Rosemary and Bay Ale

So this morning I had my first go at making beer. After reading Andy Hamilton's Booze for Free, I decided on the Rosemary and Bay Ale. It looked fairly simple for a beginner so off I went and bought the ingredients.

1kg Malt Extract
10 Large Rosmary Sprigs
20 Bay Leaves
500g Sugar
250g Golden Syrup
Packet of Ale Yeast
13 Litres of Water
2 tbsp Golden Syrup for priming

For the Malt Extract I used Holland and Barretts which costs £2.35 and comes in 454g size jars so I used 2 which gave me just over 900g. Hopefully 100g less won't make too much of a difference

 I used Brewers Beer Yeast which was recommended to me by the Homebrew Supermarket in Runcorn, who said that customers had said good things about it. Only 99p

 The bay leaves and rosemary ready to be added.

 5 litres of water brought to the boil

 The Malt Extract, Bay Leaves and Rosemary boiled for 30 mins. After the 30 mins was up, the sugar and syrup was added and allowed to dissolved.

 The wort was then strained into the fermentation bin then 8 litres of cold water was added and was cooled to 18c. The yeast was pitched and the wort was aerated.

 Hydrometer showed 1.040

Using the AlcholCalculator App for the iPhone the calculations show that the abv is approximately 5.3%

It needs to be left for 4-14 days to ferment.

Overall the process was really simple for the first time beer maker. Everything into the same pan and boiled. While boiling, the wort had a rather savory smell but once the sugar and syrup was added it turned into an almost fruity Horlicks taste.

Looking forward to see how the turns out.