Welcome to YoBrew

tommorow Jam makers needed to help check out the latest addition to Peter's spreadsheet calculator. Peter is in the process of adding jam making to the spread sheet and we are looking for some early users of this spreadsheet to try it out and provide us feed back. The role of the beta users is completely voluntary and informal. If you are interested in becoming a beta user please Email:     Do drop us a line	Site map Free Beer and Wine Calculators Glossary of terms Latest Bargains
Taking home brewing seriously Looking at the USA you see some very top of the range equipment. Not just a bucket and siphon tube for them. Top quality stainless steel conical fermenters. I would struggle to justify the purchase of one of these but I must say they do seem very good. It seems so convenient. No racking to remove the brew from the sediment (lees), No you just turn on the tap at the bottom and the sediment is removed. I think these are aimed in the states for beer brewing but I would want it for wine as I am sure that when I siphon my wine to separate it from the old sediment that's  where I can allow too much access to oxygen. I know campden tables sort this out but if you rack wine for the second time its hard to know how much campden tablet to add as you need to know the SO2 concentration. But I think all of this is avoided with a conical fermenter. Which is the way commercial wine makers do things. The above conical fermenters is available at. http://www.beertech.co.uk/   Anyhow brewing at home is fun because you do not need expensive equipment. When I win the lotto I will get one for sure.     Water less fermentation lock I just stumbled on a neat fermentation lock. If you have an unused PC mouse with one of those rubber coated balls then do not throw it out the ball makes an excellent water free fermentation lock. I took the rubberised ball and placed it on top of a 2 litre ex-plastic lemonade bottle. The ball was large enough not to fall in and since the ball is coated in rubber and is heavy the seal is very good. When fermentation produces CO2 the CO2 builds up a small pressure and in little bursts the CO2 escapes without the air getting in. Normal fermentation locks can let some air in if the fermentation has stopped and the temperature drops. In this situation gas inside contracts and effective sucks new air in. The ball acts as a very good one way valve. It only allows gas to escape and does not allow air to get in. So you could do the whole brew in an ex-plastic lemonade bottle and just put a mouse ball on top of the bottle neck. I will experiment a bit more with this and report back on how it works out.   YoBrew Introduction We brew because its fun and the outcome is far superior to the stuff in the shops. For less than ten pounds you get 40 pints of strong, good quality ale.  While brewing beer is quick and easy, wine making from a kit or grape juice takes a little longer. If you need it quick then stick with beer or try an instant wine. Homemade country wine is a bit more challenging and of course pleasing when you succeed. Wine in the UK is often done as country wines and is just about free. I do hear from brewers that say country wine is easy. For me its been a bit hit and miss. Sometime I get exactly what I should but how do I know if I am going to like elderberry wine unless I try it. I would say a rough guide to home wine making. If you can go into a super market and randomly select a wine and probably like it then you are in with a good chance of liking your own brew. If your pallet demands a particular grape by a particular company then stick with that. The same principal applies to beer / lager. If you only like a bud then I guess drinking home brew which is of course far superior but it may not be for you. There is one thing for sure with home brewing and that is lots of people do it and for a wide variety of reasons.     The Home Brew Centre, Keynsham near Bristol This well known shop now has a very extensive on-line shop. www.homebrewcentre.co.uk Alternatively, call  0117 986 8568 or pop in Home Brew Centre 37 High Street Keynsham BRISTOL BS31 1DS   A big move for Essex homebrew A big move for "The home brew shop" at Holland on sea. Andy and Lynda have moved from the indoor market to their new shop. Which I think looks pretty good. THE HOME BREW SHOP, 4-6 FRINTON ROAD, HOLLAND ON SEA, ESSEX. CO15 5UL. TEL: 01255 814141   www.thehomebrewshop.im-t.co.uk It is well worth a visit the have a very good range so if you are in the area do pop in.	NEWS Quality ready made wine £2.67 a bottle My home brew wine stock was depleted. 30 bottles brewing but not ready for a few months when I saw an offer for 15 bottles of good quality Australian wine from Laithwaites. The world wines 4 seasons offer works out cheaper 15 bottles of quality wine at £2.67 per bottle + 5.99 P&P. I went for the Australian offer. I have used Laithwaites before and have been pleased with the quality of their reds. The parcel arrived today. Just what are the Australians up to? The boxer red is 15%. Not everyone is keen on the rapid increase in alcohol that seems to be happening to wines today but I like my wine 13% plus and I look forwards to opening the boxer red. The other wines in the parcel are between 13% and 14.5%.  The offer signs you up to a quarterly 12 bottle arrangement that is not quite as cost effective. You can request to skip quarters or simply cancel the arrangement. Last time I went for the 15 bottle world wines 4 seasons offer and only bought the quarters that looked good to me and in addition I bought a few specials offers they sent out. When my home brew stocks caught up  I canceled the arrangement with a simple, no hassle phone call. Clearly they want me back and sent me the 15 bottle Australian offer. So "I'm back". They have also extended this offer to my friends. All the world are my friends so please feel free to take up this offer if it appeals to you. If you are interested in the Laithwaits UK offer Call 0870 444 8282 Quote the following nomination customer number 11502028 If you are in a hurry it can all be done in one phone call, otherwise ask them to send you details of both the "4 seasons" and the "Australian" 15 bottle introductory offer. Then you can study the offers and see if its for you.  Or you can brew your own country wine at a fraction of the cost. Good business in the garage Ever think that you could go commercial with your home brew? Well Chris Richards and his father Dean have done just that. They have turned their garage in West Hallam (UK) into a small brewery “The Nutbrook brewery”. They put their success down to custom-made ales. Their customers can use their software to design custom ales. Quite a unique offering and this custom approach has allowed places like “Seven Oaks Restaurant and Inn”, (Nottingham) to have their own ale “Oaks Ale”. The Nutbrook brewery produces around eight barrels of real ale each week. Each barrel makes them about £40 profit. As well as their custom ales they have a main ale “Banter”. Campaign for Real Ale buys their ales for festivals and as such they are a significant customer. Chris and Dean hope to continue working from the garage as long as they get the right permission. It is a bit of a boom time for small ale produces.  Nationwide over the last two years there has been around 150 such ventures. The big breweries have moved away from real ales and as such the gap in the market is rapidly being filled by home brewers that take their hobby to the next level. New Computer Aided Recipe Design NEW Version of the  Free Beer & Wine Calculator   Peter Laycock one of  YoBrew's most prolific contributors has released his beer & wine calculators in both Excell and open office format for YoBrew visitors to use for free. Simply download and use free of charge. More details see Calculators page Grow your own wine What a funny summer this has been. Wet, Wet and then wet and cold and then full on sunshine. My grape vine has gone beserk. The damson, blackberry and other fruit crops looks particularly good. Yet the apples seem to be ready too soon. Somehow there is a great joy in making things from the produce you can grow in your garden or have access to in the wild. Peter Laycock has added a super guide to growing your own home brew ingredients. I have just planted a couple of his hops plants in a sunny spot in my back garden. I realy look forwards to making ale using hops grown in my own back garden. Click here for Peter's grow your own guide Super wine (made from super fruits)   Inspired by many positive health reports on red wine, red fruits, apples and nettles and country wines, I am developing a wine that combines the best of them all yet still tastes great. I am collating all the heath reports I can get my hands and making a list of fruits to include in the super wine.  Currently the recipe is looking like     50% Red grapes     20% Blueberry or bilberries or a mix of the two (not sure yet)     20% Blackberries     5% Elderberry     5% Apple     10 to 20 young nettle leave per gallon of wine When I get the final proportions right I will publish it. Drop me an email if you want me to send you the final recipe when I am done. The main goal has to be taste and a reasonable scientific basis for the brew. Sure this is not a medical site and whilst I have a scientific background I will not be doing any double blind medical trials. I do plan to have a list of ingredients and next to them what current research show is the active benefit such as anti-oxidants and how this helps such as delaying the ageing process or assisting in natural cell repair process.   St Albans beer festivil 2007 Camera will be hosting a large range of real ales and a band to listen to while you are supping your pint. "Nine below zero" will be playing. Who? Dont ask me about bands all live music sounds OK to me. Its on  29th of September and well worth a visit if you are in the area. I will be there but don't let that put you off. More details from. http://www.hertsale.org.uk/beerfest/     St Albans Beer Festivil 2006 Full articles on Camra beer Festivil, 1997 Elderberry write up and more are on the articles page
Wine in the shops today As an avid home brewer, buying wine in a shop is not what I aim to do but I do from time to time. Its quite pleasing to see such a wide variety of types and wineries about. It really is something special. Wine seems to have avoided the mono-culture set by a few dominant players. As such I try not to settle on one wine I know will be OK and I keep on trying new types. I logged onto Majestic Wines site and bought 19 bottles. (12 In a red wine variety box and the other 7 reds were the 7 cheapest wines) Its fun pulling the cork and comparing taste against price. One thing for sure is there is no off flavours. These days all wineries are pretty good at their job. The other thing is that the same wine from the same bottle taste different from day to day. Its not just that it has meet the air its more about your own taste buds varying from day to day. The First bottle I opened was the most expensive one of the selection 5.99 a bottle and it really tasted great. The next day it was not quite so good and the third day is was great again. I guess in the day I have different amounts of coffee and different levels of stress and this must affect my taste buds. I have noticed that the most expensive wines can fill you with interest and are wonderful but your pallet needs to be in the mood for them. The cheaper ones never quire get to that point but if your pallet is not ready for a great drop of wine then the cheaper ones will be just as good.	Fine wine You may not expect lovers of fine wine to be interested in homebrew but the surprise is that the really serious ones do this to give them a better understanding of wine.. They tend to brew the top of the range kits which use not only the correct grape for the type of wine but also grapes from the correct region. By following the process from high quality grape juice to a well aged red their knowledge of wine is more complete and usually assists in understanding how to find wine that can be laid down as an investment. What's all this beer / wine stuff?  I like a drop of the hard stuff. Well there is a new generation of hero class yeast that can produce (without distilling) high alcoholic drinks such as:- Cherry brandy 21% by vol., Peach schnapps and many  many more. Update to my fine wine ideals. Just signed up to Laithwaites wine offer 15 Bottles of selected reds. (Handy while I wait for mine to mature) It came with tasting cards. I opened two different bottles both very good and it hit me. Two different bottles the grapes used were different and the countries were different yet I found it hard to tell them apart in a blind test. Maybe its because I've just got over a mild cold or maybe my taste buds are not that subtle.
Dear YoBrew, I am interested in home brew but do not want do spent out on loads of equipment and stuff. Yo writer, Great! The best way to start is a kit. For wine choose a kit for a wine you like. I chose a barolo kit and was very pleased. It was easy and the quality was excellent. More details click ->  wine.php#Barolo Even better try the student brew. You go into your super market with a fiver and come out with change, all the ingredients and the equipment to brew 5 liters of extra strength alco pops.          More details click -> drinks.php Dear YoBrew, I'm thinking of buying a pressure barrel for my beer which do you recommend. Yo Writer, None! I have turned my back on pressure barrels for a much better solution. Go down to Tesco and get a load of fizzy lemonade or sparkling water. Its the two liter plastic bottles you want. These plastic bottles (PET) hold pressure better than all the barrels I know of. Never any loss of pressure even over a prolonged time. Handy size fits into the fridge and easy to take to friends, family and parties. If you forget to bring the bottle back well no worries they do not cost much. I got 10 two liter bottles to hold my 20 liters of beer. cost 10 X 15p = £1.50 PET bottles are better, cheaper and more convenient. Just my view. For more about this see The beer brewing page Regards Stephan www.yobrew.co.uk Selections wine kits Having tried out a selections kit I am very interested to find out what other home brewers think of them. I was so keen to get my great big kit home. Must be top of the range as it cost enough. But thus far I feel a bit let down. Is it my brewing technique? I got to doing some basic calculations. At Nettos a very cheap bottle of red at 2.08 The Selections worked out at 1.80 The latter is as a result of buying in bulk. Supplying your own bottle and cork and making it your self and ageing it your self. So I would expect to make it worth it you need to be competing against at bottle at least 5.00. Now this would have aged for at lease 2 years. So to go for a top end home brew kit and drink it in 6 months you cannot  match the professionals. To do this you need a wine quality cellar and you need to lay it down for a few years. Yet lots of people swear by selections and just about all the shops seem to push the selections kits. So while my simple math shows that this is not right the home brewers seem to be happy. If you have brewed a selections kit I would be very interested in your views.	Visitor's involvement I, Stephan Barnard Founded YoBrew back in the late 90s. I set it up as a place for me to have an electronic log book. I put my favorite recipes, ideas, experiments. It was also a place for me to write up some of the science behind this hobby. (Finally get to use my biology degree). Well the eLog book was great for me and soon others stated to have a look and they were/are most welcome. Then visitors offered articles, reviews and recipes. That was just great and now YoBrew is the result of more than one author and by far the greatest contributor is Peter Laycock who found out about YoBrew in the Times culture supplement. The future of YoBrew is to keep the eLog book concept and involve visitors that want to contribute. In addition we aim to make the site advert free. Sure we will promote shops but this will be done on an equal un-biased basis. Hopefully we will promote brew shops worldwide.   Update: I have put in some links to Amazon for specific books. I hope this does not make the site look too commercial. It is just that the web is great for finding out a particular article or fact bites and books are better at covering the whole subject. My on-going project to publish my own book on homebrew and make this available for free as a pdf. I hope you enjoy the site and if you want to be more involved then please just drop me an e-mail.   Visit your local home brew shop Some how the web does not always cut it. I absolutely love visiting my local shop. Home brew shop owners all seem so very willing to help and advise as required. I decided to spoil my self with a semi-automatic floor standing cork inserter. I researched on the web and the one on offer by the art of brewing seemed very good and very cost effective. I went to my local shop and I guess they cannot stock everything and the did offer to get one in. It would have been nice to check it out but I purchased the one from the art of brewing. To this day I am very pleased with it. Solid build good action and handles commercial corks. Just the job. If the same cork inserter was available from my local shop for around the same price I definitely would have bought it their. It must be my version of retail therapy. I love it when I exit a home brew shop after a good chat about the items I intend to buy and have all the goods I wanted in my hands and one of the wine samples in my belly   .

Amazon's beta banner!

I though I would try out Amazon's new beta suggestions banner. It is supposed to look at the page text and make sensible suggestions such as books that go into the specific subject in more detail. This way the banner adds value to the site but when I tried it out it was a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it was spot on and sometimes wrong in a funny way. Anyhow I will see how it goes. If it is useful to YoBrew visitors then there is a bonus, YoBrew gets just over 5% of anything that is ordered when someone uses the YoBrew Amazon link, even if they use the link and buy something completely different. It all helps but I will readily remove the advertisements if they do not benefit YoBrew visitors.