Quote:
Originally Posted by mike31154
Make your own. I've been doing that for a while now. First at a brew on premise business. You pay your money, the owner brews it up, 2 weeks later you bottle it. Unfortunately the tax man is at work here as well & prices are going up on raw materials, which the business owner passes on to the customer.
Now I make my own beer at home, it's not rocket science. My RO system gets put to work making pure water, so all I need to do is buy the can of malt concentrate, 1kg corn sugar, boil up a couple gallons of RO water (add some of my home grown hops for extra flavour), add the whole works to 20 litres of RO water in a fermentation container & wait a few weeks.
Carbonation is the tricky part. Several ways to go about that. I've simply been using a 10lb CO2 cylinder & force carbonating each bottle after it's good & cold. Drilled a hole into a plastic bottle cap & fitted a car tire valve. Hose from CO2 regulator has an air chuck attached which locks on to the tire valve on the bottle cap. Fill the plastic beer bottle with beer, hit it with 40psi & shake for 30 secs or so. Takes a bit of planning since the bottle needs to rest overnight in the fridge before removing the modified cap. Thinking I should make up a few more of these caps to keep ahead of the game.
Ultimately I'd like to build a 'kegerator'. That's a mini fridge with hole in the top for a beer tap. Inside is a 'cornelius' keg full of beer & a CO2 bottle. Voila, your own beer bar. Tons of info & many good forums on the subject of homebrew on the web. Been making my own wine for years. Even have 3 grape vines growing in the back yard. Plan to add a few more. My own private vinyard. Okanagan is not a bad place for that.
I'm slowly getting tax weary. I don't think any level of government really has a handle on what's going on any longer. No offense to Navy folks, but they're spending like drunken sailors, usually in all the wrong places. And I still see sad looking homeless folks in downtown Vernon, hear about hungry kids here in Canada and there are plenty of charities looking for donations to fix various social shortcomings our governments are unable to solve or unwilling to fund adequately with our tax dollars. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I don't think it's more taxation. Our economy has been tanking for a few years now & taking more out of the average working schmoes pockets isn't going to help.
Let's see what I can find for taxes & fees that I am priviledged to pay:
Income tax
GST/PST/HST
Carbon Tax on Natural Gas
Gasoline Tax
Environmental fee on various goods like tires & batteries
Property Tax
Health care Fees
Alcohol Tax
Some sort of Rate Rider? on my BC Hydro bill (subject to HST by the way, double whammy there)
Might as well add all the casino/lottery money govts skim off & use who knows where
I'm sure there are other taxes & fees that I missed, some well hidden. Sorry, another rant by Mike, the thread killer.
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I also brew my own beer now, costs me about $0.19 per pint (English 20oz). Makes it economical to fill up my yard glass which is a solid 80oz. I usually just do a second round of fermentation while in the bottles by adding sugar/carbs again when I cap it. I love ales and stouts.
When I passed through Alberta in the summer I got a 55 beer tower for my dad and it was $60, you'd get half that in BC and you can't get it at Costco. I picked up an 8-pack of Guiness and its other beers for $18 where in BC you get 4 for about $15 and I've never seen that mix pack either.