Three pound pint

I paid £3 for a pint at Aldeburgh Carnival last August. It took me by surprise and I complained.

The pub concerned should have made this temporary increase quite clear IMO.

The price of Guinness in many places isn't far short of £3 But I had a lovely pint of Old Peculier last week for £2.25

I'm sure you're right but I'm going to miss out on it :-)

Just been reading this thread and the "Decline of traditional pubs?" thread. Sadly I hardly ever visit a pub these days (I used to live in them). Nearest decent pub is 10 miles away and I just can't be bothered anymore (and I don't drink and drive). Not visited my local "village pub" for 6/7 years :-( It's awful :-(

So .... make my own beer from top quality kits and drink it at home - works out at around 45p per pint. YES - I DO miss the old days with decent pubs but I'm afraid those days have gone. I'm getting old and times have changed. The younger generation don't have the same taste as people of my age and the younger generation are all that matter ..... (£££££££).

Sad but fighting it is pointless :-(

With free nuts, and chestnuts to roast on an open fire!!

Oh stop it. You're turning me green......

Hi

Why not go the whole hog and build an all-grain brewery?

My garden shed "brewery" wasn't expensive and has paid for itself several times over (presumably you already have some of the bits); it takes up only about the same space as an upright fridge-freezer and can produce 5 gallon batches of beer equally as good as the finest commercial real ale at around 20p per pint - certainly far superior in taste to any of the kits I have tried in the past.

Regards

KGB

Any more details? Sounds interesting...

In message , valeofbelvoirdrinker writes

I paid £3 for a pint of 6.0% damson beer in Reading town centre a few days ago.

Why?

My income went down in 2006 so I'm going to start homebrewing in the New Year and do what I used to do when I was a student - get a bit "relaxed" first so that you spend less money when out.

The real ale scene up here has really taken off in the past few years, but I'm being priced out of it. I'll miss those times when "alright, just the one" turns into a six-hour chat with your friends and the strangers at the next time, but I can't afford many nights where four pints is going to cost over 11 quid.

Some more details would be appreciated. Ta.

hops; Maris Otter is around £400 a ton at the moment which is £10 for a 55lb sack.And if you can get some proper brewers' yeast as well that makes all the difference!

Hi

Sitting on the top shelf is a hot liquor tank. This is little more than a plastic fermenter fitted with an electric kettle element and a tap.

Directly under this is the mash tun. This is basically a 30 litre insulated picnic cooler fitted with a wort strainer and tap, plus a mini sparge arm.

Under this is the boiler. This is identical to the hot liquor tank but is fitted with a hop back.

There is also a cooling coil, which is simply a coil of copper central heating tubing with an inlet hose on one end and an outlet hose on the other.

The whole set-up cost me little more than £100 a few years ago - and was bought ready built as a complete brewery from a homebrew shop (it is probably a bit dearer now) - it would have been a bit cheaper building it myself but I decided the few quid saved wasn't worth the hassle. You can cut costs even further by not using a separate boiler as a hot liquor tank - it just makes life a lot easier to use one. Both Leyland Homebrew (near Preston) and Hop & Grape (Darlington) sell complete breweries as described above and if you have one of the Camra homebrewing recipe books, Leyland Homebrew will even make up an ingredient "kit" from any recipe - just tell them the book title and page number.

Basically what you get is a complete mini-brewery and there is nothing essential in a full size commercial real-ale brewery that isn't in my little garden shed home brewery. The only real difference is that a full size brewery brews several barrels at a time in large stainless steel containers - I brew in 5 gallon plastic buckets; otherwise the procedure is identical; as are the ingredients.

Apart from the above equipment you will of course also need other bits and pieces such as a hydrometer and thermometer, plastic tubing, syphon, fermenter, barrel or bottles etc. but if you are already brewing from kits then presumably you already have these.

Whilst the idea of using a cheap plastic fermenter as a boiler may seem a little daunting, in practice it has given no trouble in nearly

I was surprised at just how easy it is to brew "properly" using all grain. Basically, if you can brew a pot of tea, you can brew beer and at £3 per pint compared to around 20p per pint brewing it yourself; it doesn't take many 5-gallon brews to pay for itself.

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The following is a very brief description of the brewing process using the above equipment......

Heat required amount of water in hot liquor tank to about 77ºC.

Add water to mash tun from tank, slowly add grain and stir to porridge-like consistency. Adjust temp to 66ºC using cold or boiling water. Fit lid and leave undisturbed for 90 minutes/2 hours.

Whilst mashing is in progress, fill hot liquor tank with water and heat to 80ºC for sparging.

Slowly open tap on mash tun (approx 45 to 60 secs per pint) and draw off 4 pints into jug. Return to top of mash tun and when wort is clear, allow to run into boiler. Boiler can be switched on after about 1 gallon is collected (i.e. when element is covered).

Sparge the grains at about 80ºC. Continue sparging until about 6 gallons of wort is collected (i.e. boiler is full).

From here on it is more or less identical to brewing from a kit.

Bring to boil, add hops and boil for 90 minutes, adding aroma hops & Irish moss (plus cooling coil to sterilize it) for final 15 min.

Cool wort to 20ºC (68ºF), transfer to fermentation bin, add yeast and ferment out.

Regards

KGB

I think I know what I'll be getting myself for a belated Xmas present. :-)

I've done homebrewing before, with a 5 gallon plastic bucket and a 5 gallon plastic barrel. It sounds like your set-up is simply a more convenient way of doing things.

You might want to talk to the good people at the Craft Brewing Association. "dedicated to brewing quality beers at home" - .

They had a stand at the National Winter Ales Festival in Manchester last January, though I don't know if they're back for next month's event.

I think homebrewing is a great idea, but maybe i'm lucky, as i don't think i've come close to buying a £3 pint yet (in places i'd want to drink at least - i don't really do wine bars / trendy clubs, etc) £2.20 for Landlord & Jenning's RedBreast yesterday, but that's on the high side locally (Merseyside).

Quite so. ISTR a brewery executive once saying that they're not selling pints of beer in a pub, they're selling units of leisure experience. It sounds the most appalling marketspeak but it's a good summary of most people's reasons for going down the pub.

But if everyone only went to a pub once a week, there would be precious few pubs about...

On the contrary I suspect that if every adult went to a pub once a week the pubs would be swamped.

Rgds

Andy R