Bottling Day

LimeLight has been sitting in the carboys now for 11 days, so this afternoon when I get home from work I will be bottling it. I may though have to buy another couple of bottles of Bernard or Chodovar to indulge in before I start as I only have 10 empty bottles at the moment - I have drunk a lot more of both of them since I started making my own beer as they have swing tops and thus I didn't have to go out and buy a capper.

Remaining with home brew, but this time the kit itself, I have been asked several times where I bought my equipment from? A question which often precedes much umming and ahhing before trying to explain that I didn't buy a kit, I cobbled it all together - so for those interested, here is what my kit consists of, and the price thereof:

• 2 x 5l wine bottles, 180kč each (about $9/£6/€6.60)
• 2 x rubber bungs with hole, 45kč each
• 2 x airlocks, 17kč each
• 1 x hydrometer, 210kč
• 1 metre food grade plastic tubing (1cm diameter), 15kč (I think off the top of my head)
• 1.5 metres food grade plastic tubing (2.5cm diameter), 25kč (again, I think)
• 1 5l food grade plastic jerry can with tap, 250kč

So for a grand total of 984kč - which is $49.20/£33.90/€36.45 - you too can have a brewing kit for making batches of about 8 litres a time. Sure it is only a small amount of beer, but if things go badly at least you're not throwing 18.5l worth of beer down the drain.
For my Czech readers, I bought most of the equipment from Billa and Bauhaus - the bungs and airlocks I bought from Hop Shop UK - this was before I knew Evan and he gave me the website of a Czech home brewing shop, where I now get my ingredients from, as well as my hydrometer. So far Mrs Velkyal and I have made the following in our kit:

• Dandelion Wine Vintage 2008 (very strong and very nice!)
• Mead (a downright disaster)
• Experimental Dark Matter - smoked dark mild ale
• LimeLight - lime witbier

It is perfectly plausible and possible to make a decent beer without spending tons of cash on the latest and bestest equipment with bells, whistles and LCD display panels, and it is hugely satisfying to know that so far no-one has gone blind or died from drinking my beer. Happy days all round, especially as I got made redundant the other day!
I am actually not too bothered about the redundancy thing, the severance pay will be very helpful in getting set up Stateside.