• 1.7kg Cooper’s Stout malt extract
• 500g dark spraymalt
• 500g dextrose
• 250g Cadbury’s Bournville Cocoa Powder
• 1tbsp vanilla extract
• 7g yeast

5.15: Added malt extract, spraymalt, sugar, and cocoa to the fermenter.

5.35: Threw in around 2-2.5 litres of simmering water, and stirred the lot for about 5 minutes. I poured in the vanilla, to bring out the flavour of the cocoa and to hopefully add a nice counter to the bitterness of the malt and cocoa. At this stage hard clumps of a light caramel coloured substance began forming. This confused me. Possibly something to do with just adding the cocoa straight to the fermenter… I’ll check this out; hopefully it won’t affect the final stout too much.

5.45: Added cold water to the fermenter to bring it up to 23 litres.

5.50: Measured the original gravity of the brew with a hydrometer. OG = 1.044. I was hoping for something a bit denser (greater than 1.050) for a stout with a bit of a kick, but this should give a final ABV of around 5-6%.

5.53: I sprinkled the yeast on top of the brew and shook it very gently, to agitate the top surface.

5.55: The fermenter was sealed and airlocked.

6.00: I realised the stick-on thermometer wasn’t working, and the fermenter felt wuite cool, so I dug out a heating belt and wrapped it around the fermenter. That should get the yeast going.

So there we have it. Smelling lovely, hope it turns out well. Going to use a heading powder to help promote a nice creamy head (unlike the last stout, which lacked a head completely!). I’m also not using brown sugar this time: I’m going to prime the bottles with Cooper’s Carbonation Drops. Fingers crossed!

So, what do I have planned? Well, a chocolate stout would be good (hopefully with a better head this time round), as would some more of that delicious pilsner. But I’ve also been thinking of using twigs from pine trees as an ingredient in a beer. I’ve seen them being used in festive hot drinks before, so why not try them in a brew? Even if I don’t do a beer with them, maybe a wine? What about a white “mulled” wine using pine?

I shall ponder further.

1. Get a 5 litre bottle water. This water is nice and clean, and will tend to be better than tap water. The container itself will also be used as a fermenter.
2. Get some honey. I tend to use around a kilogram of honey, costing about €8-9 in a supermarket. The natural sugars in honey are fermentable, and when the yeast is added later on, these sugars turn to alcohol. More honey means more sugar, resulting in more alcohol.
3. Get yeast. Normal packets of baking yeast can be used, but there are brewing yeasts available. The type of yeast can affect the taste, but either way, yeast turns sugar into ethanol, with carbon dioxide as a by-product.
4. You can make a basic yeast with just the above, but I suggest adding fruit and spices. You can chop up an orange and lemon, use some sticks of cinnamon, couple of spoons of nutmeg… Whatever you wish. Feel free to experiment here!
5. Get a big pot and put it on the cooker. Pour in about 1.5-2 litres of water from the bottle and heat it up. Add in your fruit and spices, and let it simmer away for about 15 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse.
6. When you’re happy with the spiced water, take out any fruit pieces or cinammon sticks. You will be left with a delicious-smelling and light gold liquid.
7. Pour the honey into the hot water (you could heat up the honey gently beforehand to let it flow better). This mixture of honey, water, and spices is called must.
8. Stir in the honey to ensure it melts. Let it simmer, and you will notice white scum forming on the surface. This is a type of parrafin from the beeswax in the honey. This scum must be skimmed off the top, or else you’ll have an awful-tasting mead.
   

   Must with white scum

9. Once the white scum stops forming, the must is ready to put into the fermenter (your 5 litre bottle). Empty out an extra litre or so of water from the bottle – this makes room for the extra volume the honey takes up. Use a funnel and pour the warm must into the cool water.
10. Finally, it’s time to pitch the yeast. Use a 7g packet (or measure out 7g if not from a packet) and actiate the yeast if required (it’ll say it on the box). Then just chuck it into the fermenter on top of the brew. Give the fermenter a gentle jostle to allow the yeast to spread across the top of the liquid.
11. The yeast will get to work on the sugar pretty quickly, so do not seal the bottle. If you do, the pressure inside will build up and you’ll have an explosion and a mess to deal with. Instead, make a pinhole or two in a balloon, and fasten the balloon over the top of the bottle. The balloon will stand up straight while it ferments, and deflate once fermentation has finished. Over the time it ferments, you will notice the liquid turning from cloudy to clear.
    

    Mead with fruit left in

12. When fermentation has finished, the mead is ready for bottling. Some people like to transfer it to another 5 litre container to age for a few more weeks. I tend to bottle it in wine bottles and let it age in those. Use a sterilised rubber tube to siphon the mead into the bottles.

The mead is now drinkable, but it’s recommended that you let it age to let the flavours enhance. After a few months you’ll have a delicious drink.

Nyom.

It was really quick to make too. Just heated up everything to melt it, added ingredients, and pitched the yeast. Simples!

• 2 jars of Oak Lane Strawberry Conserve = ~900g of jam
• A 411g tin of John West Strawberries in Light Syrup (drained, making it about 150-175g of strawberries plus some leftover syrup)
• 5 litres of Crystal Springs Stillwater
• Approximately 200g of Gem granulated sugar
• 7g of Tesco Fast Action Dried Yeast

As you can tell, I really didn’t go for top-quality products here, let alone precise measurements for pretty much anything. I don’t even have a hydrometer handy, so who knows how strong this baby is going to be.

The label on the jam says that there’s 66g of sugar per 100g of product, so that’d mean there’s almost 600g of sugar already there. I added some extra sugar (around 200g, at a guess) bringing it to a total of 800g. The tin of strawberries also has sugar in the syrup, and of course the strawberries themselves will have some natural sugar.

So first of all, I chucked about a litre or so of the water into a pot and heated it up. Once it was nicely warm I threw in the two jars of jam. I let it heat up further – but never boiling – and mixed it around so it melted nicely.

Grand bit of jam in there. I skimmed off some of that white stuff.

After about 15 minutes of pissing around, stirring, and trying to make up an “expert opinion” on how to brew this one, I opened the tin of strawberries, drained most of the syrup out and put them in the pot. The pot was almost overflowing at this stage. I need to plan these things better.

Using my wooden spoon I gently squeezed some of the strawberries, to release juice, and to allow fluids to pass through them.

After another 5 or 10 minutes I emptied out an extra pint or so of water from the 5 litre bottle, scooped the strawberries out of the pot and put them in the bottle. Following this, I poured the rest of the stuff in with a funnel.

Finally, I pitched the yeast straight in on top, and gave the bottle a gently jostle to spread the yeast over the top layer, and to slightly get in under the surface of the liquid itself. It’s fizzing away nicely there now.

No airlock, so tied a folded sheet of kitchen roll over the top with some string.

And that’s that. Job’s a good’un. The strawberries all sank to the bottom of the bottle, but some are rising really, really slowly to the top. It’s like watching a giant fruity alcoholic lava lamp.

The finished product. Job.

So my friend runs this blog about brewing his own beer and mead and stuff. It’s really interesting and I was mad interested in giving it a go.

While we were in Finland we were in a restaurant called Harolds Viking restaurant, that did a honey flavoured beer that was goddamn delicious. This was a grand full bodied refreshing flavoured beer, and I started researching basic mead recipes and what not.

So I found a recipe over at stormthecastle.com, which was a cheap and cheerful recipe for mead that allowed idiots such as myself to garner the basics of a mead.

The ingredients are this:

• 5 litres of spring water
• 3 pounds of honey
• 25 raisins
• 1 orange
• 1 packet of standard issue bread yeast.
• 1 packet of balloons.

So I followed the recipe as instructed, and wham. Everything is done.

I probably should have activated the yeast before adding it to the water, as opposed to just pouring it straight from the packet like I did. Oh well.

I’m just waiting for it it to start fermenting.

Watch this space!

Firstly, nice selection of beers on draught, and a good few bottled. They have a very nice menu too: I suggest the beef burger or a custom-made toasted sandwich with a side of crisps. All prices are reasonable, and with the recent budget, the price of a pint dropped here immediately.

The staff are great – one member of staff I hadn’t seen in possibly months knew exactly what beer I drank. Not only that, but about 10 mins ago the manager came over with a pint for me on the house – a Christmas present for a customer. This is what makes a good pub. I might pop in here a couple of evenings a week, or once every few weeks, but you are remembered, and they take care of you.

The pub itself is of, I suppose, medium size. Nice couches, boothes, and bar seating, with toilet facilities downstairs (which have improved a lot since I first starting coming here!). Numerous televisions are on the walls, and I’ve paid the odd visit to Madigans for some rugby. The clientelle are great – full of chat and craic: plenty of locals along with people passing by, tourists and whatnot. They’re the “salt of the earth”; I happily sit back and watch and listen and appreciate people in here.

Madigans on Abbey St., Dublin, is a bar to visit, have a few pints and enjoy your lunch. You’ll get a taste of real Dublin in here!

I live and work closeby, so due to its location, Beaumont House was the obvious place for a pint when I first moved here. It looks great on the outside, and the decor inside is very warm and comforting – looks classy! Even the jacks are very good, not something you see in a lot of pubs these days.

I’m at the bar now (yes, I have the cheek to write this while in the place) and I can count 11 varieties of beers on draught. Not a bad selection. Although at €5.20 this pint of Miller is a tad expensive, and the most exotic things on tap are Bud Ice Cold and Guinness Mid-Strength.

On first glance the food menu isn’t bad. Certainly no restaurant but it’s what you’d expect from a respectable pub. I should say at this point I’ve only ever eaten here a few times, and I think all I’ve ever ordered is Chicken Maryland with chips. The chips are fairly crap tasting, and you don’t get many (that said, I don’t tend to eat them all as it is). The chicken can be a bit tough, and the fruit a little too “squidgy”. The dish is served with grilled tomato, which is undercooked to my taste, a slice of bacon, and a standard side salad. Nothing too special at all.

That’s on a good day. I got the same dish on a Sunday for a carvery. It was awful. I’d say the chicken and bacon were sitting there for hours. The chips were particulary awful, and the fruit was like sludge. The meal on any day is priced at just under €16.

The staff are a bit distant from the customer; somewhat cold, maybe. But they’re always quite professional and well-spoken.

The off-licence attached to Beaumont House has a shite selection beers. Not a can of Miller in sight. And it’s over-priced. A can of Coors Light is €2.50. Wtf?

So anyway, with its decor and image, and its high prices on both bad food and standard drink, Beaumont House is aiming way too high and simply underdelivering. It just tries too hard.

Options:

• Make a raisin and peach syrup, then add water and honey to make a must.
• Make a syrup, but add it to the must just before fermentation.
• Feck a load of peaches and raisins into the must before fermentation, without making a syrup.
• Add the syrup to the mead after fermentation, during bottling.

• 750ml water
• 250g sugar
• 3 sticks of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 10 whole cloves

Bring all of the above to a boil in a pot, then turn down the heat slightly and allow to simmer for about 5 minutes. After this, take it off the heat and allow to cool. This syrup can then be stored.

Now to mull the wine. Get a 750ml bottle of red wine (I recommend merlot) and put in a big pot. Add in about a mugful of the syrup, and 3 or 4 segments of an orange.

Heat the mixture up slowly and gently, and do NOT allow to boil. Once it’s giving out a decent amount of steam, it’s ready to serve.

Enjoy!