Making beer and butter

Melanie and Ruby had gone away for two days and while Geraldo and I were looking after Eban, I helped him make beer and butter in his kitchen. As you may know, alcohol is a bit dear (teuer) in Australia. So by home-brewing you can save money. And no license is required as long as you don't sell it. Geraldo uses the home-brewing kits that you can buy; a kit costs $10 and yields about 22 litres. One barrel was ready for bottling, and then we started up the next one. The kit consists of syrupy malt molasse and a packet of brewing yeast (Bierhefe). Cleanliness is important; everything must be washed with boiling hot water. You heat up the malt, combine it with 1 kg of sugar, add warm water and finally the yeast. That goes into the black plastic fermentation barrel and all is kept at room temperature. When it bubbles you know that the fermentation is working right. After a certain number of days the beer can be bottled, a teaspoon of sugar is added to each bottle to continue the fermentation (so that it is not stale), and the beer is best after a couple of months maturing. They sell the kit in different types of beer: Lager, Draught, Ale, etc. I was surprised how relatively easy it is to brew your own beer. And the result really tasted good.

The butter making was fun too. We had a bucket of cream (which came from Glenn and Therese's dairy farm) and stirred it with an electric stirrer for a few minutes until the fat separated from the water (the buttermilk). Then the buttermilk had to be washed out with cold water and finally we kneaded, pressed and slapped the butter with our hands to get as much as possible of the water out. A plastic container is used as a mould (Giessform) and cling film to wrap the butter in. Then into the fridge - done!