Homebrewing

I spent a couple of hour yesterday on the homemade wines, so now it's all racked off, some will be ready for bottling in about 2 week's time or so. I also got 4 gallons of eldeflower wine into demi-johns, which is bubbling away nicely. All labelled and dated, and returned to their rightful places in the outside store room. They're winter wines - made at a time when fresh ingredients, although not hard to come by if you buy them in, aren't easily available to be picked or foraged yourself. So, in the winter, I make some different types of wine - you wouldn't find these in the off-licence! I have coffee, apple, jam, dandelion and Rose Pouchong tea bag. There are a lot of homebrew snobs out there, you know, who really turn their nsoes up at these wines, but when made properly and left to mature, they can be very good. I do like the traditional ones like the elderflower, the fruit wines, the flower wines, the parsnip sherry, but it doesn't do to get stuck in a rut, so I always like to try something different. I've been making the tea and coffee wines for years now, and they're good. As for the Rose Pouchong tea wine - well, someone gave me some a while back, but put milk in it; I bought my own tea bags to give it a proper go (no milk, quite weak), but really disliked it, so into the brew bucket it went. It makes a good wine, with a definite more-than-a-hint of rose. Jam wine is a good way of clearing through the cupboard before the year's jam making gets underway again - always makes a very good mixed fruit wine, usually red, or reddish, and different everytime, using less sugar than normal as the sugar is there already in the jam.
Those snobs are quite happy to go out and buy ingredients and kits to make their "wines", whilst knocking what's sitting in fornt of them. I have nothing against kits per se (although I've only ever used one in my life, when I was at college), or buying ingredients, but if they'd stop and think about it, and use what's available and in season, etc, then it would lead to a much more sustainable personal wine cellar. People are so quick to criticise without any experience of things, I find, especially this particular forum I have in mind.......Ah well, it's them that's missing out LOL
For me, homebrewing isn't a hobby, it's part of the housekeeping and always has been. It gets fitted in with everything else and plays a big part in our self-reliance efforts. It tastes good too, and saves a shed load of money, amkes great presents, barters, you can make your own labels, and recycle the bottles endlessly, support they perilous real cork industry, and - it's fun!