Just started a home brew lager kit in my bedroom (nice and warm in here). My friends have done a few and they all tasted fantastic! :)

It cost me £53 to start it off, this included all brand new equipment and also all the ingredients to make the beer.

This one makes me about 40 pints, which works out at about £1.30 for a pint :) and this goes down to about 30p a pint next time, because I already bought the equipment :-D

Only takes about 2-3 weeks before its ready to drink and some are ready in just 10 days!

Take a look if anyones interested? http://www.goodlifehomebrew.com/

Thats my local home brew shop, but they deliver and have VERY good prices

This is the lager which I am currently brewing: http://www.goodlifehomebrew.com/brewmaker-pilsner-lager.php

Just thought I would share this with you guys, as I feel everyone should benefit from tasty home brewing and most importantly... not paying the extortionate taxes on something which is mostly WATER!!

Happy brewing

good lad need good luck, good luck. haha

but 30p per pint, thats a pure win :)

i'm just finishing my first ever batch of homebrew and i'm rather pleased with it =]

got all my stuff from wilkos. except for bottles... i chatted with a number of pubs and they gave me their empty bottles

Lager needs to be fermented as cold as possible.

www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk is a damn good resource!

Made a few kits last year, and found a wild hop tree by my local scrapyard too. Added them to a Tom Caxton traditonal ale kit and was a fairly decent brew!

edit: are you using spraymalt or sugar as your fermentables?

I'm using sugar for the fermenting. The temperature has been a rather healthy 23 degrees (the kit recommended between 21 and 26 degrees is good).

Its currently bubbling away nicely and should be ready for the cooling and clearing process to begin. Will most like leave it in the garage

That website looks good, will need to have a proper read into it tomorrow.

Nice one, for lager you may be better off using half spray malt and half brewing sugar/dextrose etc. My first kit tasted like egg it was that bloody awful!

Really need to get brewing again!

i work for a beekeeping company and we also sell bottles and jars if you guys want some beer bottles check out www.bottlesandjars.co .uk

Edited 31 May, 201115 yr by mrbenpololoon

me and my mate did quite a lot of research before we did it, and we found this odd little man on youtube who does homebrew videos (along with a load of other stuff, fancies himself as a tv presenter), and he did an experiment with homebrew using brown muscurvado sugar instead of the normal stuff, so we tried that and it was quite nice!

me and my mate did quite a lot of research before we did it, and we found this odd little man on youtube who does homebrew videos (along with a load of other stuff, fancies himself as a tv presenter), and he did an experiment with homebrew using brown muscurvado sugar instead of the normal stuff, so we tried that and it was quite nice!

It would be, the less refined the better!

hmmmm sounds like a plan to me its paid iself off the first time cant get much better than that

do you use a white opaque cask thing? if so i have in the garage already

Get everyone to bring there own brew to the Polo Show and get people to judge the best

i looked into making it years back but didnt get started on it.might give it a try

do know a person who makes rum,i grow courgettes amongst other things and when there too big (marrow size) he brews them up into rum ha

my grandad used to make wine,remember as a child he gave me a few quid for each bin liner of elderberries i raped off someones tree

Get everyone to bring there own brew to the Polo Show and get people to judge the best

I took some along last year, drunk it myself though!

Needs a good 2-3 months before it really tastes its best, impossible to keep your hands off though. Best thing to do is to get another brew on straight after you've finished bottling one!

Anyone had any luck with this? Just found a pic of mine in my photobucket account from last year... A wheat beer kit this was, nice and clear unlike traditional wheat beers.

I've not tried a wheat beer yet, its never really appealed to me for some reason. But i have just finished off the last of my pilsner! man it was good.

I'm currently brewing a general "continental lager" kit and a strawberry wine as well.

I'm liking this idea of people bringing their brews to polo show. Instead of run what you brung, down what you brewed?

Went to my local brweing shop yesterday to get me some coffee beans, realised I only had my card on me so I had to spend over a tenner. Got myself another wheat beer kit... Last made this kit last May and polished it off last August round a mates, sunk about 4 pints each in an hour it was that good!

Got a recipe I posted up on a forum too, will dig it out when I make it over the weekend...

i make blackberry wine as there are millions around here and so its really cheap, i should have brought some to the polo show and got people to taste it, its really nice but you have to leave it for about a year and then if you drink a bottle you will know about it

also brew beer which lives on my bench in the garage, usually got two on the go although one is a home brew cider kit so not sure what that one is going to be like! got a nice pale ale on the go and its far too tempting to have a half when i'm working on something or just go talk to bluey for a while :-D

I made a cider kit at uni 4 years back, tasted like egg. Turbo Cider is where it's at!

Has anyone tried carbonating their lager/ciders with a soda stream? i'm half tempted to go and try it myself lol.

If you have a pressure barrell then you can get a soda stream adaptor!

Basically - once the beer has fermented out it's flat and in need of 'bottling' or 'barrelling'. Known as secondary fermentation.

You can transfer your fermented-out beer into a pressure barrell that's primed with sugar, spray malt, honey etc and then let the remaining suspended yeast eat through the priming sugars and it will clear and produce carbonation.

Once you've drunk from the pressure barrel a few times the natural carbonation will go and that's when a shot of co2 will do the trick!

I prefer to bottle mine, bit of sugar in each bottle, cap with a proper metal bottle top and leave it somewhere warm for a week or so to clear then stash in a cool place to condition.