Brewing from our own recipe

These are exciting times in the world of the Simon Alton and David Burrows' home-brewing experiment . . . we have just started our first ever original recipe beer.

Okay, we might not be at the Neil Morrissey microbrewery stage, but we are currently working on something that has come completely out of our own heads.

I won't tell you the recipe, just in case it's the best beer ever invented (What? It could be!) but I will say that given the time of year we decided we wanted to give it a festive flavour. We've even called it Light Christmas.

The confidence to go for own recipe came from the success of our last brew in kit form.

As I have said previously, Si and I employed some "advanced techniques" such as secondary fermenting and bottle conditioning, and I'm pleased to say the results have been fantastic. Had I been served up the final product at a pub, I would certainly have gone back for another pint.

The real test will be in the coming days. The landlord of one Shrewsbury pub has said we can let the locals try it to compare it to both the real ales they are used to and the simplified iBrew kit I used some weeks back.

Despite my pleasure with the ale (Brupaks Pride of Yorkshire Linthwaite Light, for anyone interested) there is no escaping the fact that for all the extra fiddling, it was still a kit. We said when we started this that we eventually wanted to be doing our own unique beers.

And now we are. Last week Si's kitchen resembled something of an episode of Can't Cook Won't Cook, with pots and pans all over the shop and ingredients measured out into bowls (mainly because we didn't have one pan big enough to boil up all the ingredients and so had to do it in portions).

As we are making this beer for others to (hopefully) enjoy we decided to make another light one, fearful that not everyone would enjoy a heavy, dark beer.

After much thrashing about of ideas, which included the rejection of amongst other things honey and spruce extra (yes, as in Christmas Tree) as ingredients, and research in our ever helpful home brewing book and on the internet, we had our recipe. We opted for two varieties of malt and two types of hops, therefore increasing the chances of this being something utterly unique.

Then the hard work began. Up to now all we've had to do is soften the contents of some tins and throw it in the brew bin. The new beer began with the pre-boiling of the speciality malts, which in itself took half an hour.

Once that was done it was in with the rest of the ingredients (the "secret recipe" parts being added 15 minutes before the end of the boiling process).

This produced our first ever mash which then had to be "sparged". One of the best bits about home brewing, apart from the beer, is getting to use funny words. Sparging separates the liquid from the raw ingredients and helps release the sugars to produce wort (pronounced "wert").

It was then a long (very long, as it turns out) wait for the wort to cool before pitching the yeast to kick off the chemical reaction which will produce our beer. A quick recording of the gravity, so we can work out the alcohol content, then on with the brew bin lid.

And now we wait. We do that a lot. Once we find our feet, we'll make sure we always have a brew on the go, so one is in production as one is being consumed. That'll make the waiting easier.

But, in the meantime, as we wait now, we'll simply have to content ourselves with dreaming of our Light Christmas . . .