Chardonnay

I'm kicking off the most ambitious brew yet ... well, the biggest brew anyway. I've bought a 30 bottle kit of Chardonnay (white wine). Having looked at the costs, it seems that wine offers bigger savings over the prices in the shops. The cost breakdown is at the end.

This is the same volume as the 40 bottles of lager before Christmas, but it feels bigger because I've had to get some proper grown-up kit. I am the proud owner of a hydrometer and a bubble trap. I've got a second bucket, too (one with a hole in the lid for the bubble trap).

The instructions said to rinse out the bucket then add 5 litres of boiling water. This was 4 kettles full. There must be a neat way to boil 5 litres in one go...

Next, the 4Kg of sugar is dissolved into the water. I found it helped to use a torch to see that the sugar was all gone.

Then the bucket is topped up with the concentrate, the yeast, additional flavouring and water to fill the bucket. Again, lots of kettles full.

Now we just have to wait and see...

Additional kit bought:
Youngs Chardonnay kit ... £25
Brew bucket ... £11?
4Kg brewing sugar ... ~£8
2 bubble traps ... £2.25

This works out at around £1.55 per bottle. That's at least £3.45 less than I would normally spend, whereas the beers only saved about 60p each.

Next week we'll see how it turns out.