Apricot Honey Ale recipe

Ingredients

• 3kg Alexander pale malt
• 450g wild flower honey
• 40g Hallertau hops
• 15g Saaz hops
• 1.3L apricot puree
• 1/2 teaspoon irish moss
• American ale yeast (e.g. Wyeast 1056)

Instructions

Mix water with extract mixture and bring to a boil. Add the honey, stirring constantly to prevent sugars from burning to bottom of pan. Add Irish moss to boil. Add Hallertau hops and then give a minimum 45 minute boil. Five minutes from the end of the boil, add Saaz hops. After boiling, strain the mixture to remove hops and cool to 18°C. You can add the can of puree now or when you rack the beer into the secondary fermenter. Add the yeast when the wort is 18°C.

After three days of strong fermentation, rack the beer into a secondary fermenter and add the puree if you have not done so already. Ferment for 7 to 10 days and bottle.

Cherry lambic beer recipe

After getting some good Kriek cherry lambic in, I found this recipe to try out:

Dark Cherry Lambic - makes 23L

Ingredients:

2.5kg Munton's plain light DME

1kg wheat malt extract (hippie shops are fine for this)

100g malto dextrin

30g Hallertau hops

1.5kg can Oregon Dark Sweet Cherry Puree

Wyeast #3278 Lambic Blend

Instructions:

Dissolve the light malt extract, wheat malt extract and malto dextrin in warm water. Bring to a boil and add hops. Boil for 45 minutes. Strain out hops. Add enough water to the fermenter to make 23L and cool to 18°C degrees. Pitch yeast, add fruit puree and ferment for 3 weeks.

Rack into secondary fermenter and condition for a week at 16-17°C. Bottle condition using corn sugar (or any pure sugar high in glucose/dextrose, inverted sugar should be fine) for priming.

Dave's Ginger Beer recipe

From Dave's Ginger Beer at Netcooks:

Ingredients

• 23L water
• 500-800 grams ginger root, coarsely chopped
• 4kg sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 sachet champagne yeast
• 4 lemons, sliced in half (or eighths)

Instructions

Squeeze the lemons into your largest pot, and put in the squeezed bits too. Add the ginger root and cream of tartar. Fill up with as much water as you can, then boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Add as much sugar as you can, if there's room.

Put the rest of the sugar, if there's any, in your 23L fermenting vessel. Pour the water mixture over. Top up to 23L and cool to lukewarm (no more than 30°C, ideally about 22°C). Have a taste - this gives you a clue to the final flavour - if neccessary, add more ginger or ginger powder.

Scoop out a cup of the mixture, dissolve the yeast in it, then stir it back in.

Cover and ferment for about a week at 18-23°C. Test it to see how it's doing. When you're happy with how it tastes, siphon into sterilised bottles, age upright for a week at 15-18°C, then store at below 15°C. This is a pretty unstable way of storing it - you will likely want to let out gas, or add potassium sorbate when bottling to stun remaining yeast.

If you want to bottle it fizzy, you've a couple of options; stop fermentation with a bit of sodium metabisulphite and some potassium sorbate when it tastes nice, then leave for a day, and either:

1. Keg it, adding carbon dioxide through a pressure valve, and giving the CO2 a day or more to dissolve
2. Bottle prime, with half a teaspoon cane sugar per 500ml bottle. Putting in too much sugar will probably cause your bottle to explode eventually, so watch out!
   

It'll hit at least 3% abv. within a week, and will finish at about 19% if you let it, so keep an eye out. I think it tastes best about 10-20 days in!