Creative Living

[aliwood]

Afer MrsL's challenge earlier about doing one more thing to be nicer to the planet, this is the first thing that's come up and I realise now that it has the potential to be a right can of Fosters (just as bad as worms but possibly contains alcohol).

We already brew our wine from straight ingredients as opposed to kits, but looking at the general ingredients list there's a lot of room to look at it and go 'hmmm'. My general theme is one of

water
sugar
dried fruit (raisins / sultanas or a mix of the two, usually the Morrisons cheapie fruit)
lemon or orange juice (straight from the fruit)
yeast (bread yeast)
possibly some cold tea (leftovers from the pot)
my main ingredient(s) which will generally be some sort of free thing like elderberries or dandilions or whatever is seasonal.

On the beer front, we're still on kits as we don't have the facilities to make it from raw stuff, sadly. I don't recall ever seeing an organic beer kit. We do get them from a nice local shop though, which is about the only thing in it's favour.

Now, given that I am not about to give up drinking alcohol, thus solving the problem completely, how can we make this process nicer to the planet?
_________________
Alice

Be bold, be brave, be weird!
Help keep a horse warm.
Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises - Elizabeth Zimmermann

[MrsL]

Facilities for beer from raw - your health food shop will have hops (dried) and malt extract (organic and non -organic) - less packaging than a kit, and use your bread yeast.

Water - use rain water.

Sugar - use Fair Trade and British over organic, unless you can get a load cheap; buying in bigger packets/bulk is better.

Dried fruit is harder - FT and organic is available, but expensive, and rightly so; use fresh fruit past its best instead - you just need something to add a bit of body - a few wrinkly apples etc should do the trick.

Fair Trade lemons and oranges easily available; buy unwaxed and loose; often reduced if a bit bahsed, but that doesn't matter here.

You've covered tea (Fair Trade tea bags in Sainsbury are 28p for 80), yeast and main ingredients.

For equipment, use secondhand, bartered, LETS, jumbles, boots, charity shops, what's left of Freecycle, etc.

Buy recipe books from charity shops, etc; print off from the net on paper used on the other side and file away for future use.

Hope that helps. Good theme, we like that one
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unboughtdelicacies
figheade knitting blog
knitten

[aliwood]

Maybe the hops could be garden grown? You'd have to get the right sort, but it can't be impossible, I know a place four miles from here where a hop is growing rather well but I suspect it's not brewing grade.
_________________
Alice

Be bold, be brave, be weird!
Help keep a horse warm.
Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises - Elizabeth Zimmermann

[aliwood]

[MrsL]

Oh, I can't bide preciousness - especially when to do with homebrew

I grow my own hops, Alice; I started with 4 bines, Fuggles, but theya re threatening to take over half the county! An excellent investment. You can brew with all hops - wild, ornamental (golden) and true brewing hops. Easy to grow, but thuggish in the extreme.

Forgot to mention corks - avoid plastic. Re-use scretops, or if using cork, go for real cork. As well as being sustainable (keeping an age-old industry in Portugal alive, not to mention the wild cats and other wildlife that inhabit the cork growing areas), there are lots of things you can do with them afterwards.
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unboughtdelicacies
figheade knitting blog
knitten

[aliwood]

I have a set of plastic corks and a few real ones. Mind you, I've had the plastic ones for about eight years now as I constantly reuse them. I only put real ones in bottles I give away and I always ask the person to compost it if they can't find a use for it.
_________________
Alice

Be bold, be brave, be weird!
Help keep a horse warm.
Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises - Elizabeth Zimmermann

[Aine]

When you say equipment - what would that include, please?
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Aine

[aliwood]

Well, for starters you would need a big buctket type thing to make your initial brew in no matter whether wine or beer. Also a syphon tube.

For beer you'd need either a pressure barrel, which then requires gas, or bottles and crown caps. At least you could recycle the crown caps. You'd also need a capper if you went down that route.

For wine, demi-johns (actually you could brew beer in demi-johns if you were doing a small batch, or you had a whole load of them), air-locks, a funnel is handy as well as muslin for draining in your original brew. Bottles, corks or tops, possibly a corker as well.

I think that''s about it.
_________________
Alice

Be bold, be brave, be weird!
Help keep a horse warm.
Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises - Elizabeth Zimmermann