Home Brew with Aldi Juices

White Grape Juice
Sugar content 180 gram per litre.

Red Grape Juice
Sugar content 180 gram per litre.

Apple and Elderflower
Sugar content 35 gram per litre.

Apple and Raspberry
Sugar content 35 gram per litre.

Forest Fruits
Sugar content 130 gram per litre.

Peach and Grape
Sugar content 150 gram per litre.

Cranberry
Sugar content 130 gram per litre.

Cranberry and Raspberry
Sugar content 130 gram per litre.

Pineapple
Sugar content 150 gram per litre.

Other Fruit Juices

Mango from Morrisons.
Sugar content 150 gram per litre.

Hope this helps people avoid making either sickly sweet wine or wine that is too strong to enhance a meal.

“When home brewing wine why use juice from the supermarket?

Surely fresh fruit is better?

I can hear the above comments echoing from the distant past.

Newcomers to this dark art could be lulled into thinking how much purer it is to start with a freshly picked apple or plum.

Fair enough, but consider these arguments.

Have you got a fruit press – not cheap?

Have you got access to the finest quality fruit?

A punnet of raspberries at 2 for £3 from the supermarket is enough to make about half a pint of wine. A litre of apple and raspberry juice costs less than £1 and will make 4 times as much wine.

I will submit some recipes over time for you to try. However this is just to entice you into the idea of using cheap products to produce great alcoholic beverages.

My daughter has just left having tasted my grape (juice) and blackberry (ok they are free this time of year so don’t count)  Her comment – that tastes like “real” wine not “homemade”.

If you look at the back of any wine bottle there will be phrases such as “a hint of – insert various fruits here – and “a peppery taste”.

Grapes used for making wine will be made from grapes grown in different regions with different soil types etc. This gives the flavour variations.

Grape juice – in the main – will be concentrated, shipped and then re hydrated with local water.

As any beer affecionado will tell you Burton beers are different from London beers because of the water.

We can vary the “subtle hints” by mixing grape juice with other fruit juice.

Also there are alcopops and adult alcopops! We can make adult alcopops. Juices that we may not consider making “wine” out of mix well with Baccardi & Malibu. Mango and Cranberry respectively.

Brew a “wine” from either then purchase a bottle of the spirit and mix – sip not gulp! Or add lemonade.

Hint – Aldi sells cheap white rum and white rum with coconut spirit.

I hope this has whetted your appetite for using juices.

I gave up making my own wine well over 20 years ago because I no longer had the space for 5 gallon vessels. Pat Mack has  re ignited my passion. Not only because of the suggestion that you can make 2 or 3 litres at a time but also because fruit juices are now common place. This makes the process so much more reliable.

I hope this inspires some to go beyond beer and cider good as they are.

Cheers

Tony”

“Even 5 PM caps is not enough to keep on top if you are making wine because of the length of time it takes to ferment then mature. However the PM caps are only needed  for a short part of this process unless you want fizzy wine.

Whilst fermenting a layer of carbon dioxide protects the brew and whilst maturing a normal cap will protect. It is the bit when you are refrigerating and adding a camden tablet where the PM cap is needed to prevent unwanted visitors adding body to your wine. The PM cap will then protect the wine and prevent the bottle exploding.

For the fermenting stage cover the bottle with a piece of plastic (carrier bag cut up is perfect) secured with an elastic band below the thread. leave some loose plastic which will fill with the carbon dioxide while fermenting and start to deflate when fermentation is complete.

Then add a camden tablet and put in the fridge with the PM cap on. After a couple of days pour or syphon the wine off the sediment and replace the PM cap. Leave the PM cap on for a few days with the bottle where you would normally store it to ensure fermentation has stopped and replace the PM cap with a normal cap and allow it to mature.

Tony B”

Some good advice there Tony, thanks for that. Tony has been making some great tasting refreshing white wines using fruit juices  from Aldi and some homebrew wine made from real fruit too. I look forward to hearing more great tips and recipe ideas.

Getting the most from your Brewers Yeast

To help get the most out of your brewers yeast I usually suggest putting only a little bit of brewers yeast into your brew and then allowing it to multiply. In good brewing conditions yeast can multiply hundreds, if  not thousands, of times.

However in less than perfect conditions only putting a little bit of brewers yeast into your brew may lead to a stuck fermentation as the yeast struggles to multiply and eventually becomes overwhelmed by the large amount of sugar that needs to be fermented.

There are a few things that you can do to aid and prevent a stuck fermentation.

Add More Brewers Yeast to your struggling batch

Firstly you can add more brewers yeast to the batch to help out any struggling yeast. That’s the obvious solution. An even better continuation of this solution is to make sure you are adding yeast that is already in a successful fermentation. Maybe you have another batch that is brewing nicely or maybe a batch has just finished fermenting so instead of throwing away the brewers yeast from that batch simply add it to the struggling one.

Many brewers don’t like to add dry yeast to their brews. Instead they put their dry brewers yeast through a re-hydration process. It’s very simple. You simply add the dry yeast to 50 ml of luke warm water containing half a teaspoon of sugar, leave it for 15 minutes and then stir vigorously. Then you add this mixture to your brewing bottles.

The other solution is to improve the conditions under which the brewers yeast is fermenting.

Brewers Yeast – Aeration (Oxygen Supply)

Brewers yeast requires oxygen to multiply. This is one of the reasons why you should leave an air gap at the top of the bottles when brewing. To increase aeration (oxygen supply) you can leave the home brewing cap unscrewed by a couple of rotations. Then after 24 hours when the brewers yeast has multiplied you can tighten the cap fully again and allow the drink to carbonate.

Brewers Yeast – Brewing Temperature

Other brewing conditions that need to be adhered to are temperature controls. Optimal brewing temperature is between 20 – 24 degree Celsius. It is also important to keep the brewing bottles out of direct sunlight.

Brewers Yeast – Sterilization and Cleanliness

The final important brewing condition to note is to do with cleanliness. If any piece of brewing equipment you are using has not been sterilized then you run the risk of creating an infected batch. Things like wild yeast and bacteria will thrive under good brewing conditions if cleanliness is not looked after. Even if you have been careful to clean all of your equipment and then you accidentally stir your brew with an unsterilized spoon you are likely to have just added some small colony of bacteria to your brew so be very careful.

So he has modified his caps to fit onto 5 litre water containers! Liam has kindly sent me the process by which you can recreate your own Super Home Brewing Caps and here it is. (A word of warning: be careful with any sharp tools and hot glue guns. Cutting and gluing plastic can be tricky)

Items needed:

- 5 litre water containers

- regular fizzy drinks bottles (any size)

- Home brewing caps

- a Hacksaw

- Glue or PTFE plumbing tape

Super Sized Home Brewing Caps Method:

Step 1) Using the Hacksaw cut off the top of the regular fizzy drinks bottle cutting just under the thread of the bottle neck.

Step 2) Now using a sharp knife make a hole in the blue 5 litre bottle caps. The hole needs to be just a little bit smaller than the diameter of the bottle necks from the bottles in step 1.

Step 3) Push the fizzy drinks bottle neck through the 5 litre bottle cap hole. Then seal any gaps/air holes on the inside of the blue cap with PTFE tape or any thick glue you might have. (Liam says he used a glue gun for this)

Step 4) Finally run a  seal along the outside of the cap to finish off.

And that’s it. I haven’t personally created any Super Caps of my own yet but I know Liam has and he is now enjoying his brews from giant 5 litre bottles! His next project is to engineer caps for the massive office water cooler containers. 19 litres. I look forward to seeing how that turns out.

Cheers Liam.

The importance of your brewing ingredients. When home brewing with Pat Mack’s Home brewing Caps you want to keep things as simple as possible. After all that was the purpose of creating the caps to begin with. It should really take no more than 10 minutes to prepare your brewing ingredients for fermentation. And then you should be able to simply forget about your brew for a few days by which time fermentation has completed and your drink is ready to enjoy.

When you are brewing from juice, whether it be a wine or a cider, you want to make sure the brewing process goes as smoothly as possible. An important thing to look out for are the many nasty chemicals hidden in your brewing ingredients. Alongside your sugar and brewer’s yeast you will need to select an appropriate juice as the base for the home brew. The problem is that some juices contain unwanted, troublesome brewing ingredients that can slow down fermentation or even stop it completely. In general you want to avoid brewing with any juices that contain a long list of various preservatives and additives. A few key negative brewing ingredients to look out for on the juice’s ingredients label are:

1. Potassium Sorbate
2. Sorbic acid (not to be confused with Asorbic acid which is Vitamin C)
3. Sodium Sorbate
4. Calcium Sorbate
5. Sodium Metabisulphite

There may be even more additives and preservatives in your brewing ingredients that you need to look out for but these are the key trouble makers.

In general, if you see a long list of chemicals in the juice and you don’t know what those chemicals are then you’re probably better off picking a different juice to home brew with. Any unknown brewing ingredients can cause unpredictable issues for your brewers yeast that can lead to a variety of problems such as off-flavours, stuck fermentations or even no fermentation at all. It is therefore a sensible idea to keep an eye out for these nasty additives and preservatives when selecting your juice at the start of the brewing process.

The strange thing is that this has virtually nothing to do with taste or quality. It’s a purely visual issue. And although it is perfectly good to drink a cloudy home brew beer, cider or wine, many people prefer the now all too common sight of a crystal clear brew and won’t accept anything less. To be honest I don’t blame them. I’d prefer a perfectly clarified brew over a cloudy one too, so here are some tips on how to turn your cloudy homebrew into a crystal clear prize winning beer, cider or wine.

Let’s take a Cider clarification process as an example. The first and most obvious step is to refrigerate your brew. Refrigeration should help with the clarification process as it causes most of the solids in the drink (yeast cells and non-microbiological particles (NMPs)) to fall and form a sediment at the bottom of the bottle. But if this isn’t producing a clear enough drink then it’s likely that the original fruit juice used was high in a fruit protein known as pectin. The cloudiness of the brew is caused by many, virtually weightless, particles floating in the drink. They eventually bind together and become heavy enough to fall into the sediment below, however when pectin is present it prevents the binding process so the particles continue to float.

The best way to defeat pectin haze and to force further clarification is to use a fining agent. These agents work by attaching themselves to the suspended particles and dragging them down to the sediment. One easily obtained ingredient is clear, plain gelatin. Dissolve it in a little warm sterile water and add it to your bottle. A fining agent known as Bentonite is also good to use. I’ve also heard that Egg Whites can be used for clarification in the same way. In fact they’ve been used for hundreds of years to clear haze from wines throughout history.

Another good method for aiding clarification is the rapid cooling of the brew. A sparkling clear beer for instance can be brewed by cooling the wort to just above freezing until it becomes slushy. This procedure somewhat reduces the need for further clarification. A long, slow cooling however does not give a good cold break in the same way rapid cooling does and more NMPs become trapped in suspension producing the dreaded chill haze and sometimes a sulfur-like aftertaste in the brew.

A few good things to do to help prevent the cloudiness from forming to begin with is to reduce the time the brew is open to the air before pitching your yeast. The longer your juice sits waiting to begin fermenting, the more possibilities there are for wayward ambient flora and fauna to invade. Unless you brew in a sterile lab environment, there are bacteriae, wild yeast, and many other creatures in your brewery just waiting for a snack. If you’re making beer then you will need to try to chill the liquid down after boiling and pitch the yeast within an hour of the end of boil. If that’s not possible, then keep it covered/sealed until it is cool enough.

Sanitation is the key. All equipment must be not only clean but also sanitized. Chlorine bleach, iodine, really hot water, autoclave… whatever method you choose, you cannot get your equipment “too sanitary”. This includes all items that come in contact with the brew after boiling – bottles, spoons, hydrometer and test jar, pots and pans, lids, caps, etc. etc

Finally, just to clarify, the particles that cause haze and cloudiness are actually perfectly ok to drink, in fact they’re said to promote good health throughout the body. I’m not too sure why we are trained to view cloudy drinks as a bad thing. But then again there’s nothing better than a beautifully clear brew!

The Home Brew Guinness brewing recipe is a slightly more complicated home brew recipe than most of the brews I tend to make. As you know I like to keep things simple when it comes to brewing which is the original reason why I created the Pat Mack’s Home Brewing Cap. But this particular home brew is worth the little added extra effort.

The actual brewing process is very much the same as the process for making beer, so be prepared to spend a little more time on this than you would on a cider or a wine. Also with Home Brew Guinness you’re going to need a few extra brewing ingredients. All in all the ingredients can be bought for around £4 and will make about 8 pints. £0.50 for a pint of Guinness isn’t bad!

Ingredients needed for your Home Brew Guinness:
(Making two 2 litre bottles of Home Brew Guinness)

You will need:

- Light Malt Extract (500g)

- Roasted Barley (110g)

- Flaked Barley (85g)

- Carapils (Dextrine) (85g)

- Northern Brewer Hops (10g)

- East Kent Goldings Hops (10g)

- Brewing Yeast (1/8th teaspoon)

Additional Items needed for your Home Brew Guinness:

- 2 Pat Mack’s Home Brewing Caps

- 2 clean empty plastic bottles (2 litre bottles)

The Process:

Step 1) You’ll need to bring a couple of litres of water to boil and then add your Roasted Barley, Flaked Barley and Carapils. Steep these ingredients for about 20 minutes and then remove them from the water. It may be useful to use a brewing bag/muslin bag/strainer so that it’s easier to remove the ingredients from the water.

Step 2) You should now add your Light Malt Extract to the boiling water. Stir this well and then when it is evenly mixed you can add both your hops varieties. I use those “fill your own loose tea teabags” for my hops. Now let this steep for an hour and then remove the hops.

Step 3) Turn off the heat and let the brew cool to room temperature. When it’s cool enough we will pour it equally into our 2 plastic bottles and then add our yeast. We will also need to top up each bottle with more water to make 4 litres over all.

Step 4) There is a peculiar extra step that is unique to home brew Guinness. When making Guinness you need to add a soured Guinness to the newly brewed batch. Basically you need to leave an opened Guinness out in a bowl for a week or so and then freeze it until you need it. Then when your at Step 3) in the brewing process above you add the soured Guinness to the brew! Very strange but it works to create that unique Guinness taste.

Now all that you need to do is let it ferment. I would let this one bubble away for about 2 weeks, checking on it every few days to make sure it’s brewing nicely and not in a stuck fermentation.

This recipe should make a Home Brew Guinness to the strength of somewhere between 4.1 – 4.4%.

All this talk of Guinness is making me thirsty, I’m going to go brew some now!

A great Homebrew photo here from Luke. He’s been busy brewing and has been putting his homebrewing caps to good use. Thanks for sending in the photo Luke.

Here’s a homebrew beer i made using Dry Malt Extract and some Cascade hops. It took about 45 minutes to prepare and I then left it for about 3 days. It’s fresh from the fridge and tastes great!