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1. Pour 500g unmalted barley into a jug and cover with water. Leave for 24 hours.
2. Squash 500g grapes in a bowl and add 400ml of water. Place into a sterilised bottle and cover with a balloon. Alternatively, crush 200g of pitted dates into a sterilised bottle and add 400ml of water before covering with a balloon.
3. After 24 hours, rinse your grain in a sieve. Place it back into the jug but don’t cover it with water. Continue to rinse it off every 12 hours.
4. After a few days it will have begun to sprout. When the sprouts are about 1 cm long, place the sprouted grains onto a baking tray and bake at 100 degrees C for 1 hour.
5. When the grains have been malted, crush them in a mortar and pestle (or a food processor if you’re not stuck in the dark ages like me.)
6. Split your ground grains into two even halves. Add crushed spices (I used cardamom, cumin and coriander seeds) and a cup of water to one half. Mold into biscuits and bake at 160 degrees C for an hour or so, or until they are very hard.
7. Take the biscuits out of the oven and crush them up into a bowl. Add 1 l of water to the bowl and leave to sit for 1 or 2 hours.
8. Add 1 l of water to the other half of the grains and cook on a low heat until it reaches 65 degrees C. Keep it as close to this temperature as you can for 1 hour.
9. After this time, combine both mashes into one pan (gunk and all) and allow to cool to 35 degrees C.
10. Once the mash has cooled, tip in your (hopefully successful) grape/date wine.
11. Give it all a bit of a mix, then sieve out the gunk and allow the beer to drain into a bowl. Leave it for 24 – 36 hours and then drink.