I used to brew my own beer when I lived in England. I started off with the raw ingredients and a starter bottle for the yeast. Then along came the ‘Kits’ so much easier but not the best way to make your own individual special brew. I soon found that I had many new friends to help me drink it!
That was a long time ago. Brewing in England was easy because the house had an ‘Airing Cupboard’ and central heating so it was easy to keep the correct temperatures during all the processes. I quickly learnt that if you put more sugar in the brew then the amount you had to drink before the nose went numb was very little. When I moved to the Countryside and Real Ale took off I stopped brewing my own.
When I moved to Australia we did not have an ‘Airing Cupboard’ so I used a temperature controlled heating element. I quickly decided that bottling was a time consuming process. I changed to using 2 x 5 gallon plastic barrels, the sort you can pressurise.
My method was to have one brew ready and then start the next. At completion of the brewing process when the beer was clear and ready to bottle I would just add a teaspoonful of sugar and seal the barrel, oh and I forgot to say the barrel had a tap. A couple more days then I would start to drink 2 pints a day and add one more teaspoon of sugar each day, this provided just enough CO2 to keep the barrel pressurised. Any more that 2 pints and the beer would not be under enough pressure.
Well I moved 15 years ago from metropolis to small farm, ‘she who must be obeyed’ would go spacko if I brewed in doors. We have a big tin shed with a mud floor and every type of creepy crawler in residence (Spiders and the occasional snake). In the summer temperatures get into the 40C region and in winter down to Zero. So I would need a temperature controlled room or cabinet in the shed. I have all the brewing tackle and one day I may start to brew again.
One trick I did find when I first came to Australia, I used to drink ‘Coopers Sparkling Ale’ it used to have a live yeast and I could get it to re-start by adding sugar! I would re-brew to make a much stronger brew. The laws changed here some years back and all beer has to be pasturised to kill the yeast so that option no longer exists. We do have the Coopers Kits in the supermarkets here so maybe I will get brewing again soon. In the mean time I have to limit my beer to a few of the English imported cask beers, Tetleys, Old Speckled Hen, Abbott Ale, Boddingtons etc. Although the last two have not been on tap for a while now. Well time for a bottle of Coopers Mild Ale.
Tony.