I don’t know if you
remember this, but I do. As a child and a younger person, I have memories of a
time when Boots the Chemist had a whole section dedicated to the art of Home
Brewing. In fact, my parents went through a phase, in those far-off days when
wine was hardly ever consumed at home, of making stuff from kits. I was too
young to sample the results, but I have a feeling they may have been a bit
nasty. Mind you, in those days few knew the difference. After all, the height
of sophistication to wash down your prawn cocktail or black forest gâteau was a
bottle of Black Tower or Mateus Rosé.
Apart from the wines,
there was, in Boots, a whole raft of equipment and ingredients for brewing your
own beer. Hydrometers, hops, yeast and
big plastic buckets took up whole shelves…
I’ll get to the point.
TH and sons #1 and #2 have started to teeter on the brink of becoming beer
bores. TH does enjoy a glass of wine each evening. I don’t. In life’s lottery,
I have been dealt a losing hand. I CAN drink wine, but not only do I derive no
real pleasure from it, any more than a glass tends to make me ill. I am what I
can only describe as a “lightweight” when it comes to imbibing alcohol. Or, as
some prefer to describe me, a “designated driver”.
Over the past few
years, manly conversations in the N-o-T household have frequently turned to new
beers, micro-breweries, beer festivals, tasting sessions and, more recently,
home brewing. So far, it’s been mostly just talk, but last year son#1 and a
friend brewed some beer from scratch, and in order to do so they borrowed all
TH’s beer-making equipment, which hadn’t seen the light of day since before
son#1 was born. And so, when TH suddenly announced that he had an urge to
make some alcoholic ginger beer, there was a problem. The equipment was
missing.
Once upon a time, this
problem could have been remedied by way of a quick trip to Boots. Alas, Boots
has long ago withdrawn from the home brewing market, and alternative suppliers
are a bit thin on the ground. But TH was determined.
Thus it was that
yesterday we set out on a journey to that well known centre of home brewing:
Aldershot. Now I don’t know much about
Aldershot, but I do know that it’s not exactly On The Doorstep. In fact, it’s
far enough away that we had to break out the Satnav. As it was a sunny day -almost a forgotten
phenomenon here – there was a lot of traffic, but the nice satnav lady got us
there, and we found what appears to be the only purveyor of home brewing
essentials in the South East. TH purchased all the bits he needed for a mere
£45 (I hope you can tell I’m being sarcastic) and we drove it all home, where
TH set to work in a “just add water” sort of way. He then wrapped the large
bucket in a specially-purchased bargain-price electric blanket (Tesco, £9) and parked
it in the dining room, where I am led to believe it will be staying for at
least a couple of weeks.
Some time in the
distant future, therefore, we should be the proud owners of 25 litres of
Nowhere-on-Thames’s finest alcoholic Ginger Beer.
On the journey back
from deepest Aldershot, TH informed me that he had been motivated to make his
home-brew by the fact that Crabbie’s alcoholic Ginger Beer ( the
commercially-available equivalent) is currently on sale in the supermarkets at
around £4.50 a litre.
Now, let me see…
Trip to Aldershot… a
50-mile round trip costing approximately £12 in fuel
Materials….£45
Electric Blanket…£9
Total outlay: £66
PLUS the cost of
having an electric blanket running for two whole weeks
PLUS bottles (we haven’t yet got any bottles)
Yielding 25 litres..
I conservatively
estimate that the whole process may just, if he’s lucky, have saved TH about
£12. If he’s lucky. As for what the
resulting brew will taste like……I just hope it comes closer to the commercial
version than a Boots wine kit ever got to wine!
Yes,I remember the Boots home Brew section....and specialist shops too...one at the top of a steep hill in Norwich where it was wise to put a stone behind your wheels...another in Charlotte Street off the Tottenham Court Road - alas, all gone, fallen to the superior fire power of supermarket BOGOF offers.
ReplyDeleteI used to make a natty gorse wine in those days and the hawthorn blossom wasn't bad either apart from the usual suspects.
Then we moved to France....
We are now back to brewing though....the glut of bananas ensures that the airlocks are gurgling non stop in the kitchen - as having a more stable temperature than the balcony - and let me assure you that you will not be reclaiming your dining room in anything like two weeks.
Never give a man control of a public room in the house. They occupy...he'll be building an Atlantic Wall round his brewing kit next...
As a lover of ginger beer shandies, I am now off to dig up some ginger root to see what I can do with it...
Fly, I suspect you Know the Truth...I am losing my grip on the dining room, as you have correctly deduced. It's partly the downside of not having an airing cupboard, or indeed a kitchen in Costa Rica! Men seem to have such messy mid-life crises! There's also an amplifier in the dining room, although I reclaimed the sofa which had been entirely taken up by the guitar case, even though TH is testament to the fact that Bert Weedon's "Play in a Day" book is an advertising sham! However, not even a stream of family members filing past and quietly singing "Kumbayah" each time the guitar came out was a big enough deterrent!
ReplyDeleteI will be vacating the premises for a couple of months soon, as I head back to France. I strongly suspect that by the time I return the dining room will indeed have become a micro-brewery.
But CB, you forgot to take into account the fact that the equipment will be used at least once more before TH loses interest, thereby halving the cost per litre. :-) As my DH is also a very lightweight drinker - Stone's Ginger Wine goes down nicely at Christmas - he's never felt any urge to use the mass of brewing and wine-making stuff inherited from his father, who always had a demijohn or two on the go. And yes, I too remember when Boots had a whole aisle of the stuff to choose from.....
ReplyDeletePerpetua, I am fast reaching the conclusion that I am not alone in suffering the "man with hobby" phenomenon! You have almost certainly hit the nail on the head. Yes, other brews will follow. I predict some form of cider will be next on the list. I also predict that overall results will prove less satisfactory than the commercially-available alternatives and that the paraphernalia just purchased will eventually become yet another of the obstacles laid in my path in the shed at the bottom of the garden (where old hobbies go to die)
ReplyDelete