Homebrew Kits

Alcohol is not cheap. Not if you buy it from shops ready made that is. An average bottle of bottom of the range wine will probably set you back a fiver, and a bottle of beer will easily cost you a couple of quid, probably more. As we approach Christmas, a season when people seem to imbibe rather more than normal, everyone is probably feeling the pinch a little more. There is another way.

I'm stocking up for christmas now; 30 bottles of wine, and 40 pints of beer. If I were to walk into my local 'offie' or Supermarket, that'd cost me maybe £100 for the wine, and £50 for the beer, as long as there were some decent offers. So lets call it £150 for the lot. I can't afford that.
What I am going to do is get the 30 bottles of wine, and 40 pints of beer and I'm going to spend less that 40 quid. And it's easy. Home Brew Kits.

I've made kits before, and while some brewers would probably turn their nose up at them I see absolutely no shame in it. After all it's basically extract or juice concentrate brewing. Don't get me wrong, without serious outlay you aren't going to get a vintage bottle of wine or an artisan crafted beer. But you do get a quite satisfactory tasting bottle of whatever you brew for a fraction of the cost of the equivalent shop bought drink. The 2 kits I am using are about as bottom of the range as I can find. The beer kit cost me £15 and the wine kit cost me £20. Add in £4 for 5kg of sugar and that's change from £40, with 500g sugar left over.

If you want to have a go and you've never brewed before, there will be another cost, which is the equipment. This isn't going to break the bank, they sell complete kits for around £20, but in fairness a barrel and spoon and a syphon are about all you need to brew from a kit, and you should be able to pick those up for between £10-£15. Add this one time outlay to your first brew total and you'll still be quids in.

The premise of both of the kits above, and in fact for any of these varieties of kits is very similar. Empty the "wet" contents of the kit into a large barrel, add boiling water and sugar, top up with cold water, add yeast and leave for 1-2 weeks. Stabilise and clear the contents of the barrel (for wine), bottle and leave for a week or so and it's ready to drink.
I'll admit that as someone who brews quite regularly I find sections of the instructions frustrating. The first 3 steps of the instructions which were INSIDE the kit told you what to do before you openened the packet. Not an issue if you don't open it before you're ready to start. I've never taken a temperature reading as they seem to think you must (probably to sell you a thermometer). In fact between a thermometer and a hydrometer I know what I'd choose. The little irks I have though are not in any way major, and the instructions are clear and concise enough for anyone to follow.

These are my 2 barrels just before the lids go on, wine on the left and beer on the right. The weird "scum" on the surface of the wine is actually wood chips. These was a new one on me for a wine kit so I'm interested to see if it adds anything extra to the flavour of the finished product.

I'll update on how these turn out just before Christmas when they're ready, but I wanted to get this post up now and throw the gauntlet down to anyone who wants to save a few pennies at Christmas. These kits come in all shapes, sizes, colours and flavours, so whatever your preference there will be a kit to match. Given that they are for sale in a lot of supermarkets nowadays you should be able to source one quickly. I'd love to hear from anyone who decides to give it a go. And if not for Christmas, maybe New Year!

An Almost Rant and Excitement

Foraging is about so much more than simply finding food for free. Granted this is a large part of it; the tastes and textures you can experience from food which isn't available in any shops is hard to describe. The incredible selection of mushrooms, wild greens, berries, fruit, flowers and nuts, from the simple blackberry picked and popped into your mouth as you walk past a bush, through a simple dish of mushrooms on toast, to the painstakingly prepared feasts incorporating special ingredients and cooking techniques, there is a feast waiting in the wild larder on everyone's doorstep.
I am still a beginner, and it will be years before I could consider foraging as a way of replacing a fair number of my meals, but it's not about that for me. I have the small allotment plot to put less shop bought produce on my family's plates, and I aim to increase the size of the plot as a means towards self sufficiency. From a pure food point of view, foraging supplements this with variety and tastes from select meals, alcohol, preserves etc.

For me, foraging is not just about feeding the body. It is about connecting with the world around us again, to learn to respect our surroundings and appreciate what we can take, in moderation, from nature as our ancestors did. While I am still a beginner when it comes to foraging, I am learning more each season. Little by little my knowledge will grow, but I don't see the process as aiming to know everything. It is about the journey of learning new things. If you continue to read this blog you'll see me find things for the first time and hopefully share in some of my joy. (as below). You'll also see me fail to find things which I have before (I have no idea where my Wood Blewitts are this year!).

So the above may sound a bit ranty, maybe even slightly hippy-ish. Hopefully neither. But what brought it about was the realisation that when I go out foraging, I probably don't even gather a tenth of what is around me. The reason for this: I go with my family!
My intention is to keep this blog, as far as I can manage it to the 3 main hobbies I have and not about my family, hence it's name, "Brew Forage Grow".
But in this one post I will make the exception, and if you can see that it is possible to have a full time job in an office and 2 young kids at home yet still make time to get out into the world around you, to cultivate a plot (even just a quarter plot like I have) and even brew some alcohol to enjoy in the downtime then I'll feel like I've added to this world.

I have a long suffering wife and 2 beautiful little girls, currently 1 and 2.5 years old. A trip out to the forest means we generally take a pushchair, restricting our movements to the main paths for the most parts. It can often involve a backpack carrier as well, restricting my movements even further with the eldest on my back.


I can almost sense the mushooms sat off the path, mocking me as I pass blindly by. Occasionally I venture off the path, often with my eldest daughter, normally returning to the "look" from the wife who was left on the path with the pushchair.
This happened at the weekend. I knew "the look" was waiting for me back at the path when I darted into a LMLP. That's a Likely Mushroomy Looking Patch. Then I started grinning. And I did a little dance. With a 2.5 year old strapped to my back like this:

The reason for my joy? The reason for the jig? I found my first ever Winter Chanterelles or Trumpet Chanterelles depending who you talk to (Cantharellus tubaeformis). I know they taste good, I tried them once on a mushroom walk I went on with John Rensten, but I'd never found them on my own. Maybe I'd passed them by many times, it's hard to say as they are almost exactly the same colour as the leaf litter they inhabit.

After that excitement I stuck to the path with the family, and just before we turned back, happened upon a couple of birch boletes

So when we got back to the car we had a couple of boletes and a couple of handfuls of winter chanterelles in the basket. By no means close in size to the hauls you often see on foraging blogs from people who have been doing this for years.

What you can't however see in the basket, is the fun we had as a family and the memories we are hopefully building for the girls as they grow up. You can't see the excitement I felt finding a new species of mushroom for the first time, or the connection with the outdoors we all get from just being outside. That is why foraging is about so much more than food. That is why foraging is about more than just what is in my basket when I get home. The memories and family time are the most valuable things I can take from my surroundings, and I wouldn't swap them for even the biggest basket of foraged goods.

Rowan Racking and a Book Review

Over the last couple of weeks the constant rains of October seems to have died down, there is a freshness in the air from the glorious sunshine mixing with a November chill, and I haven't been able to enjoy any of it as I've been ill. Joy. What I have been able to do while I've been out of action though is catch up on some reading.
And carry on with the rowan wine.

The wine (water) was strained off the must into a demijohn, sugar syrup, citric acid and yeast added and it's now bubbling away. It's also probably the nicest colour of any wine I've made at this stage, a glorious pinky peachy haze. I'm hoping it keeps some of this beauty as it clears.

As for the book, it's Booze, by John Wright, which happens to be his fourth River Cottage Handbook and the 12th in the series. I have to admit to owning the entire collection, and his Mushroom, Edible Seashore and Hedgerow books are all looking more worn in my collection than quite a few of the others.

So what of Booze? Is my copy of this one going to end up worn and dog eared from use or looking new but relegated to propping up the bookshelf? Now I've had the chance to read through it I can happily say the former. The tone of the book is exactly as I had hoped from John's previous writings. It has a steady pace throughout, and delves into considerably more detail than simply a list of recipes. The detail however, is presented in a mix of lessons, stories and good humour making it both educational, interesting and fascinating at the same time.
I have been brewing since around 2010, mainly country wines and infusions, but I have learned as much from this book as I probably did over those last 3 years. I had always known the hows, but never really known the whys. Maybe this is because I gloss over the moment I start reading a paragraph of technical terminology, or couldn't focus my attention long enough to take in all the information, but this book has remedied that. Not only this, but it's re-kindled my desire to experiment a little more with my concoctions. Not just to follow recipes but go off-piste (and occasionally off pissed) with my brews, which should be easier now I understand how each component affects the other. But I digress.

The book is broken into 5 sections; The Principles, Infusions, Wine, Cider and Beer, with a small directory in the back of links to useful sites.
The principles take a look at each stage of the general "brewing" process which covers the 4 main sections of the book, has a decent list of the terms used and a handy brewing calender. The calender seems to give a nod towards the previous Hedgerow book and nods at John's interest in foraging many of the ingredients used in the brews from the first 3 sections.

The book has plenty of images running throughout, both detailed photographs and hand drawn pictures, all of which I believe are provided by John himself. Whilst the drawings themselves won't win any art prizes, they do the job of visually explaining a task better than a "posed" photograph in my opinion. I will also admit to having a chuckle at one of them. If you get a copy of this book or have one, turn to page 182 and tell me that's not a drawing of John, by John, straining the mash.

I won't delve into each section in detail, as the actual content is pretty self explanatory from their headers. However they do all follow a similar pattern; an introduction of the general techniques which will be used, a guide on the equipment required, and a look at anything which can go wrong.
I will be revisiting these many times until I don't need to, and certainly trying a few of the recipes out from each section, some of which I'm sure will appear on this blog.

For more information on the author, John has a website at www.wild-food.net and I'm sure the book itself is available from all good retailers (or as I bought it, direct from the man himself if you're lucky enough to attend any of his walks).

A Pretty Good Day

Some days are just good days. Originally the plan was to bottle the pumpkin beer and strain elderflower cordial that i've been making from elderflowers gathered earlier in the year and frozen. I managed to strain the cordial:

Found a couple of bay boletes and a massive cep which i've cut into thin slices and are drying for storage:

But best of all, was the free chicken coop with run that I picked up from freecycle. It was dismantled and collected in the dark, but the picture below shows the exact type of coop. I've wanted chickens for a long time, but initial start up costs have got in the way. We've been saving to hopefully get a coop and chickens next spring, looks like we'll be able to. And the money we've saved can be spent on a bigger run for the chooks.

As for bottling the pumpkin beer, there's always tomorrow

Wild Chug and Rowan Wine

This post was originally going to be the first part of my acorn coffee adventure which I started yesterday, but needs must and the wild hop brew needed to be bottled today. Well yesterday actually but who's counting? This will be a short and sweet little post so I can keep track of what's starting when. And if you get some enjoyment out of it, even better.
There are loads of ways to sterilise bottles, but I tend to fill a brewing bucket with Milton Sterilising Fluid (other sterilising fluids are available) and submerge the bottles. 15 minutes later I have sterile bottles and a barrel full of sterile liquid. Rather than waste it, I siphoned it out into 3 demijohns so I could rack the scrumpy I started a few weeks back, and was left with a sterilised barrel which I decided to start my Rowan wine in. I don't make things easy for myself!

So the wild chug is bottled; I'll provide some fantastic pictures of what will amount to, um, bottles, when I finish the pumpkin beer tomorrow. I don't want people too excited at too many posts with pictures of bottles.

The 15litres of my first ever attempt at scrumpy cider is now sat in 3 demijohns to ferment out.

And the Rowan wine must is sat, smelling slightly dodgy which I've read is normal, in a barrel doing it's thing. I had these Rowan berries in my freezer waiting to be used, but there may be enough time still to pick some if you fancy giving it a go.

It doesn't matter what angles you try, a barrel with a kg of Rowan berries and some water in it just doesn't look exciting. See:

Rowan Wine

• 1kg Rowan berries
• 2 oranges
• 2 litres boiling water
• 1.5kg sugar
• 2 teaspoons dried yeast

• Pick the berries when ripe, remove stalks, wash and place in brewing bucket
• Cover wtih the boiling water and leave for 4 days, stirring daily
• Strain in to demijohn
• Make up sugar syrup with sugar and 750ml water
• Pour into demijohn with rind and juice from the oranges
• Start the yeast and add to the wine
• Leave for 4 months
• Rack and leave for another 6 months, then bottle

Apparently this wine clears quickly but needs a long time before it becomes drinkable. Lets see if it was worth it in a year!

Mushrooms and a celebrity

For my sins, I work for a major multinational organisation. My days are spent sat at a desk, basking under artificial lighting, tinny air conditioned oxygen pumped around me and my head buried in a computer screen. Not exactly my dream job, but it keeps a roof over my head and supports the family. It does however, occasionally have it's perks.
For the second year running, they have organized a fungi foray around the grounds with John Wright. Ok, so "celebrity" might be pushing it slightly. I should probably just say "that guy who's occasionally on the telly and has published some books".
I've had the pleasure of attending several foraging courses with John at the Kingcombe Centre, and he's an absolute pleasure to listen to. His impressive knowledge is imparted with humor and plenty of random stories, and the brief hour the foray around work allowed was much too short.
We did however find an impressive array of mushrooms on the work grounds, including several edibles: Shaggy Inkcap, Shaggy Parasol, Cep, Clouded Agaric, Honey Fungus, Beefsteak Fungus, Deceiver and Snowy Waxcap from memory. Most of these weren't new to me (only the last 2 in fact), as I regularly walk the grounds and surrounding areas looking for edibles in a lunch hour, and had even stopped doing this for a week beforehand to make sure there were mushies left for the walk. What it did provide though was an expert to confirm identification of a couple of mushrooms I'd found (and picked for this exact purpose) the day before from a new spot. It also gave me an opportunity to buy John's latest book, The River Cottage Booze Handbook, which I'll cover in another blog post once I've had a read.

Having got confirmation, I returned to the spot today to harvest a few for the pot (or should I say pan).

Please meet, for the first time for me at least.....

The Trooping Funnel 

And the Common Yellow (or Ochre) Brittlegill

I am not going to put identification guides up on this blog (at least for now), as there are much much much better sources than my random ramblings. Not only that, but I'd be worried for your safety if you relied on one blog as a mushroom guide. I've found many edible mushroom species in the 3-4 years since I started foraging. However I've eaten a lot fewer than I've found, mainly because even a 1% uncertainty is too high a risk to take.

There are old foragers, and there are bold foragers. There is no such thing as an old, bold forager.

A Ghostly Glug and a Wild Chug.......Eventually

Without so much as a fanfare or an introduction, here it begins.

Most of the home brew I have made in the last couple of years has been either country wines or infusions, with the only real dabbling in beer being from home brew kits. A few months ago however I bought a tin of malt extract from a home brew shop. I don't know why, I had no use for it back then, but I guess the "kid in a sweetshop" syndrome kicked in. And anyway, it lasts for ages.

Fast forward a few months, and the wild hops I foraged last year are completely dried and ready to use, and the pumpkins we carved for Halloween either need to be used ASAP or thrown away. As luck would have it, I found a recipe for the hops, and a separate recipe for the pumpkin, both requiring malt extract.

So tonight I got stuck in and made both together

Before I begin, here's the last pic of the pumpkins in all their ghastly, ghoulish, ghostly glory. I'm already hoping they taste as good as they look

And here they are looking less scary with the remaining ingredients required. I only had wine yeast, but what's the worst that can happen!!

I'm just going to put the recipes below and leave it at that. There is more than enough time to go through the hows, the who's, the what's and the why's when it's not half past midnight on a work day!

Ghostly Glug (Pumpkin Beer) 

• 2kg pumpkin
• 1kg malt extract
• 750g sugar
• 13 litres water
• Ale Yeast  

 

• Chop the pumpkin and roast for 20 mins at 200c/gas mark 6. Allow to cool then scoop the pulp out.
• Bring 7 litres of water to the boil, throw in the pulp and boil for 30 minutes.
• Pour the malt extract and sugar into fermentation bin and stir to mix.
• Strain the pumpkin liquid into the bin and stir to ensure sugar has dissolved.
• Pour remaining 6 litres of cold water over wort.
• When cooled to room temperature pitch the yeast.
• Seal the bin and leave for a week or until fermented.
• Siphon into bottles, leave for 10 days, then drink.

Wild Chug

• 0.5 litre hops
• 225g malt extract
• 225g sugar
• Yeast
• 4.5 litres water

• Bring 4.5 litres water to the boil, add the hops and boil for 15 minutes
• Strain into a fermentation bin and mix in the malt extract and sugar
• When cooled to room temperature pitch the yeast
• Leave for 5 days
• Siphon into bottles, leave for 10 days to 2 weeks, then drink

So hopefully by Christmas I'll be able to report back on how these brews turns out. I'll cover brewing in more detail in subsequent posts for anyone curious too.