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home brew.

does it really taste good... or is it just alcoholic and cheap?

Bizarre question I know... but as people are putting time and energy... and water! into making the stuff... is it really as good as it sounds?

I have had some good stuff.. the barley wine that Stonehead made was very nice indeed... so I'm not tarring all with the same brush... BUT...


Honest answers only please.

Everything I ahve ever tasted (with notable exception of theaforementione d Barley wine) has tasted like cats pee.

Except the treacle ale we made. Which tasted worse.

it's all cat's pee! - even the commercial stuff! - let's be honest, it's utterly ghastly - all this rhubarb about bouquet - the stuff gets you plastered - all the rest is justification of a drug habit!

*splutters tea all over the place* Oi! Oi! Just because you're no good at making homebrew doesn't mean you can badmouth it!

Right. Generally my wine is... acceptable. Not cat's pee by any means, but probably no better than a mid-range commercial wine. Now and again though, I knock a batch out which is accidental genius... such as the buried elderflower wine I mentioned in another thread. I live for those batches, but more than that is the satisfaction that I made this, that it's organic, and that with the exception of the sugar I picked all the fruit myself. It's SS in a bottle.

My beer now, that is cat's pee. I'll admit it. But it's alcoholic and cheap.

My elderflower champagne, on the other hand, is the most sublime drink I have ever tasted, bar nothing. A shame it doesn't keep for long, but then it never gets the chance!

The majority of mine is very good - comes with the practice of 19 years, I suppose. I make wines, meads, metheglin, liqueurs, beer, cider, cyser,elderflower champagen,e tc. The one I have never ahd success with is marrow wine - tastes like old socks smell, so don;t bother with that. Pleasant surprises have been watercress, Seville orange and lime and the teabag wines, made from herbal tea bags.
All works out very cheap, and f=very satisfying to drink your own, especially from free stuff - foraged/bartered/left on the doorstop in a box type things.
With practice and experience, you can turn out some excellent stuff. In the beginning, I followed recipes, but mostly make up my own now. Storage can become a problem, though, as can keeping it long enough to mature to a decent age

the thing I've never worked out is how people can drink lager - if you've ever tasted it warm (pure cat pee!) - it's probably why you have to drink it cold - to numb the taste buds!

Sacrilege! I prefer real ale myself when I can get it, but for thirst-quenchingness nothing beats a cold lager. I can remember getting ribbed when my friends realised that for my first post-exercise sip I couldn't help but close my eyes to savour it...

My interpretation of Stoney's Treacle Ale was pants.
:tongue2:
However, it was a first venture into the world of homebrew. I suspect that leaving it on the lees too long and a bad (putting it mildly) racking technique didn't help. It hasn't put me off (I've some wine on the go.)

Over the years I've managed to create both ends of the spectrum. But my elderberry fortified with Brandy is beter than ANY other Port type drink I have tasted, can't say the same about one year's potentially-lethal mango wine (could have stripped paint with that!). The best thing to do is keep trying new ones, many people try once with a kit create yuk and stop. I like to brew from produce so you know what's in it- man has been making wine for thousands of years without the access to ingredients, information and advice available today to create your own speciality.Grapes are only one choice available to base a wine on-Great researching the ones that become your favourites!

kind thougths
Deb

Leaving wine on the lees isn't always a disaster - sometime the flavour develops more fully - but leaving beer on the lees is always folly imho.

Hmm ... won't be making that mistake again!

My parents knock up a good giner wine.

MY nettle beer was pants as too much yeast, will give it another bash soonish. Ciderish recipe was a bit too sweet, however if you make proper cider than that can really nice and knock your socks off too.

HOmebrew beer - Made a batch of ale and added honey in the last bit of fermentaion instead of sugar and that stuff is pretty nice. In fact I will now commit scralidge in Martins eyes by stating that I don't really like ales. I have tried, I DO like my own though.

To stick up for largers then some of the german ones are fantastic Berliner is definelty one of my favorites but to be fair most german larger is much nicer than some of the brands we get over here. If you have only ever tried Harp (orginal not Irish), XXXX, Carling black label or even special brew, tennants super and other UK strong largers then frankly you would think that Larger is awful.

I've only tasted one GOOD homemade wine and that was yonks ago. It was white, that's all I remember. A friend of mine had a brother in law who made the best wine ever, with rocket fuel amounts of alchohol to match. Didn't need much either to get the desired effect. AND....no hangover...amazingly!

All the other stuff was vile...my ex's grandparents used to make gallons of it and send it to us. We took it gracefully and poured it down the loo. The bowl came up sparkling like new!

glenniedragon wrote:But my elderberry fortified with Brandy is beter than ANY other Port type drink I have tasted, can't say the same about one year's potentially-lethal mango wine (could have stripped paint with that!).

You put brandy in it too? My elderberry comes out at around 14 degrees, which is fortified-wine territory already! I've tried lower alcohol recipes, but it ends up being a bit thin and hit-and-miss. The thought of adding MORE alcohol...

Its lovely! honest, I use a half bottle between 2 demijohns at the bottling stage. I gave a bottle to a friend without warning her about the extra, she opened it up when she was at her sisters house and had to put her dog on the lead to make sure she got home! It really does taste better than any port, is'nt that just fortified red wine? I make sure people know what to expect from the bottle now, just to be safe.

kind thoughts
Deb