to cool it but since I don't have one of those I improvised a cold water bath to cool it. It worked reasonably well but I think I will have to stick a length of copper pipe and some fittings onto the shopping list along with the brew kettle if I am going to do this more often.

Improvised cold water bath with icepacks

Once the mixture had cooled I then siphoned off the mixture into my fermenter. You want to do this without getting the hops through the siphon. Again I improvised, with a sieve to stop the coming through. Proper equipment, shopping list, you know the story at this stage. I then added the yeast and let the brew ferment out.

About 5 days later once the vigourous brewing had finished I transfered the porter into my new glass carboy. This stage is to allow for the beer to settle and clear (sounds stupid for a dark beer but I cant think of another word for it). You don't want to do this in the original fermenter as the dead yeast cells can impart a bad flavour.

Fermenter and Carboy

I then put an airlock on the carboy and left it to clear in a cool place.

Once this has cleared I will bottle it and give it a 2 or 3 weeks in the bottle before tasting. Possibly at our family Christmas Eve get-together. I will post another blog here when I am doing the bottling.  **here is the update on bottling the porter**  I also have an update on the blackberry and elderberry wines and the cider to post but that will have to wait because I have to go to work. I should have the update blog up in the next few days.

Until then.