CHEAP BEER! or Brew It Yourself

Sunday afternoon and I'm enjoying a glass of Sagres Preta, one of the very good Portuguese brews available now - it's a dry stout, pretty near to bottled Guinness...

Now, to business.  Home brew sounds messy and smelly, and is if you're doing the hallowed Full Mash - boiling the malt, throwing the hops, but not if you use KITS!  This is where the full-mashers go all sniffy, preferring to do everything themselves.  Which they don't.  Some grow their own hops, but maybe two or three grow their own barley, and I'll bet that none of them has sunk his own well.  Or beaten his own vessels out of home-smelted ore. The thing is, somewhere along the line you let someone else, who does it full-time and, so, better, do it for you.  I went once to a barbecue in the mountains of Portugal and ate beef reared by the host and the local butcher between them,  but that was once.  Very tasty it was, too, but there's generally some compromise in cooking or brewing, because we've other things to do.  So, for daily life it's KITS!

STARTING OUT.

Assemble the parts:  find a supplier, and buy the necessary, bin - food grade, so chemicals are guaranteed not to leach out of the plastic, er, that's it to begin with, until you come to get your beer out of the bin.  Your kit and sugar.  You're advised not to buy a cheapie, but if they're that bad no-one would buy a second.  So you buy a cheap one to test the water -  bitter, mild.lager or whatever.  As for the sugar, it'll be the granulated.  Now, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS.   They want you to buy more...  And keep it CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN.  You've a nutritious soup in your bin, yeast is vigorous enough to look after itself, but give it first dibs.  As for the instructions, don't do what my dad did and add double the amount of sugar - a sand-filled sock to the back of the neck is cheaper and it'll taste awful.  The thing is, beer is a balance of sugar, for body, and hops, for aroma.  Adding more sugar brings the sugar to the fore and that sugar will have to taste good;  white sugar is light and neatral, so you need malt or similar for any extra.  Besides, kits are balanced by the experts.  My interference is to, for everyday beer, to add only 1.5 lbs instead of the prescribed 2 lbs or kilo.  Makes for a dryer, hoppier pint and better for a thirst - kits seem to produce a 4.5% pint, which I think is on the stiff side, so 1.5 lbs makes for 3.8%,  bouncy castle stuff.

Wait.  Expect a faint, vaguely farty smell in the kitchen, blame the dog.  You don't need a hydrometer, just wait until  they froth dies down and sample it.  What to put it in?  have you got your pressure barrel?  You're equipped.  As for bottles,  they've got to be strong enough to take pressure, need crown tops and capping tool - or you can use 33cl plstic coke bottles, cost nowt as they come out of bins, light, safe.  Sterilise them, rinse them, prime with a little sugar (fiddly!)  and you're done- except for the siphoning, where a tap is useful about 6" from the end of the tube.  Stick siphon right into the bottle, when you withdraw it displacement gives you the neccessary air space in the bottle.  Worries about spoiling the beer in the light as they're not brown?  Keep them in the dark.  Genius Man strikes.

Anyway, in two weeks or thereabouts you'll have good-enough. cheap beer,  Once you've brewed your first, you'll more or less know the ropes, so you can try pricier kits or do your own tweaking.  Cheers!