>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Quick and Cheap Way to Get Pissed <<<<<<<<<<<<<< By Psi-co of United Minds Fed up of paying to get pissed? Well then you should do what I do (and I am not talking about drinking household solvents!) No, you should make your own home brew beer. It's dead cheap to make and well, you can get pissed with it (hence title above!). So if you are interested read on! First of all its best to buy a starter kit. Yes, I know that costs money, which you would probably prefer to spend on booze, drugs, prostitutes or even a copy of Scottish Farmer depending on how you are orientated. But once you have one, you will have all the equipment you need (without which you're going to have trouble making your beer). So you can expect to get a decent starter kit for between ten and fifteen pounds. In it you should get bottles, fermenting bin, and the ingredients for your first lot of beer. You'll normally get the ingredients in a big can or something. In it you should get Brewers wort (this isn't something that has been scraped of a brewers cock OK?). Brewers wort is in fact a thick gooey liquid that gives the beer its flavour. If you try drinking it you will find it tastes like complete shit and nothing like the finished product (depending on how good you are at brewing). So don't drink it. You will also get some yeast, we'll talk about that later. One thing you do need which you don't get in the ingredients is sugar. You need quite a lot of this. I find that if you use special brewing sugar then you'll get a better quality beer. This stuff isn't expensive (It's actually just glucose) and can be bought at you're local brewing shop. Just go up to the friendly looking bloke at the counter and ask him for some help. Okay so you've got all you're ingredients and your sitting there thinking "What the fuck am I supposed to do now?!?". Well now its time to start brewing. First you should read the label on your can of ingredients as it contains some useful information. It should tell you how many pints that you can make, how much water and how much sugar you should add. So the first thing you are going to do is sterilise all your equipment. If you don't do this then lots of nasty little germs and bacteria will seriously fuck up your beer. Now that everything is nice and clean you should get out your fermenting bin (basically an oversize bucket) and pour in the brewers wort. Now add as many pints of water as the label on the can told you to. This water should be boiled in your kettle first. Now that you have a big bucket of nasty brown stuff in front of you, you should add the sugar. The same amount as the instructions tells you to. All that is left now is to add the yeast. Yeast is actually an enzyme (strangley enuff!) which converts sugar in to alcohol. So this means you should be very kind to it and respect its needs and desires. For instance the yeast will die if it gets too hot, so its best not to add straight after the boiling water. Around 21 degrees C is a good temperature to add the yeast at. So, it might be best to leave the mixture over night to cool down. Don't let the yeast get too cold either or it will stop working try to keep the beer at a constant temperature in the lower 20's. You should now leave the beer for between a week to 2 weeks so it will ferment. The best place to leave it is the airing cupboard or somewhere warm. Check the beer now and again. You should see foam appearing on top of it, this shows fermentation is taking place. You should spoon the foam off as the beer is better off without it. Once the beer seems to have stoped fermenting its time to bottle it. I recommend you use glass bottles. Just simply siphon the beer off into the bottles and cap them. Put about a tea spoonful of brewing sugar in each bottle before caping it. This makes the beer fizzy, so if you don't add any you won't get any head, Err.... Anyway leave the beer in the bottles for about a week before you drink it. It will improve with age. So that's basically it. If you try this I'd like to hear from you and any samples would be gratefully accepted... To get in contact to swap demos or just to write to me for no reason (I like getting letters!) or whatever write to: PSI-CO of UNITED MINDS 12 Miller Avenue Perth PH1 1HN Scotland