How cool is that!
I started home brewing this summer as well. And it all started from home made blackberry jam! I work in construction, and near the site I was this summer was a lot of blackberry bushes. So one Saturday I decided to pick some and make home made blackberry jam as my kids love jam and we buy it all the time. So I thought I'm going to save some coin here and it's homemade, everyone is the winner. And to be honest it was not money save driven, but the process of making it, almost something caveman like in our digital age, where a lot of people get distant from reality, making things and stuff.
My mate once told me his fourteen year old son was good at computing and he could model and render egg and bacon sandwich, but he could not ever make one for real.
So anyway I picked berries and made 4 litres of lovely jam, and I had some berries left over, so I decided to try making blackberry wine, how bad can it go, right? So managed to make 1 litre of deep burgundy colour wine, which when poured in the glass was amazingly clear colour, I mean it was not muddy or anything. Taste was rather on the dry side, but with a bit of sweetening it was ok. So that was a foundation to my home brewing.
Then I thought to myself why not try making cider. And when talking to one of the fellas at work I mentioned my intention in experimenting with home brewing and he said he had some apples from his garden, my name was all over those apples I told him. And that is how I started to plan for my cider production. I got the apples, I juiced them on my juicer, which we bought I used couple of times and now I had ultimate purpose, yay.
So I had juice done, I poured it into empty 1 gallon water bottle a set it aside to ferment. I needed hydrometer to check alcohol as I read on some blog, you meant to check before fermentation and after. Anyway it was an excuse for a shopping trip.
When in my local shop, where they have a home brewing section, I discovered all sorts of handy things, and most importantly that you can buy a kit to make beer, cider, wine, etc. I was all over it)) I bought couple plastic kegs for storing my cider and beer, bought proper fermentation bucket, empty bottles and caps.
When I got home set my first cider kit batch fermenting, now it was not 1 or five litres of brew , but exciting 40 pints of Wilco's kit cider!
Now it's been over 4 weeks and I already started tasting and testing this lovely drink, I gotta tell you, it's quite satisfying the fact that you drink beer/ cider you made. Since then I set some beer fermenting, and I have stout in my plans for Christmas. So home brewers around the world I salute you!
This is it, my story of home brewing and newly obtained hobby.
Thanks for reading.