One of the best home brewing tips ever: make sure to brew some extra wine in small bottles! So you can taste, and taste, and taste…

It’s autumn again and since there is not much to be done in these gray, rainy days outside in the garden, it’s time to get warm and well, get some more alcohol to get warmer .

Another hobby of mine… brewing that is, not drinking…

In summer when harvest is plenty, or fresh fruit supply is cheap, I make sure to buy some extra cherries.

I invite the grandchildren to get rid of all the kernels (and give them some jolly delicious cherry pan cakes, cherry ice-cream and well, a sip of homemade cherry liquor their parents are enjoying…) and freeze the cherries.

Any day in autumn when the heating is on and the temperature in the house is stable, I take the cherries out and start fermenting them.

Always make sure to start off with some wine-yeast in some sterilised apple-juice and sugar. I just buy the sterilised juices in the cooling section of the supermarket, those days that I would boil cherry-juice myself are far over.

Once the apple-juice is yeasting well, use it to add to your cherry bottles, put the waterlock on it and there you go!

What I do is making sure I have some small bottles of cherry-yeasting-wine to consume when it’s fermenting.

I just love bubbles in wine and I can’t drive all the way down to the BodenSee in Germany to taste their "Süsser" or half fermented wine.

Drinking only the small bottles also makes sure my big bottle keeps as clean and healthy as possible and can "yeast in peace".

For those who want to try making wine at home, make sure you buy something that’s called a hydrometer : it’s a little thing that looks like an oversized fishing gear that you throw in your juice.

the hydrometer sticks out of your brew (like a straw) and you can read a number with which you can calculate how much sugar you need to add in order to get a wine of a decent amount of alcohol. (too much sugar won’t get you anywhere, so it’s an important accessory).

You can buy it at any decent chemist’s and the plastic ones are quite cheap.

In the end it’s not about exact science, it’s about brewing something at home that tastes good, so no need for the expensive hydrometers.

Once you are yeasting, make sure to put the bottles on a spot where the temperature is more or less constant.

Also shake the bottles from time to time as yeast not only needs sugar but also oxygen to flourish.

After that, it’s sit and wait and make sure to try the little brewing bottles from the 5th day onwards

Apart from marrying the world’s most beautiful women, Brad Pitt hobbies include:

• interior design,
   
• architecture
   
• nature
   
• collecting functional metal art pieces
   
• collecting furniture.

Now this post is not entirely about this little brat, but more about retirement and hobbies. Although when it comes to marrying the world’s most beautiful women, it’s a wise choice not to wait until you are retired. Especially not when you made your fortune already being in your 30′s.

Hobbies and retirement

First question my doctor asked me at my yearly check up after I retired was: "do you have a hobby"? According to him, people with a hobby live much longer than people without a hobby.

Now for me that was a needless question, as I love to spend a lot of time in my garden. And I took up blogging as well, although it would be ideal to have a wireless Internet connection so I could go blogging under my cherry-tree in my garden

Dying standing up

I needed to write this post because this Sunday in church, our retired butcher just stood up and died…

For him, his shop was his life.

He only closed his shop earlier this year and like I said: his shop was his life… no more shop and the poor guy passed away…

What are ideal hobbies when you are retired?

Of course that’s entirely up to you. Just try to remember what you loved to do when you were a kid and pick up from there.

My brother in law who retired 2 years ago quit smoking and at the same time enrolled in a photography-computer course. Meaning he learns how to take a nice picture and then plays around with it in Photoshop making slide-shows and all that.

All you need is a simple camera, a simple computer and… lots and lots of time! It’s an ideal hobby, especially when you learn to look from a different angle to the things you see in your every day life.

It’s always fun to get an email from him, as his pictures are original, not the normal forwarded jokes you get from everybody else. It shows what he is doing and how the world looks around him. And it keeps him away from those deadly cigarettes!

He also subscribed on a website where he sells his pictures for a very small fee. That is: if you need a picture, you pay a few cents to put their pictures on your website.

Making pocket-money is always great when you are retired I find, I do miss the monthly paycheck that used to come in but I love the extra pennies I make like selling my chicken eggs

Not to mention my waffles and my wife’s cakes when people are not buying enough eggs. We could start a bakery but hello: we are retired and we just do it for the fun of it!

Now my brother in law is not making a fortune yet selling his pictures. Unfortunately, he is still a far way off to take pictures from celebrities like those 2 latest Brad Pitt hobbies… But again: it’s the hobby part that’s the most important part.