Whats your best, simplest, budget brew?

[phatboytall]

After making some cracking 5% ginger beer out of water, ginger, lemons and sugar I was wonder what other really simple, really cheap, really GOOD recipes there are out there?

Thought it would be great any people wanted to share their favourite recipes..

To get the ball rolling my ginger beer was
4 Lemons chopped
700g Ginger chopped
4 KGs Sugar
10 litres water

All boiled together, then pitched into a fermenting bucket with 10 litres water. Then pitched some US05 beer yeast

Then primed stored in Asda Smart Price Still Spring water bottles 17p each

It was superb! Brewed and all drunk inside 4 weeks.

Whats your best recipe?

[jason123]

4 Kgs of sugar in 10 litres

Thats sounds a bit tasty

Might give it a try. Would you say US 05 was essential or for that extra rough touch could a bread yeast be used to cut costs even further.

[Gordonmull]

1L grape juice
1L apple juice
700g sugar
1 tsp citric
nutrient
topped up to 1gal.

Works out at about 50p a bottle and is a very nice tipple.

Although:
1 bottle lowitcz malina
750g sugar
citric
Nutrient

Works out about 30p per bottle and is ok for drinking on its own.

[Curious Brew]

The simplest brew has to be four litres of apple juice in a demijohn with yeast.

Sugar if you're feeling adventurous!

[second2none]

"Sugar Wine"

5L water
Youngs super wine yeast
Yeast Nutient
1kg of dextrose (found in morissons with bakery stuff)

Desolve dex in some hot water, top up with cold tip in a DJ add other stuff and leave to ferement out.

13% crystal clear crappy vodka clone, Nice with coke or ginger beer

Works out to be about £1 for 1L you can get it stronger if u wanna add more dex but I like it like that

[pauliedangerously]

I think I'll be giving that ginger beer a go but only in a 5 litre batch so I'll have to downsize everything

[The_blue]

To get the ball rolling my ginger beer was
4 Lemons chopped
700g Ginger chopped
4 KGs Sugar
10 litres water

All boiled

Whats your best recipe?

If second2none is getting 13% vodka from 1kg in 5 litre what are you getting???

[WishboneBrewery]

I'm thinking a Ginger Beer might be a good idea, I'll probably just make it up as I go along, did you boil the whole lemons with the skins?

[phatboytall]

I cut the Ginger length ways in to thin chunks and scored them with a sharp knife. The lemons were zested/scraped then cut in half, squeezed and zest added....then i just the chucked the lemmons in!

Basically boiled the lot up for 10mins to sterlise and extract, then just poured into the FV and topped up with water.

No need to prime the bottles I found, the fermentation goes on for ages! Had to keep releasing pressure on the asda smart price water bottles.

Many people complain there ginger beer is really dry, this was as sweet as lemonade, probably due to the amount of sugar left after the yeast had got lazy and given up. I have photos I can add i think when i get back to blighty.

Next up i want to make a Smirnoff Ice clone*, i'm convinced its just sugar, water and lemon!

*Not that i would ever drink that awful stuff, i just want to prove i'm right to myself!

[WishboneBrewery]

We've got to do some shopping at the local Indian supermarket, which has a great fruit & veg section.... Lots of ginger, lots of lemons and whatever else takes my fancy, I might even steep some Caramalt as I have heaps of it - viewtopic.php?f=24&t=42783#p455403 as mentioned here, though he's not replied yet to my question.