Introduce Yourselves here

[goldseal]

Welcome aboard. I'll wave in your general direction later this morning as I head past on my way to Scotland

[lockwood1956]

YAY more Geordies.....just the ticket

[Zapp Brannigan]

Hi all, another newbie here

I've been impressed at the knowhow of the members on here, and have joined in a pretty shameless attempt to pick the brains of all you master brewers.

I am just getting back into brewing after several years out. I used to do kit brews, using pressure barrels, with mixed, but generally poor results. I recently started up again, using hefeweizen bottles rather than the barrel and am much more pleased with the carbonization and overall quality of the beer.

My ultimate aim is to graduate onto grain only brewing, but am going to take my time getting there. I am on the back end of a batch of Edme Superbrew Gold Stout (Very suppable, though with some "homebrew twang"), and will be racking a batch of Edme SBG Weizen tomorrow.

Once I have mastered the basics I will be looking up to partial grain brewing before taking the plunge and doing it for real.

As far as preference of beer goes, I'm all about the German styles, with hefeweizen being my all time favourite, though dunkels, altbier and proper southern style lagers dont get past me when I can help it! I note with great interest the variety of weizen and Pilsner/Helles type recipes are on here.

Having said this, I also love a good stout, ale or IPA.

Anyway, sorry for the long winded first post, thanks for having me and thanks in advance for putting up with my future dumb newb questions.

ZB

[NorthernWiner]

Welcome aboard, ZB. I'm not much of a brewer myself - more into the wine - but I'm sure you'll find plenty of help on the board.

[alex000]

Hi, I'm Alex and from Bristol, England.
I was first interested in wine making when I tasted some home made in Poland from a relative. So have recently decided to try my own. So far I have made 1gal of rhubarb. And by using the tutorials here I hope to make some Plum, Sloe, Mead and apple wine.

[goldseal]

Welcome aboard

[rjb222]

Hi Zapp. Welcome to a great place. You can reduce the home brew twang as you call it by changing the fermentation instructions given on most concentrate cans. You can for a start substitute DME for sugar cup for cup this will get rid of the cidery type flavors in the typical home brew. Second you can get a lock down lid type food grade plastic pail and start your primary there. This will allow you to rack into an air locked secondary and leave the heavy trub behind this will help reduce the off flavors from that.Allow your beer to settle and clear in the secondary until it is pristine looking.Then rack back to the primary and add your priming sugars to the brew. Then bottle. Allow this to mature for around fourteen days and you will have a decent beer with greatly reduced home brewed twang.

[Mindscape100]

Another new member

Hi all,

Thought Id put up my first post.
Been into wine making for a good year or so but Ive just started "knocking up" production a level or two. I already have 3 carboys which Im trying to keep in a constant rotation. At the moment these are filled with the Beaverdale kits (barolo and Rioja) But Ive also just started my first Cherry wine in a demijohn so Im excited about that....only another year at least....till I can see how that will go!
Im trying to amass loads more demi john and carboys as my father-in-law has also just started converting his shed for the production of wine so Ill have more space which is awsome! Hopefully we`ll be soon self suficcient with our own wine. And eventually with the wines that Ive made from scratch.
Slightly nervous about the Veggie ones though... I can see carrot working in wine but some recipies...well Im not sure about. I think Id have to try one first before commiting myself to starting a batch!
Enough rambling then. This is a great site and seems to be a wash with all sorts of usefull info which Im sure will help me develop this hobby/obbsession.

Cheers. John

[lockwood1956]

Welcome aboard John

We got you logged in at last

regards
Bob

[Mindscape100]

Yep All sorted now ..thankyou.
Definatley going to be trying the cranberry and rasberry. Im trying to wean myself from the security of the kits just need to resist temptation!!

John

[goldseal]

Welcome, John.

Prepare to be abused re: vegetable wines (do NOT mention parsnip)

[Mindscape100]

Welcome, John.

Prepare to be abused re: vegetable wines (do NOT mention parsnip)

Im ready to take some hits...after all we learn more from mistakes than we do perfect progress!
Why not mention that? Is parsnip a good one?

John

[lockwood1956]

Lots of people make parsnip wine and like it

I don't think it makes particularly good wine, as it has that distinct taste of converted starch, which is fine for beer, but not in my opinion good for wine, and as such I don't like it at all.

In the early days of the hobby (rationing still in place after the war) sugar was in short supply, so home brewers (a resourceful lot) found that they could convert the starch from root vegetables into fermentable sugars, and so still be able to brew without cane or beet sugar. Pure sugar is available readily these days, and is very cheap, it ferments cleaner, so I prefer to use it.

Parsnip wine is very full bodied, and is thought to make a good dessert wine, I have tasted a great many well made parsnip wines whilst judguing, and have indeed placed some of them first, but I never tasted one that I thought of as great wine.


but each to their own

regards
bob

[goldseal]

There are some people here with very strong views that vegetables are to be served with roast dinners and never fermented under any circumstances

Bob is one of them - and that was a very diplomatic answer from him

All you need to do is search the forum for 'parsnip'!

Anyway, it'll all be good natured, becuase it's a nice friendly forum.

[spritzer]

Yep All sorted now ..thankyou.
Definatley going to be trying the cranberry and rasberry. Im trying to wean myself from the security of the kits just need to resist temptation!!
John

Wine number one is very good to start with LINKY

I have used both wine number one and two in the past with cranberry and raspberry juice... both very nice.