The Home Bar - Everyone should have one

I just thought I would write quickly about home bars. Here is mine, while not perfect it does the job quite nicely.

The Bar itself is a garden bar i picked up at Ganleys in Athlone. It closes down to half that size for easy storage but mine stays where it is. I varnished it so it looks better than the usual stained wood you get in garden furniture. It came with two wooden bar stools which were very big so i replaced them with brown leather to go with my Dinner table chairs. I fit a light to the underside of the bar too and i have a stereo also.



The Other side of the bar has enough space for about 30 bottles of spirits and mine is full. There are also two little drawers were i store drink recipes and co2 cartridges for my chiller/tap.





The Chiller/Tap is a Morphy Richards that I got for €99 in Lidl. It takes standard 5L mini-kegs but not the Heineken one as that uses its own dispenser.
In this image here you will see my Cider. It dispenses pretty well and chills your beer nicely. The fact it uses co2 bulbs means i can regulate my co2 and induce some carbonation if needed.


No Bar would be complete without a TV so i got a cheap LCD from argos and mounted it on the wall. I use a digi-sender so i can control the sky box in the front room.

My dream is to one day have a proper bar with proper taps but for now, this does perfectly fine.

Brew #3 Coopers Brewmaster Series Wheat Beer

I started my third brew tonight. The Coopers Brewmaster Wheat Beer. I think a wheat beer should be a good kit to try as i have yet to actually taste a bad wheat beer, or at least one i do not like as its possible i have liked bad wheat beers.

Anyway so the only difference to the instructions were instead of 300g of dextrose, i used glucose as i have loads of the stuff. I used 500g of light spraymalt also. I also used a different yeast to the kit. I used Brewferm wheat beer yeast.

Just to be safe i also added 5 tsp of fermax yeast nutrient.
Im hoping that no bacteria got in and everything will work out nicely. No matter how safe you are, there is always a possibility of not getting the wort cooled quick enough before adding the yeast.

In my previous attempts i used water from the bath using the sprayer. This time i filled up using the pot i heated the water up in (from the mains in the kitchen) and poured it in. This took a few goes but it should oxygenate the wort nicely and be better quality water than from the tank in the attic.

My OG was about 1.040 but i could not get an exact reading due to foam. Im not so concerned about gravity readings at the moment.

Success on the Cider!

I figured it was time to see how my Cider attempt has gone and i could not be happier with the results, well i could but im happy enough to call it a success.
I decided to open my little 330ml bottle to check and I have a perfectly carbonated dry apple cider. It is not sweet like Magners or Strongbow and has a dry and light body. It would never win any reviews, but it has worked out.

Perhaps as the weeks go by, the others will get better. All I know is that I have no beer to drink for the last few days and I just cooked a chilli and Whiskey (plenty of that) is not going to be enough to go with it. I may even open one of my larger bottles later.

I think I am about ready to start a Wheat Beer this weekend.

Cider is primed and bottled/kegged

I spent today washing a load of bottles (500ml) and i sanitised 10 of them. I also sanitised my 3 5L mini-kegs and left them drying. While the power went out from 14:00 to about 19:30 or so, I spent that time in the dark until I lit a load of candles. I played my Nintendo DS and ordered Chinese from the next town which was not affected by the power cuts all around the country.

Eventually I siphoned my fermenter into my sanitised bottling bucket while I boiled some water and sugar (glucose brewing sugar) to prime it. Now tasting the cider at this stage, it tastes like very cheap and watery cider. I'm not sure if conditioning will improve on this but we shall see. It is also not clear, in the image it almost looks like orange juice. I believe when i move to a cool place that it should clear eventually.

Im not sure about the mini-kegs. I get very mixed reviews and the one thing im worried about now is that the priming solution contains too much sugar for the minikegs to handle? I have them down on a towel just in case.

As it turns out though, the bottle capper i got is very simple to use and very quick. I might go all bottle next time however it is an infinite pain in the ass to wash them all so i need to make sure i wash as i use.

My FG seems a little off too. It looks to be about 1.005. The instructions said when it reaches .998 or below then its done. From a bit more reading it seems that contrary to the instructions time of 7 days fermenting, Cider can take weeks or months to ferment properly and it should have been pretty much clear when i siphoned to the bottling bucket.

So i have a sneaking suspicion that this is another batch that will not work out, although its much more successful than the last one. As long my kegs do not explode then I should have something that i can at least drink.

I will hold off on making another batch for now, I want to see how this turns out and also make some decisions about either getting more bottles or go the Cornelius keg route. The only problem with the cornelius is chilling it as its too big for my fridge.

Bavaria 8.6 - Sometimes trying different things can be a bad thing.

So tonight I stopped off at my local Centra to get some Veg for dinner. I spent a few mins deciding on some beer. Most of the selection is the usual mass produced crap. There are some polish beers but I decided to try Bavaria 8.6 for the simple reason that it is a Blonde Beer and not ever having had one that i can recall, I decided to give it a go.

OK so this was a mistake. Of the many cheap beers out there, Bavaria crown (in a bottle) is one of my favourites. This though was just downright weird.

The strangest thing about this beer is how sweet it is, its like some sort of syrup almost.

In short, getting this beer was a rookie mistake but making mistakes is the best form of education. I had 3 cans tonight and due to its strength at 7.9% (not even 8.6) it has left me with a nice buzz and surprisingly I find it gets better the more i drink it. I'm sure if I drank enough Bud light it would taste pretty good after a while too but when I sober up I will remember that i have at times forgot to wash my hands and tasted piss inadvertently that was better than an American light beer.

My advice, avoid this beer unless your sole goal is having a strong alcohol content beer to get wasted and not remember what it tasted like.

I now understand why people drink to forget, in my case it is to forget the taste of this beer.

Black Dog & Double Dragon.

Here are the last two beers from the pack of Great British Ales. Before i begin, let me say that everyone has a different taste so by no means should anything i or any other Beer reviewer say be taken as Gospel. That said, these were the two weakest of the set.

Black Dog is an English beer. This is not to be mixed up with the American Black Dog Ale.
Firstly is the obvious, this is a Dark ale so I would be expecting a lot of dark ale characteristics and i was not disappointed. In fact this was almost like a stout in that there were definite notes of roast coffee. This was a very enjoyable beer to drink and left me wanting more.
I have been reliably informed that in fact this beer is made by Elgood's in Cambridgeshire. Thanks Beer nut, that makes the next statement obsolete. *Unfortunately a little research leads me to believe that the brewery went out of business in 2001, however seems to have started back in 2006. It seems to be based in Whitby however i could be researching another black dog, either way they do not seem to have a website any more.*

Double Dragon is a Welsh beer, not to be confused with a certain 80's video game i enjoyed. This is brewed by the Felinfoel Brewery in Llanelli. This was an interesting beer. There was a taste, a taste that i can only describe as a little weird. I am not sure if it was good weird or not, i did not dislike this beer but there was something about it i can not put my finger on. To that end, i will need to track down some more. The bottle i got in the pack was only 275ml so I need a little more. This was a good beer though, it was just my least favorite from the pack of Great British Ales.

The only disappointing thing about the pack was that there were two English beers and yet there are four countries in the UK. There was no Northern Ireland beer? It is not that there is no beer made in Northern Ireland. If you look at the picture of all the different types of beer i bought in Belfast, you will clearly see Belfast Beer from the Whitewater Brewery and they were very very good beers!

Spitfire (Shepherd Neame)

This is the second of the Great British Ales pack. Unlike the Fraoch, I have had this many times. Shepherd Neame is one of my favourite brewers and Spitfire is an excellent beer. It is so good, i could never do it justice. It is malty, hoppy, spicy and leaves a wonderful bitter aftertaste that leaves your pallette wondering where the hell the next mouthful is?

The beer is named after the excellent Spitfire plane from world war two. The bottle has a clever slogan at the bottom that says "The bottle of Britain" which is pretty amusing considering the orgin of the name.

Fraoch - Scottish Heather Ale

I had never heard of Scottish beer before i picked up the Great British Ales box in Holywood Northern Ireland. Actually i picked this up along with a lot of different beers in November as you can see in the picture. I am going to deal with the Fraoch now. The reason is that all the other beers are gone, except for what is left in the Great British Ales box.

This lovely beer smells floral, which makes sense considering what its made from. The taste of this beer was a surprise as it tastes like a Summer Beer. It is a little like Blue Moon or Oberon in the US. I do not mean it tastes like them, i simply mean that they are what i am reminded of. This beer would go down very well in bluk on a hot summer afternoon. It tastes malty to me but also sweet. Im sure Velky Al will have more to say since he is from Scotland and has been tasting beer and blogging about them a lot longer than i have. I suppose all i can say about this beer is that it is sweet and delicous and has a nice bitter (not too bitter) aftertaste.

Oh by the way, my airlock is bubbling away nicely on the Cider this morning so fingers crossed i will have Cider ready to drink in a month.

My second attempt at brewing has begun

After my first disastrous attempt, and all the knowledge I have gained since then i do hope that this time i will be successful. To that end I have gone with the most simple of brews. Instead of a stout, I will this time do a Cider. Youngs cider kit to be exact.

I made sure everything was sterile and boiled 5 pints of water. I added 1kg of brewing sugar (glucose) into my bucket and also the can of apple juice concentrate. I then added my hot water and stirred.

This time around though I had the bucket in a bathtub half filled with cold water to cool it down. The temperature should be below 30c and it was below 20c which should be fine.
Then the yeast and yeast nutrient were added and it got a good stir as per the instructions.

I used my shiny new auto siphon to siphon a little into a test tube and take my specific gravity which was 1.042. I then transferred this into a washed beer bottle and put some tissue in the top, this should in theory ferment at the same rate as the bucket and I can take gravity readings now without having to open my bucket and risk infection.

Keeping the room at a constant temperature is my Bionaire Galileo panel heater. The unit has a remote control with thermostat so i leave the remote sitting beside the bucket and the temperature is set to 20 degrees Celsius.

New Year in New Orleans

We arrived in New Orleans to a scene of mentality just in time for rush hour, New years and pre game traffic all combined into one, all heading to the French Quarter and seemingly all in the same direction as us down Canal street. It took about 40 mins to get a few blocks so i could do a U turn and get into the holiday inn car park. Check in took forever, the Queue was out the door. There were Queues to get in the lifts. I grabbed a porter who took us through the people waiting and up the service elevator which may not have been much quicker as it kept stopping on every floor and service people were trying to get on, but could not. Eventually we got to our room on the 15th floor and i gave the porter my last $5.

The Queues did not stop there, every restaurant had people out the door. We wondered would we ever eat. We headed down Bourbon street which is the main street for bars and restaurants.

Eventually after walking down until it got quiet, we walked back up. We went down some nice side streets but everywhere was the same. In the end we went almost to the start of Bourbon and Canal to a place we passed earlier and admired. There was still about 15 people outside but we went up and gave our names. After standing around for 5 mins someone came out and it turned out that the 15 people were actually together and the waiter was slipped a $50 note and in they went. We were sent to the bar to wait and before i got my drinks we had our table so that worked out in the end.

The name of the place was La Bayou and it was excellent. I had Blackened Redfish and my wife had flame grilled Tuna. Both came with a side of Jambalaya. Now Louisiana has a much bigger brewing industry and Alabama, the biggest local brew company is Abita. I had the Abita IPA called Jockamo and it was fantastic, even if it was in a plastic cup. Lots of flavour. It was spicy and hoppy and went down well. I would have liked some more but time was pressing on and i was pretty full. I have to say though, this is one of my favourite beers now.

After eating we went back to the hotel to rest for a bit and watched some family guy. We then went back out and headed down to the Mississippi river, by Jackson park and the old Jackson brewery where the fireworks would go off. In new york they drop a crystal ball but here they dropped a flour de lis from the roof of the brewery. Not very exciting, it just slowly goes down a pole and then the fireworks go off behind you. The fireworks display was great, unfortunately it was cold for once. We soon got warm as after the fireworks, we followed the crowd back to bourbon street and mother of God i have never been so squashed in my life. I swear a million people were in that narrow street. It took about 20 minutes to get from the block we entered, to the next block and down a side street and away from the instanity.
We went back to our hotel and family guy was still on tv. I got on the web looking for a brew pub nearby and found the only one in the French Quarter, which is back down near Jackson park.

So after sleeping in we get up and head down to the brewpub for some lunch. The Crescent City Brewhouse is where we went and it was a truly excellent choice, good beer aside the food was fantastic! I had a half rack of Brewhouse ribs which were delicous. More importantly though are the beers. They only have 5 of their own. There are foure regular and one seasonal. They do a sample, so i ordered a sample and also a 22oz Red Stalion which was pretty tasty but would not be among the best beers i have tasted. Still i would not say no to some more of this malty & hoppy brew.
The sample obviously contained the red stallion so i gave that glass to my wife and i took the Weiss Beer (my wife ordered one for herself) which was actually very good.
The Black Forest is a Dark beer, not quite a stout but similar. I liked it a lot but felt something was missing.
The Pilsner was a big surprise though, i have not had many pilsners but they usually end up very similar to me. Maybe its just that i have not had a good one but this was fantastic, it was very crisp and sharp and i thought it was wonderful, i can not wait to get back to Prague (and Germany) this year and try some proper pilsner. Last time i was in that part of the world i did not drink beer very often.
Lastly came the special brew and this turned out to be my favourite and the waiters. I can not think what it was called though, It was like a mix of the weiss beer with the black forest. It was a Dark Weiss beer and it had the best of both brews.

So anyway, If you are ever in new Orleans then this place is a must.

That night we went to the Market Café down at the French Market and it was lovely. We were outside and there was a live Jazz band playing. The food was as usual, excellent and i had a platter of fried food. The fried Catfish was very impressive and i found much nicer than Cod. It was not like Fish and chips back home in that the chips were French fries so pretty boring. I had my first sampling of the Abita Amber which was the only interesting beer they had. The Amber is a nice beer but its pretty mediocre in that i would not go out of my way to get some more, but if i was somewhere that had a choice of that or the usual American watered down beer flavoured water, i would certainly pick the Abita amber.

The next day (our last full day) it was lovely and warm so it was shorts and T-shirt weather again. We went for a stroll down to the river again, i had a destination in mind but kept it to myself. We were heading to the ferry that takes you to Algiers point on the other side of the Mississippi. There is only one reason i wanted to go on it, well two to be honest. Firstly, and this is the most important one.... It is FREE for passengers.
Secondly, i like water and i like boats and thought it would be fun to see the city from the other side of the river.
And as always, there was the whole "to get to the other side" thing. Well due to my wifes lack of forward thinking in wearing high heal sandals that reduces her normal slow pace to one that involves me having to drag her, we did not make the ferry at the dock but that was fine as they are every 10 to 15 mins and it was lovely out. We sat down at a bar in the plaza which turned out to be downtowns 3rd mall (they only have 3 and they are not very big). Riverwalk Marketplace is very nice though. I had an Abita amber again and we called Hilary's cousin in frozen chicago to let her know we were sitting in the sun having drinks and we would see her in a couple of days.

We went into the mall, got some PSP games in Gamestop and had some mall sushi! Usually this is a bad idea, and the fact that it was the only eatery that had no Queue might be a sign but in this case it was a simple decision. I hate queues so we had the sushi and as mall sushi goes, it was pretty good stuff. It was made fresh, unlike normal mall sushi which is prepacked and sitting in a fridge all day.

Afterwards we wend out, missed the ferry again and had another drink. This time i tried the local cocktail (hurricane) which was like the last one i had on new years eve. Not worth writing about. We waited by the river, drinking and listening to a live band until I spotted the ferry on the way back and we headed for the ramp.

So Algiers point, what can i say. It seems to be a neighbourhood forgotten somewhat since Katrina hit however it is still a charming place to visit and there are two reasons for this.
When we got off the boat, we saw two places we could go but on the way i saw a shuttle for Mardis gras world. Now without know what this is, other than seeing it while crossing on the ferry, i decided "what the hell" and we jumped on board. Well Mardi Gras world is a warehouse/museum of all the Mardi gras floats. I did not fancy going on a tour and spending money on that so we went into the gift shop and bought overpriced souveniers for my family before getting the shuttle back. This is one reason to go to Algiers point as apart from getting to see the neighbourhood for free, the tour itself is probably very interesting if you are into that sort of thing.

Now we get to the real gem of our trip, the best reason to go to New Orleans let alone Algiers point. The Gem i refer to has the simple name of The Dry Dock Cafe. This turned out to be one of those places that we could have spent all day in and perhaps a few more days at that. When it started to get dark many beers later i asked what time the last ferry was and i was told after midnight so i delightedly ordered more drinks and asked for a menu, but im getting ahead of myself. Lets start with the music, the place was kicking with classic 80's and 90's music and people were singing, the barmaids were joining in with sound effects and the atmosphere was charged and ready to spark. Actually i think it did spark as we lost the music for a while, some cable issue which was resolved later with sticky tape.

They had a good selection of non Piss stle American beer such as Samuel Adams but i tend to only order beers that i can not get back home so i got my 3rd style of Abita which was their Christmas ale. Not as good as the IPA but much better than the Amber. It tastes like Christmas but its not overpowering on cloves and spices and it goes down well, real well as im pretty sure i downed about 7 or 8 pints during the day.

The people were very friendly as is usual in the south, one guy who seemed to be the local know it all when it came time for him to turn his attention on us was a very nice guy. Once we got past how he was the first in his family to be accepted as an actual local in Algiers point, even though his older siblings are still "blow-ins" he got to telling us how he has been to Ireland and has a cousin in Cork on the Island of Cape clear. Now i want to go to Cork, i think the cousins name is Michael and he runs a pub. Being Irish i know how easy it is to track someone down with a name and a general area. Its a small island and cape clear is a Tiny island off the coast of this small island so how hard can it be?

Well eventually after some food (more fired catfish for me) and some more beer, we got on the ferry back and walked to our hotel as we left very early in the morning. Our flight was about 7am or so.
Our flight would bring us back to Chicago and a 9 hour layover. Thankfully we could get the Blue line EL straight to Bucktown where My wife's cousin lives and kill a few hours.... more on that to come.

Christmas in Alabama

We flew out on Christmas Eve. Our flight was with American Airlines and went to New Orleans via Chicago. Unfortunately Chicago had a bad snow storm and flights were delayed. We were delayed in Dublin by over an hour, we did not mind that as we had a 7 hour layover in O' Hare so any time we could knock off that was a good thing. When we got in to Chicago we had only 5 hours to kill. We stopped off at the O'Hare Bar and Grill and had some nice food. I had my first Leinenkugel. I got the red and it was a pretty tasty brew i thought. I also had a heifeweissen of some kind but it was average if not below so i had another Leinenkugel.

We killed over an hour, maybe almost two and went wandering towards our gate in search of plugs to charge our portable DVD player etc. There we are sitting on the floor (no plugs by any chairs) watching movies and at this time i notice some delays on the floor and hear of announcements. Our flight is way off so im not concerned yet. Eventually it is nearly time to board and i notice that now our flight is delayed but no announcement has been made and the flight that was waiting at our gate hours before is still there? Doh! All in all our flight was delayed by about 4 hours. Instead of arriving in New Orleans at 10:30 that night, it was after 2am. When we went to try and get our car, the stand was closed and directed us outside to the shuttle pick up, which there was no sign of and someone shouted over that Dollar rental is closed for tonight, only one still open was Hertz. So we got on the Hertz shuttle, get there and their computer is down so we had to wait another 20 minutes for a quote. It came to over $930 i believe for the 10 days? Jaysus!! We had prepaid with Dollar using auto-europe for about €290. So we politely declined and decided its too late anyway and we will go check in to a hotel for the night. Now this is where we have some good luck! The girl at the desk said she will take us to a hotel down the road. I doubt we would have had an offer like this in Dublin. So we stayed at a hotel for $99 ex tax and got the hotel shuttle to the airport the next morning (2 mins away) and that shuttle brought us straight to the Dollar shuttle which was waiting and we got our car and drove through Fog to Foley Alabama passing the Stennis Nasa Space Centre and signs for the USS Alabama Warship.

We arrived to a warm Christmas day at about 10:30 am. Compared to Ireland and especially Chicago, this was paradise. In fact it was warmer than expected and we were not prepared or packed for the heat. Over the next few days the temperature was in the 20's for the most part, peaking at about 26 degrees Celsius. It did get a little chilly sometimes but for the most part it was very warm and it was shorts, sandals and a T-Shirt weather. Luckily my mother in laws condo is situated accross the road from the Tanger Outlet mall so we could get stuff real cheap. Its like a tripple saving! First we gain from the Dollar to Euro exchange rate, then we save because stuff is just so much cheaper in the US (very little sales tax/VAT also) and then because they are outlet stores, you get another 40% to 70% off the RRP.
I got a pair of Docker shoes and docker sandals for about $60 at buy one get one half price. Also got some T-shirts and another pair of shorts.

In Alabama i tried mostly bottled beer i had not tried before. Samuel Adams Cream stout was a very nice stout. Not a patch on the O' Haras which is my favourite but still a very nice stout. It had a sort of Nutty and Coffee flavour. It was not a thick heavy stout.

I also tried Yuengling black and tan which was drinkable but nothing worth mentioning. Sort of like a combination of the Sam Adams cream stout and some Miller light.

My wife got some Tequiza beer which was absolute muck. Its a Mexican cerveza with lime added in. Since the wiki shows the alternative is Bud light with lime, it pretty much sums it up. Incidentally, my wife loved it.

One of my favourite moments (and weirdest i suppose) was the morning my Mother in law took me out and left my wife feeling a little sick and sleepy in bed. We went to Hooters of all places. Now there was a reason for this. The last (& first) time i went to Hooters was with my father in law and Brother in law along with his two children. Anyway while at hooters that time, the power went out and we never got to eat there. my mother and father in law loved hooters so she took me there to a great little hooters right on the beach. We had a chicken wing platter and i had a few Blue Moons sitting on their porch in the sun. Blue Moon is a very nice Belgian Wheat style beer. It is seen as a sort of a micro brew but in fact is owned by Coors, who try not to let on that they own it. It is usually served with a slice of orange and is very tasty and refreshing. Full of citrus and the Orange brings it out even more. Similar to my favourite summer beer in the North, Oberon which is brewed by Bells in Michigan (where my wife is from). Oberon is also served with an orange slice but has a spicy taste to it and a little more bite. Unfortunately its only available in Michigan and also in Chicago and probably northern states nearby. Being seasonal, i can not get it down South in the middle of winter.

On the way back from hooters we stopped off at a mall and my mother in law went into a shoe shop. I went down to a sports bar and had a very nice IPA. It was a 22oz so bigger than a pint and it went down very nicely and left me buzzed after the blue moons just before. Unfortunately i can not remember the name of the bar let alone the name of the IPA.

We left Alabama on the morning of New years Eve and drove towards New Orleans.
On the way we stopped off in Mobile to see the USS Alabama. This is the ship they used in the movie "Under Siege" only in the movie it is supposed to be the Mississippi. It was lots of fun exploring the whole ship and as a bonus (i was more interested in this) they have some planes too. There is also an old Diesel sub to explore which was a bonus as i did not know about it till i got there.


In the hanger are the best planes such as an F-16 but the biggest reason for me to go there was to see my favourite as a kid. The SR71 Blackbird. This was before modern Stealth aircraft but it was stealthy enough back then even though the main reason was possibly the altitude and speed it would fly at. The biggest reason i loved this plane is the most obvious. It looks like a space ship! Its like something out of star wars, in fact Queen Amidala's ship in the phantom menace looks like an SR71 with a silver finish. Of course the sign says do not touch and of course i touched it :D


We tried to go to the Stennis Space Centre but it was closed. Still there was a rocket at the USS. Alabama park.

On to New Orleans we go.....

The Start of a failed brew

On the 6th of December 2008 we started brewing. I started with a Brupaks black moor stout and my wife started on a Solomon Grundy 7 day wine kit (white medium sweet wine).
We left our brews in the spare room with the radiator turned off and with a thermostat controlled heater to keep the temperature constant at about 23 Celsius.

The Airlock on my wife's wine bubbled away once i made sure it was sealed. My Beer however did not. Here are some of step i took which may have been a factor and so should be avoided.

1) The kit told me to hydrate my yeast in warm water while heating up the two cans of Malt in hot water. So what i did was start heating two saucepans of water and when the water in one got warm, i poured it into a mug and poured the yeast in and water may have been too warm.

2) I kept opening the lid to check which may have let in an infection.

3) On a few occasions i stirred and shook it and this may have let too much oxygen in.

4) before pitching the yeast i may not have let it cool down enough and also may not have aerated it enough to add initial oxygen to the mix.

There may be other reasons but they are the main things.
Some of the things i tried in order to rescue it are as follows

1) On the assumption i killed my yeast, i pitched another from a wheat beer kit. This did start fermentation for a while but did not ferment all the way.

2) Lots of shaking and stirring to mix up the yeast again.

3) I even pitched some baking yeast before i left for the US for Christmas.

4) When i got back from the US i put in some yeast nutrient which did fizz up and cause a reaction but did not change my gravity reading after a few days.

Now even though my attempt failed, i did learn a lot in trying to rescue it and am far more prepared for brewing beer. I will be starting again this weekend. I think i will try something simple like a Cider. I wonder will it taste like Magners?

During the failed Beer making attempt we made two batches of wine. The initial White medium sweet and a second batch of Rosé and they both turned out pretty well.
I will post about my trip to the US and the beers i tried there later and then i will keep an update on my next batch of beer.