Money-saving tips (journalist question)

[ketsbaia]

*dips toe in water*

Hello all. Just about to start home brewing myself and am also writing a feature for a magazine on how to brew your own beer without spending loads of cash on kit.

What would be your top suggestions on improvising kit? I've got the obvious cool box as mash tun, but are there any others you think are definitely worth considering/work really well/save you lots of money?

I'll be plugging the forum in the article, of course, so it might be you get an influx of newbies once it's published.

Cheers!

 

[oldbloke]

One widely used money saver is to use 5l bottles of water from the supermarket as a fermenting vessel for wine or small batches of, say, cider. The water itself can be part of the brew, with the plus it needs no treatment for chlorine/minerals.

 

[ketsbaia]

Thanks, oldbloke. I should have specified it's just beer brewing tips I'm after, but I imagine you can use 5L bottles as fermenters for beer too and experiment with different yeasts in each 5L batch.

Cheers.

 

[Vossy1]

Welcome to the forum K :thumb:
You might want to have a look in the 'how to' section K for cheap ways to make beer, all grain is covered here and kits here and those are just 2 posts, there are others :thumb:

 

[ketsbaia]

Thanks, Vossy. I had a look at that BITS thread earlier. Looks interesting. May be a bit long-winded for my purposes, though. But one for me to try at home, though.

 

[dennisking]

Out of interest can I ask what magazine you are looking to publish in. One tip, join this forum, we have a section where people sell or give away unwanted kit here.

 

[ketsbaia]

You can indeed ask. It's a homebrewer's handbook that's being published by Future Publishing. Not meant to be too technical or in-depth, just a general how-to guide with easy-to-follow pictures and captions. Plus some hints, tips, recipes to try and a bit of history about beer and homebrewing in general. One of the sections is 'Improvisation', which as I'm finding out is pretty much part and parcel of the process. I think one of the appealing things for me is seeing how people find ways of surmounting problems or emulating the tasks performed by purpose-built kit with ingenious work-arounds. It appeals to the Blue Peter/Great Egg Race fan in me, I guess.

And yes, joining a forum such as this is likely to be a great help - I'll definitely be trawling the how to guides when I eventually get round to brewing myself.

 

[wilsoa1111]

hard to say whats an improvising and whats repurposing, bird feed buckets on amazon are popular as fermentors, cheap tesco etc kettle elements are used for making boilers plus watever foodgrade plastic tub u have to hand, cut up plastic bottles for funnels, ladys tights for hop bags, recycling fizzy drinks bottles for bottling ur beer in,

For everyday ingredients stuff like nettles, pine needles instead of hops (not great as 100% sub), treacle, dark sugars for fermentables, oats for body and baking gelatin for fining, baking glycerin for freezing yeast, even marmite for nutrient... list goes on

its more what u cant find/improvise and that seems to be siphon tubing and malt n hops (well maybe if u really are dedicated)

 

[bobsbeer]

It's a homebrewer's handbook that's being published by Future Publishing

When are you planning on publishing? Is it going to be a book or an article in a magazine?

 

[ketsbaia]

It's a cross between a book and a magazine. Which they're calling a 'Bookazine'. They do similar ones for Digital SLRs, etc.

 

[calumscott]

It's a cross between a book and a magazine. Which they're calling a 'Bookazine'. They do similar ones for Digital SLRs, etc.

I know the sort of thing. They do lots of them for iPhones and such. You reckon it'll fly?

 

[ketsbaia]

I honestly don't know. I wonder how many people out there are all that interested in brewing their own beer who don't have the first clue about how to do it. Maybe there are thousands.

Personally, I'd go online to find out what I needed to know, but if you're in a branch of WH Smiths at a station and it catches your eye, you might go for it if you were possibly interested.

 

[Rukula]

Thanks, oldbloke. I should have specified it's just beer brewing tips I'm after, but I imagine you can use 5L bottles as fermenters for beer too and experiment with different yeasts in each 5L batch.

Cheers.

I do most of my brews as 5L batches. Its because i like brewing lots of different beers, and i enjoy experimenting with flavors :thumb:

The only time i brew more than 20L, is when i'm really happy with a small batch, and want to have lots of bottles available. I just scale up the recipe, and adjust it a bit.

 

[calumscott]

I honestly don't know. I wonder how many people out there are all that interested in brewing their own beer who don't have the first clue about how to do it. Maybe there are thousands.

Personally, I'd go online to find out what I needed to know, but if you're in a branch of WH Smiths at a station and it catches your eye, you might go for it if you were possibly interested.

That's my hunch too, I guess it all comes down to how many copies you need to sell to turn a profit though.

Brewing is an odd one, the drivers behind getting people into it are so massively varied, from the beer-geeky, culinary aspects of the serious all grain brewer to the cost savings, to the downright just make cheap alcohol whatever it tastes like...

I think the middle lot might be the target. I just wonder how many of them there are... :hmm:

 

[dennisking]

There was a magazine years ago, amateur winemaker that ran for several years

 

[ketsbaia]

There are an awful lot of people in Dalston who carp on about brewing beer because their mates have just opened up a microbrewery in Clapton or some such. It's potentially aimed at them too. Not that there's anything really wrong with that. More the merrier, really.

 

[Growler]

You could try doing an instruction for kit beers as the instructions for kits are for you to drink as quickly as poss where as our instructions are to get the best out of a kit
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=3216

 

[ketsbaia]

That's a good shout, Growler. Thanks.

 

[calumscott]

There are an awful lot of people in Dalston who carp on about brewing beer because their mates have just opened up a microbrewery in Clapton or some such. It's potentially aimed at them too.

Ah, yes. Spiedel Braumeisters all round then!! :lol:

 

[anthonyUK]

Take a look at 'ghetto' BIAB for an indication of how resourceful people are