So this weekend we finally opened the home-brew beer and it was… quite nice actually. In fact, very nice. Between four of us we got through the best part of seven pints and the empty bottles now stand lined up, waiting for sterilisation so they can be used again.
We’d been very doubtful about opening the first one in company and had planned on having a private tasting session in advance of the weekend’s festivities. We also bought three emergency bottles from the supermarket just in case it was a complete disaster. When we’d been bottling it up, we had both got some in our mouths from the syphon tube and it was the bitterest, most foul tasting liquid ever to come from anything other than a medicine bottle. We were sure we must have done something wrong.
In the end, though, another month of conditioning in the bottles did them the world of good. Each one had been topped up with a teaspoon of sugar to feed the yeast and we were left with a light golden-brown liquid, smooth and barely fizzy, and perfectly refreshing.
So we’ve proclaimed the beer-making a success, and although we have plenty left to uncap and drink we’re already planning for fruit-blended varieties for the next batch.
Looking back on the calculations we did when we bottled it, the seven pints we drunk cost us 17p each, or a grand total of £1.19. That’s about a third of a pint in a London pub.
In metric, it’s about 36p per litre, which makes for simpler comparisons. Taking Sainsbury’s prices as generally representative, Adnams Explorer works out at £3.18 per litre, Badget Fursty Ferret at £3.06 per litre, London Pride Ale at £3.38 per litre and Newcastle Brown Ale at £3.05 per litre. That’s an average of £3.17 a litre, or a little under nine times the cost of our own home brew.
So on a self-sufficiency front, home brewing is very much worth the effort. It’s easy, fun, and massively cheaper than buying from the shops. And as a bonus, we all woke up clear-headed the next morning.
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beer, home+brewing, self sufficiency, self+sufficiency
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