In addition to 2014 being my year of thrift, I'm also making a point of trying to finish off the million and one craft projects I have half completed and also actually trying all the things that I've been meaning to do for ages.
Top of my list is making my own homebrew wine. Mr C has been making beer for a few years now, but after Liz from Me and My Shadow presented me with a bottle of her homebrew when we appeared on BBC3CR together I've been keen to try myself. A while back I picked up a kit from the local chemist that sells homebrew supplies and the only thing that was preventing me from getting started was not having a demijohn to brew it in. Rather than rush straight out and buy one new I decided to ask on my local freegle group first. There wasn't an instant response so being an impatient soul I rushed off to Wilko and bought myself a demijohn and a couple of airlocks. Just a few hours later came an email from a local lady offering me a "couple" of demijohns and a bag of assorted other wine making bits of kit. Bingo!
To complete the process you need to use a couple of different vessels so in actual fact I was always going to need more than just the one I'd bought, but this means that I'm all set now for many a homebrew experiment. My first batch is now in progress and after a couple more days should have finished the first fermentation stage.
It doesn't exactly look like wine that you'd want to drink right now (and this was actually taken a few days ago and it looks worse now!) but checking obsessively on google images it seems that it does actually look like it is supposed to – phew!
The whole wine making process is actually much more involved than I expected and it'll be a while yet before I'm at the drinking stage, but once I'm there I'll try and blog about the whole process.
The moral of the story though is that if you're after something secondhand then you've certainly got nothing to loose by asking around to see if anyone's getting rid of something or selling it on. And huge thanks to local resident Iris for passing on her old demijohns! I promise to put them to good use.
Once again I'm linking up with Liz over at the wonderful Magpie Monday – so please do pop along and see what other wonders people have found in their local charity shops, thrift sales or for free!
V says
Oooh what a fabulous find, and you can’t get more thrifty than that! Love freegle and freecycle, I got my first bread maker from there! x
Liz Burton says
Oh how fabulous!
Are you making it to a recipe or from a kit?
I’ve got some more white on the go, actually I need to syphon it off. We’ll have to do a wine tasting evening!
Thanks for linking up x
Emma says
oooh I wouldn’t mind having ago. But tell me how it tastes first. I do like my wine!
Mrs C says
Lets just say that I hope it tastes better than it looks right now!
Mrs C says
Fantastic. Have to say that our local group is so busy that I think only once have I been successful in getting something offered on there, so I find asking often works best. But in order to be taken seriously you really need to be offering stuff on there too.
Mrs C says
This ones from a kit, but bust reading several books so that I can hopefully do a recipe one next.
compostwoman says
Top tip – 5 l water bottles are great to use as demijohns!
Carolin says
Oh exciting. I can’t wait to find out how it tastes x
Janet says
I remember my parents doing this. The best bit (for us kids) was hearing the popping of the airlock! My dad use to make homebrew as well. I can remember him boiling up huge bags of hops in my mum’s jam pan. She wasn’t happy!
Mrs C says
Me too – I just hope it starts to look better!
Mrs C says
Sounds like a fine alternative use of a jam pan to me!