I enjoyed this so much last time and I’m on a real roll today what with bottling the cider and working on the elderberry wine I figured I’d keep it going and kick off another one, I still have hundreds of empty bottles to fill

Well this is the first time I decided not to sterilise the bottles to AAVE a bit of time. More fool me as this beer tastes awful. I’m pretty sure it’s not the fault of the kit as the beer tastes like burnt tyres, it’s barely drinkable as a shandy so I’ll leave it a little longer and see if it improves but if not it’s down the sink
So lesson well and truly learned always sterilise!
No rating due to user error

We have been drinking more wine recently but all of it has come from the supermarket. I decided to make my own after previous kits worked out quite well, whereas all the homemade stuff (except the plum wine) has ended up down the sink. Afte almost following the instructions properly it seems ok so now I just need to wai for it to clear. Apparently the whole process should take 7 days and then it’s ready to drink. I might give it a little longer than that though

I thought I’d try something different and brew some cider. Ideally I’d like to do this using fresh fruit but I started with this kit. The instructions where the same as a beer kit which involved dissolving the tin of wort, adding sugar and yeast before leaving for a week. After the week I adde the sachet of pear flavouring which smelt a lot like pear drop sweets (not too sure about this for flavouring). Anyway the taste was relatively fresh but the cider was pretty cloudy, think traditional cider rather than Bulmers or Magners. Bottled with green cap.

Kicked off another stout I received from my parents or my birthday. I bottled it a couple weeks back so it should be good for Christmas.
Red top

Well I have been here a couple hours with my wife and 4 month old son. Freddie has loved every minute even though he’s still a little under age to sample the wares. There are 53 beers to sample and 10 varieties of cider. I started sampling on an empty stomach and have to conceed that these beers blow the socks off my homebrew. After sampling 8 of the west country beers my top 3 are as follows:
Keystone – Gold spice ginger beer (nice and light with the Ginger only kicking in on the after taste)
Country life – black boar porter (a lovely sweet smoth porter)
Keltek – king (a light refreshing golden ale perfect for an all day session)
End result pleased real ale is still available even though the event was mainly attended by oap’s! Join CAMRA to ensure we don’t lose our real ales. Apparently 8 in 10 beers sold in the uk are from a major brewery I.e. Piss poor lager. What a shame to lose a great tradition. The event was a massive success and runs all weekend. Very freindly people a great atmosphere and only £2.40 for a real beer 5 stars!

This was a very tasty beer. It wasn’t as thick and dark as a stout which is what I expected. Instead it was full flavoured like a stout but had the consistency of an ale. It was sweet and very refreshing, a very good alternative to other ales.

Docklands Porter homebrew rating:

Pale Ales are one of my favourite beers but I haven’t brewed one so far this year. I have previously brewed the Munton’s pale ale which was very good, but this time I fancied trying something new. The Brewmaker pack was pretty standard with 2 tins of wort and a sachet of yeast, so simple to start brewing.

After transferring the docklands porter to the keg for secondary fermentation (tasted great already with real malted flavour) I started another brew straight away. I have 1 bottle homebrew left it’s disgraceful so it’s time to get stocked up again. I really loved the colne valley last time so I thought it a safe bet this time round. Standard procedure with a good soak for the hop bag as I’m sure this is part the reason the brupaks kits turn out so well.

I first thought porter was like stout but after reading the description it sounds a lot lighter as it was used for refreshing the dock workers. The syrup was dark and thick so maybe it will be like stout. strength is 4.6%