Home made Lager and Ale

The first batch of home brew is almost ready.  We are on the second stage of fermenting.  The last amount of sugar has been added and the lager has been bottled.  At the moment it looks a little like Chicken Korma, but it's beginning to smell a little like beer.

Once the beer is clear it means its time for drinking, however it will improve with age.  Date for tasting: Tues 28th of Dec, Happy Days!

The Village People cider tasting

We held the 'Village People' cider tasting the other day.  Two of the three founders in the photo are Marcus & Mark (Two fine country folk).  The cider tasted surprisingly bad, like mud and apple juice.  I think it's about 5% proof at the moment.

The plan is to filter it, add a load of sugar and re-ferment it. This should give it a better taste and a few bubbles, I think the cold must have stopped it from fermenting to early.

I will post an update soon.

Please note, the photo was taken prior to the tasting.  The photo after the tasting wasn't pleasant.

Christmas and New Years booze

65 pints for £20, that can't be bad! That's what me and my village mate Marcus made last night. I was on baby sitting duty when Marcus turned up with two beer making kits and an idea to make cheap booze.
After drinking half a bottle of port we got to work adding the water to the syrup and hey presto we should have beer in 2 weeks.
The last time I made home brew was with my mate Richie, we drank well for months and had the beer guts to prove it.
I recommend it to anyone who likes beer and also needs to build up a bit of fat for the winter

Picking Mussels with my muscles

Right then, this was a time of warmer weather in the summer.  A trip to Fistral beach inspired me to follow the likes of Hugh and do a bit of free foraging for supper.
We were camping and I decided to give mussel picking a try.  It was easy, with the tide out the huge mussels were at my mercy and I quickly collected enough for a large main course.  You have to take care to collect from an area where no stagnant or slow flowing water circulates around the mussels, as this can be dangerous, where the mussels feed on toxins and then pass them on to you.  Clean fast flowing water, high and low tides, often produces mussels without any grit.
Back at the camper van I cleaned the mussels and removed their beards before cooking them until the shells were all open, discarding any that were still shut tight (the dead ones, not to be eaten).
A quick addition of some pasta and pasta sauce and the meal was ready.  Fresh sea food from the beach to my plate in under an hour, nothing better.
This makes me a true forager, bring it on!

Cider Making

A few months ago I got together with a few of the Village people to make cider.  I made some last year using and breaking my electric juicer.

This time without the juicer we used 3 pillow cases, a small hand juicer and a sledge hammer.  Needless to say it was a long and arduous task.

After about 3 hours of grating and sieving the apples through the pillow cases we managed to produce about 20 pints of juice.

Since then it has been fermenting into cider, about 8% proof.  The 2nd tasting will be very soon, the first tasted of mud and grass with a hint of apple.

Rich's poem for Gilly

Saturday

After a few birthday pints with my best man Slim, it was back to watch the X-Factor. I can't believe how all they did was ruin each song, singing or shouting off key and generally being bloody annoying.