Racked Cranberry

Okay so earlier today I apparently had some time to waste and sat there and counted bubbles burping out of the airlocks on the Cranberry Mead and the Strawberry Wine. 28 in one minute for the cranberry, and one in THREE minutes for the strawberry. I'm thinking the wine is getting pretty close to being done fermenting.

Tonight I racked the Cranberry in order to get it off the lees before we move sometime next week. It took a couple of weeks to get that stuff out of suspension, and I don't want it going back in suspension by being in a car for a half an hour. So after racking I topped up with Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice (thanks to my roommate for running out and getting some while the equipment was sanitizing).

Current Temp: 78 degrees
S.G. (before adding juice): 1.025
No reading for after adding juice.

Wooo, that stuff tastes like rocket fuel! I'm estimating about 17% ABV right now. Smoother than the wine, but it's also a week older. The cranberry flavor really comes through - very tart. I think that with some serious aging, this will be very potent, very good stuff!

Mmmm, happy yeasties!

Last night, when I pitched the yeast, I just poured them straight in the middle, no stirring them in, in order to let them get used to their new environment. This morning when I went to check on it, there was a very nice layer of foam all over the top of the must, with a heavy yeast smell. After stirring the bajeezus out of it for a minute or two, I was rewarded with what seemed like 2 inches or more of foam. Happy yeasties! Happy Scout! I will be stirring again tonight and twice a day all weekend to make sure the yeasties get their required oxygen.

On a seasonal note, it looks like the weather might finally be turning. It's almost 11, and it is still beautifully cool outside with a heavy cloud cover, maybe some rain soon. I saw a cute little hummingbird hovering around my neighbor's oleander bushes. So cute! It was only as big as my little finger - the smallest one I have seen here yet. *grins*

Racking and Cherry Vanilla Mead

So, I found out a couple of rules of thumb as far as when to rack goes today on the forums. According to Pewter, you should rack whenever there is 3/4" or more of sediment on the bottom. According to Oskaar, you should rack when there is less than 4 blips in the bubbler per minute - unless you are using D-47 yeast, which you can let sit for months without affecting the taste of your brew. By either reckoning, I seriously needed to rack my strawberry wine. So a-racking I went tonight. *grins*

I added 2 pounds fresh strawberries to the new fermenter for three reasons. First, this is already a VERY dry wine, and I prefer sweeter wines (so added some sugar). Second, I like the taste of strawberries, and this will let some non-fermented strawberry flavor come through. Third, I had almost 2 inches of sediment in the bottom of the carboy, and seriously needed something to take up space.
Current Temperature: 78 degrees
S.G.: .992

I will prolly go ahead and rack the cranberry mead tomorrow night. I don't really need to, but I would rather get it ready to move next week sometime, and don't want all that sediment in the bottom getting stirred back up, and then have to wait for it to clear out again.

Yup, we found out we won't be closing on our house(s) until maybe next Tuesday because the buyers' mortgage company, Washington Mutual, is dragging their feet. So I decided that I would have time to go ahead and start my Cherry Vanilla Mead. I will leave it in the bucket all weekend, and then transfer to a secondary Monday night. Here's the recipe:

Cherry Vanilla Mead
3.5# local honey
warm water to one gallon (or a smidge more *grins*)
1/4 t. tannin
1t. nutrient
K1V-1116 yeast
one vanilla bean (secondary)
1.25 pounds frozen dark sweet cherries (secondary)

I rehydrated the yeast first, and I really should have waited because the must is too hot, and will take a while to cool. I have done this almost every time now, I really should remember next time. Mixed warm water, honey, tannin, & nutrient. Stuck must in fridge to bring rapidly to room temperature.
Temperature: 100 degrees
O.G. 1.107
Must is 85 degrees, pitched yeast and sat in a water bath (SOP now, due to ants).

Just looked at the wine. ACK! There is already almost as much sediment as there was before we racked, about an hour ago!! Not as tightly packed, but still, jeez. I don't want to have to rack this AGAIN before we move.

I ottabe in pictures . . .

Dang I really need to get a camera set up for this system. Unfortunately, the only camera we have right now is my husband's really nice one that he has set up on his laptop. Maybe when I get a new phone, I'll get a camera phone, so that at least I'll be able to post tiny little pictures of my brews instead of having to describe everything.

That being said, here's a description *grins*

The cranberry mead looks so beautiful still. Not a whole lot of change, maybe clearer, but definitely not "clear" yet (can't see through it). I'm thinking that I should have started with something that would go to a nice amber color. It would prolly be easier to see when it clears. I dunno. Guess I'll just have to wait.

The strawberry wine is looking very promising. A LOT of sediment has dropped, and with it a lot of the orangish color. It looks much more red now, still not as ruby/garnet as the cranberry, but very nicely red. The sediment is compacting as time goes on, but there is still something like an inch and a half of fluff on top of the compacted part. The wine seems much clearer right above the lees, making it able to be seen through. And when you look right at the top of the lees it looks like a Martian landscape because of the orangey color of the lees. I am getting very hopeful as the days pass about this wine. I have also been toying with the idea of racking on top of some more strawberries (maybe fresh this time, slightly crushed) or maybe some strawberry juice when I rack in a month. I think that the wine may end up too dry for my palatte, and I would like some "strawberry" flavor, along with the fermented strawberry flavor. I dunno . . . Maybe I'll just leave it as it and see what it tastes like in 6 months.

Airlock activity is still about the same for the mead: 1 blip per second for the mead. But much slower for the wine: 1 blip per minute and a quarter (the mead blipped 72 times in the time the wine blipped once). My roommate and I both think that the mead is prolly going like gangbusters simply because it has a whole lot of extra sugar to plow through. The yeasties are very happy, indeed. *grins*

Good news, only about a month before the batch of Ancient Orange should be done. YAY! Of course right now is when I should be deciding if I am going to try to make up a larger batch of it, or one of the other "quick" meads to give out at the holidays. I dunno. My head is full of trying to get into the new house right now, deciding things like that are waaaaaay in the back of my head, if there are there at all. Let's see, if I started a batch of AO at the beginning of October (starting with the new moon seems to help the yeasties be very happy and active), it should be ready for bottling at the beginning of December and that would allow almost a month for bottle aging. Not the best, but certainly not bad. Definitely will be thinking about it over the next couple of days.

Strawberry Wine

Okay, so yesterday I racked my wine to a secondary. Had a taste from the hydrometer reading sample - wow. It tastes like wine! Really bad, really cheap, harsh wine, but dang - I made wine! It's now burping away next to the cranberry mead, but nowhere near as active (1 blip every 10 seconds as opposed to one every second) - I'm going to ask on GotMead about this. It looks very different from the mead, too. The mead has been fermenting and dropping sediment (I am cautious about calling it "clearing" so early in fermentation) for a few days now and is now a beautiful ruby red with a thin layer of what looks like very compacted lees. The wine, on the other hand, dropped a huge amount of lees within the first couple of hours, and is now a nice light orangish red with maybe and inch and a half, 2 inches of very loosely packed lees at the bottom. I hope these compact more as time goes on so I don't have to top up so much when I rack again in a month and a half (per recipe). So the stats for this racking:
Current temp: 75 degrees
S.G. .997

So, going by the O.G., I'm already at 13% alcohol or so. I am wondering if the reason it is bubbling so slowly is that it already fermented to dryness. I mean, looking at the current S.G., I am already fairly dry with this one.

Hurricane still coming . . . . we're gonna be securing everything and lifting as much stuff as we can above waist height today in case we do get some flooding in the house. We'll also be taking baths and showers and then filling the bathtubs. We had a power outage yesterday. Luckily only for a half hour or so, but I am so not ready to lose power before tomorrow morning. I like my computer. Current weather at our house: nice actually. Pleasant temperature, cloud cover, light wind. In the immortal words of Denis Leary, "Oh, man, this is gonna SUCK!"

Category 5

So last night, the weather service changed their mind on where Rita is going to hit. Yup, straight on here in Houston, maybe a little to the west, maybe a little to the east. Here in Houston, we're hoping for a little to the east, that way we don't get hit straight on and we get the clean side (the side with less wind and rain). But no matter what it is going to be icky. Galveston is a ghost town, and the freeways are all parking lots. Most people tried to start evacuating last night and still haven't left the city limits. TxDOT has started opening the southbound lanes of I-45 to northbound traffic, north of town, to try to alleviate some of the traffic problems.

Let's see, what's my plan for today? Rack my strawberry wine. Fill other 3 jugs with water. Hopefully close on the houses (selling one and buying one). Get some gatorade or something to drink. Try to eat as much of the leftovers in the fridge as possible, as well as the chicken that's defrosted. Do laundry, take showers and baths (we might not have water for a while after the storm hits). Try to avoid the freeways like the plague. Hell, try to avoid driving, save the gas for emergencies. Clean up anything outside that could turn into a window breaking missile in high winds. Find and put out candles in every room. If we could get someplace to buy plywood, my husband would be boarding up the windows.

It's nuts. People are stuck on the roads because they ran out of gas, and there's no gas to be found anywhere. Not to diminish the severity of the storm that's coming, or the loss of those people who are going to be affected by it, but people are seriously going over board. The media has overhyped this storm to the point where people are now in more danger because there is a good chance they are going to be stuck on the side of the road somewhere, out of gas, when the storm hits. Houston is the fourth largest city in the US, and we have fully a quarter of the population evacuating, if not more. The city officially shuts down tomorrow, although most of the businesses are already closed.

Sorry, I know this is supposed to be a brewlog, but well . . . .*shrug*

Hurricane Rita

Hey all. Well, here's the situation here in Houston. Frankly, it's insane. I've lived here almost all my life, and this is truly bizarre. I remember going out to play in the eye of Alicia back in 1983 and watching people canoe down the street. Right now, the media and weather stations have the whole thing so hyped up in this area that people have gone crazy. There is no gas to be had in Houston - or at least not much. I live in Alief, which is on the far west side of Houston, and when I went to go pick up some stuff at the grocery store tonight, they were already out of water, and running low on batteries, bread, and chips. I am in an area which is not going to to get a whole lot of rain, prolly, and people were lined up to get gas at the various gas stations in town, sometimes two or three lines per station each 10 or 20 cars long.

Rita is not even supposed to hit us straight on, but they have already issued mandatory evacuations for Galveston, and most of the small cities between Galveston and Houston. Most businesses will be closed at noon tomorrow. Metro (the local busline) will not be running from Friday morning until it is safe to resume.

I think this is all insane because we have been in a semi-drought situation for several weeks, so the ground is more than ready to soak up most of the rain. I feel for the people southwest of us and all along the coast who are going to be hit most drastically and directly, but the way people are acting in Houston is insane. I know I have used that word a lot, but you would think people would know better. I am not expecting any real trouble where I am at, except for some flooded streets, and maybe lawns. The worst I am preparing for is power going down (which is why I went groce3ry shopping, to get some foodstuffs that don't need refrigeration). We are going to be closing on a new house tomorrow, so there is not a whole lot we can do right now, except hope that the irreplaceable stuff is above the water line. Luckily we can get flood insurance that starts tomorrow for our new house, if something happens to it, but the major problem for us right now is that with everyone trying to get out of dodge (including our housemate, who has never lived through a hurricane in Houston before, and is going to visit his family up north) is that there are no moving trucks availalable in this city for love or money until Monday.

So. although I wasn't able to get any bottles of water tonight, I realized that I have 3 empty one gallon secondary fermenting jugs (which is more economical and more environmental as well). And now I am quietly (or not so quietly *grins*) getting drunk on a couple of bottles of Syrah that I have had for a couple of years. But I am just trying to empty out the bottles so that I can reuse them. Really. *grins*

No News is . . .

Good News! Nothing much to report since the racking of the Garland Mead, except that it is happily bubbling away (very happy yeasties!) and the strawberry wine smells yummy. I got a vanilla bean yesterday for my Cherry Vanilla Mead, which I will prolly start once we move, so I won't have to hand carry a bucket of honey over to the new house. The price on the bean wasn't too horrible - $3. There's a guy on ebay who sells them for as low as $1 each, but I have also seen posts from people who bought them at a health food store locally and paid $18 for 2. So I figure my $3 isn't too bad *grins*.

Racking for the first time

Oooh, racking is fun, when you have someone to help you. *grins* Just racked my Yule Garland Mead, and oh is it pretty. It only came up to the shoulders of the jug, so I had to top it up with, say, 3 cups of tap water. I would have used cranberry juice, but there is none to be had here, and no vehicle to run to the store and get some. I can't wait until it starts bubbling!

Stats:
Current Temp: 78 degrees
S.G. (before adding tap water): 1.092
S.G. (after adding tap water): 1.072

I think that adding the tap water is going to end up being fine considering my mishap with the honey measurements to begin with. It just may take a little longer to clear. I dunno. But the fact that the S.G was measurable (and so much lower than I thought it would be!) gives me hope that it will turn out fine. Also, it tastes pretty good, but VERY harsh right now. I have the feeling this is going to be one kicker of a drink. But the aftertaste is very nice *grins*.

Ants!!!

Grrrrrr . . . . Last night when I went to start my strawberry wine, I figured I would check on the others while I waited for the must to cool. I pulled out my bucket of peach, promptly started crying out of anger and dumped it down the drain. I don't think anyone was interested in trying peach and ant wine. Reminds me of the piscamel post (yup, fish mead, pretty gross sounding). I feel a little better now than I did last night (after having written a therapeutic plea for help and staying out most of the night at IHOP BSing with a friend), but I am convinced that neither ants nor cats (who were the only pests I thought I would have to worry about originally, don't ask me why) will be getting this strawberry wine.

For some reason, the ants were decidedly indifferent to the cranberry mead. Tasteless bastards.

So here's the recipe thus far and stats for the strawberry wine:

Royal Mark
3 lbs. frozen strawberries (ish, remember I'm using up leftovers here)
11.5 oz can Welch's white grape juice frozen concentrate
2 lbs. light brown sugar
2 t. citric acid
1/4 t. tannin
6 pts. water
1 t. nutrient
Red Star Cote des Blancs yeast

Thaw berries and juice. Dissolve sugar in 5 pts. water and bring to a boil. Strain syrup from berries and save. Put fruit in nylon bag in primary and crush. Pour boiling water over fruit, cover primary and set aside to cool. When cooled to 80-85 degrees, add juice, reserved syrup, 1 pt. water, tannin, acid, and nutrient. Stir well. Add activated yeast, cover and stir daily. Do not further crush bag of pulp.

Now, because of my overwhelming need to get out of the house last night after the ant attack, I stuck the pulp, sugar and water in the fridge to cool and sit (ant-free) overnight. then I brought the bucket out this morning and left it, covered in a sink with detergent laced water in it (suggestion from the post), to warm up all day. This afternoon I continued with the recipe as stated.
Temp: 72 degrees
O.G. 1.097

Must is currently being contained in a primary bucket with some of that press and seal stuff around the top (the only plastic wrap I have), and bucket is sitting in a pot of soapy water with at least 1/2" of gap between side of bucket and pot all around. Trying to do as much as I can to keep the ants out since I don't have lids to fit the buckets, and couldn't get them until Saturday.

Peachy Keen

Okay, so yesterday after waiting 2 hours for the must to cool, I got tired of waiting and went ahead and added the acid blend, tannin, nutrient, and campden. The temperature was 115 degrees, but since I wasn't adding the yeast yet, I figured I was okay. Last night, around 10pm, I added the pectic enzyme. Temperature was 82 degrees, O.G. 1.100 (adjusted for temp). This morning, I gave the must a good stir and sprinkled the yeast on top (as per the original instructions). I figure that since you can't "sprinkle" a liquid very easily, Jack Keller must have meant the dry stuff. If not, well . . . it might take a little longer for the yeast to get bubbling, but I don't think it will be a problem.

I'm not going to touch the cranberry again until Saturday when I rack to a secondary.

I have come to realize that prolly the only recipe I have started or plan to start that will actually be bottleable, much less drinkable by the holidays will be my batch of Joe's Ancient Orange (all hail Joe, Blitzmead extraordinaire!). I have been looking for some other quick meads, and not surprisingly, most of the ones on GotMead are by Joe, or based off of one of his recipes. I think I may need to go ahead and just make up a 3 gallon batch of Ancient Orange by the end of the month so that I can have plenty to give out at the holidays. Or I might go with a gallon of his 5 week Pyment, another gallon of AO, and a gallon of Norskersword's 4 Week Quick Cyser. That would give me a variety to give out. I would love to give out wine as well, but I'm thinking that wines prolly need the longer fermenting time and proper aging. That and I haven't found a great forum like GotMead for wines yet. *grins*

Speaking of wines, I will be starting my strawberry wine in a little while. I'll post the recipe after I'm done.

Peach Wine and Conversions

Got up early and woke up enough to have already started my Peach Wine. While I'm waiting for the must to cool, here's what I've got so far (and what I will do as soon as it's cool):

Peach Wine (Giant Peach Wine??? I dunno, better than Potion of Immortality, though *grins*)
7 pts. water
2 1/2 pounds sugar
about 4 1/2 pounds peaches (commercially frozen and then thawed)
11.5 oz can Welch's frozen white grape juice concentrate
1 t. acid blend
1 t. nutrient
1/4 t. tannin
1 crushed campden tablet
1/2 t. pectic enzyme
Champagne wine yeast

Put water on to boil. Put peaches in straining batg and tie closed. Put in primary and mash until no solids remain. When water boils, dissolve sugar in it. Pour over peaches. Add grape juice concentrate. When must cools, add acid blend, nutrient, tannin, and campden. Cover primary and set aside for 12 hours.

**************************
As you can see I have deviated from the original recipe a little (the Peach and Grape wine). Since I am trying to use up frozen fruit from my freezer, I just used the whole amount of peaches I had left, which was most of a 5 pound bag. Also, since I am using frozen peaches, not fresh, they already had citric acid added to them to retain color, so I cut the amount of acid blend originally used by half a teaspoon. Here's hoping it works.

On another note, I was disturbed by a post on the GotMead Forums. I had thought that "A pint's a pound". This person couldn't be right . . . . could they? Ummm. Yep. That is prolly why my cranberry mead's O.G. reading was off the scale. There is only about 1 and 3/8 cups of honey in a pound, not 2 cups (as I used). Wooooohooooo. I'm thinking I may be making a couple of gallons of this stuff instead of one. That's okay. It smells great :) But I may need to get some cranberry juice to top it up with, so it doesn't end up thin on the cranberry flavor. Anyway, if you're clueless about these conversions like I am, try this.

Oh, and the cranberry mead? Beautiful foamy sweet smelling goodness this morning. *grins*

Foam!

Yay, foaminess. The distinct lack of foam yesterday was kinda disturbing, but now I am thinking that the floating cranberries are affecting the foam getting to the top, because when I stirred this morning there was a lot of foam that whipped up. Much more than could be accounted for by just the action of stirring. Yay!

I was going to start some peach wine tonight, but I am just too wiped out from cleaning the house this morning. I'll start tomorrow. :)

Comment spam . . .

Okay, so I didn't realize that the spamming phenomenon had gotten to the comments on blogger. at first I was excited cuz I actually had comments. People were actually reading my blog and had something to say. What a freaking disappointment. I have to say the one person who was an actual person, who actually read my post, and actually commented on the content of my post and didn't try to get me to go look at her blog . . . well, thank you very much :). You made my day.

The rest of you, however . . . .Get a freaking life! I don't want to see your betting site, or your site on how to work from home or any stupid crud like that. I know how to use google and if for some bizarre reason I DID want to go to a site of that nature, I would look for one myself. So from now on, all posts like that are being deleted and you must register with blogger to comment on my blog. If you actually read this and want to say something remotely on topic, please feel free, I welcome it! If you are only interested in insulting me, or worse, insulting my intelligence then GO AWAY. Sorry I had to be like this, but I would really prefer not to have to wade through spam.

Yummmmmmy!

Okay, so reading a post on the forums reminded me that I needed to stir my mead this morning. It doesn't have a whole lot of foam on it as yet, which is discouraging, but the smell of yeast is pretty overpowering (like bread rising). I stirred it, well not violently as suggested, but pretty darn vigorously *grins*, and decided to go ahead and sneak a taste.

Wow.

If this stuff ends up tasting half as good in the final product as it does right now, with the added benefit of alcohol, well . . . .let's just say we'll have a very happy Scout. :)

Shopping and Cranberry Mead!

Okay, so I finally talked to my mom and got the low down on what is going on with my Ancient Orange. She says it's happily burping away (about 1 bubble every 10 seconds or so), so I had her top it up with water. I can't wait to go over there and have a smell!

I went out shopping today, first to DeFalco's and picked up a huge amount of equipment. I also got 7 and a half pounds of local honey at $2 a pound (much better than $3 a pound for cheapo overprocessed store brand stuff). Then I went to the grocery store and picked up some other stuff I needed (like an extra pound of cranberries). Came home and got a batch of Cranberry Mead started. I'm so excited! I don't think I let the must cool down enough, but I think that since the temperature was lower than the temp Lalvin said to rehydrate at, it won't kill the yeast. So here's the log:

Yule Garland Mead
3# local honey
26 oz cranberries, thawed and popped (by hand - the food processor
is packed in our storage unit somewhere)
water
pectic enzyme
campden
D47 yeast

Popped cranberries and put in primary. Added 6 cups of honey (3#) over the cranberries. Added hot tap water and stirred to dissolve the honey. Rehydrated yeast according to package instructions while must cooled. Added yeast, pectic enzyme, and one crushed campden tablet.

O.G. 1.145 (estimated, it was off my hydrometer's scale, adjusted for temperature)

This is based off a recipe from GotMead, but since I don't have quick access to sage honey, I am modifying a bit. I will go ahead and rack it off the fruit in a week. I might go ahead and rack onto some cinnamon, just to get a little more "Yule" flavor in it.

I need a memory upgrade . . .

You know even though I had typed out the words twice now that I needed to call my mom to ask her about my mead (three times), I still haven't done it. Usually just writing or typing something out is enough to give my memory a kick in the bum, just enough to say "Now, wasn't I supposed to remember something??? . . . ." Not this time. grrrr . . . . .

Anyways, part of the reason I forgot to call was that me and my housemates went out to hit a couple of stores, one of which was Barnes and Noble. One of my housemates wanted the game guide for Final Fantasy XI, and I wanted to see if I could get a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker and a good beginning winemaking book. Okay, so I found the section where all the brewing books were (not in Hobbies as I originally thought, but mixed in with the wine appreciation books and bartending bibles), and found a copy of First Steps in Winemaking (no, I don't know why they have a picture of the Dictionary of Wine, but that is the description for the book I bought). No Meadmaker, though. So I went over to the customer service desk to see if they carried copies at all (maybe one was hiding in the back or on another shelf or something). Then comes the "This is a book with weirdly spelled words and author's name" spellothon. I'm not griping about the guy at the service desk, he is a super sweet guy, it's just the act of hanging onto a three year old who desperately wants to find her own book (or food or a way home, whichever is least easy) and saying, "Well, it's c-o-m-p-l-e-A-T not c-o-m-p-l-e-T-E", "Meadmaker is one word", and "S-c-h-r-a-m-m" . . . .well, let's just say it isn't the nicest way to spend five minutes. And of course they didn't carry the book in stock. Well, guess it stays on my shopping list for Saturday.

Brrr!

Okay, so I know that the Equinox is right around the corner, but we usually don't get these nice cool mornings in Houston until Fall is in full swing. Okay having looked at weather.com, it wasn't really that cool - in the low 70's, but dang it felt good. Must have been the low humidity.

It's really hard to keep in tune with the seasons in Houston. Mostly because we don't really have any. Trees drop their leaves any time the temp drops below 75 (which could be in the middle of summer) while some deciduous trees never drop at all. Last winter it was so abominably hot, I wore shorts and t-shirts most of the season.

I am trying to get myself more seasonally oriented, though. That's part of the reason I wanted to start brewing. Making wine and mead seems such a "Fall" thing to do, although I have the feeling I am going to keep going through next spring and summer. *grins*

In mead making news - I forgot to call my mom last night and ask her about the ancient orange. I had an issue come up with bad planning of dinner (started making soup and forgot I was going to make bread to go with it - which takes 3 hours - the soup ended up being simmered long and well!), and with everyone but the baby out of the house for the evening I felt very much at loose ends and didn't know what to do with myself. *shrug* The recipe is supposed to be fool-proof, hopefully it is. I'll call tonight.

So now I have to make more . . .

Having just extolled the virtues of how cheap this hobby can be, I now have to admit that I am planning another run to DeFalco's this weekend to plunk down over $100 on more equipment. Well, see . . . it's like this. I would really like to make a bunch of brews in order to have some ready for bottling and giving out this coming holiday season. And I am moving, so I am trying to use up the food I have in my refridgerator and freezer (freezer cooking is great for this, it makes you only purchase what you will actually need for a given time period - mine time period is two weeks, payday to payday). This includes a TON of frozen fruits that an ex-roommate had bought saying that he would make us smoothies for breakfast every morning. Needless to say, I still have most of the fruit.

What better way to make use of it than to brew it??? *big grins* So here are my plans for my frozen bounty:

Peach and Grape Wine
Frozen Strawberry Wine
Cranberry Mead
Cherry Vanilla Mead - yup, that's right. I'm trying to make up my own recipe already

The wines won't be done in time for December bottling, but if I hop to it, the meads should be. So what I am planning on getting as far as equipment goes is a one gallon wine making kit plus extra primaries, secondaries and bags, as well as a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker and First Steps in Winemaking. I will also be getting a bunch of different yeast strains, plus additional additives if I don't get enough of what I need in the kit.

I can't wait. *grins*

Also, many home brewers tend to make up names for their "brewery", "meadery", or "winery", and make some great labels to go along with it. There are many who have said that while their product is wonderful, adding a good looking label not only means you don't have to wonder which brew you are drinking, but really enhances the experience - especially if these are to be given as gifts, as mine are. So, I have come up with my own name, and have some ideas for naming some of the brews I have planned. I am going to use the name "BellaDonna Brews" - after my two cats - yeah, Bella came with the name, but I did name Donna intentionally for a pun. And Brews is cuz I am not planning on making just wines or just meads. Not planning on making any beers at the moment, though. Think "brew" as in "Witch's".

For the peach, I am thinking of maybe calling it Potion of Immortality - I dunno. Kinda pretentious, but that is what the ancient Chinese thought of peaches. For the strawberry, I am thinking something like Royal Mark - you know that strawberry birthmark that always shows up in the last scene to prove that some pauper is really the prince. The cranberry mead is going to become Yule Mead - I just can't get the image of strings of cranberries on fir tree out of my head when I think about it. And the cherry vanilla mead? Nectar of the Goddesses, of course. Because I think Freyja would like some a little more refined. *grins* Either that or "Mahna Mahna".

Okay, time for me to go make lunch for the munchkin . . . . mahna mahna *grins*

Mead Making 101

So I have started a new obsess- . . .er, hobby. Let's go ahead and add mead and wine making to the huge list of things I already do with my "copious" amounts of free time. Good things about this hobby, you can start off cheap and it really takes much less effort for the outcome than most of my other obsessions. Bad thing: you have to wait and wait and wait and wait for it to be done!

When I say cheap, I mean cheap. I found the perfect first mead recipe on the GotMead forums. I went to my local home brew shop to get the equipment (one gallon glass jug, solid stopper, drilled stopper, and bubbler). This set me back about $7 including taxes. You could do it even cheaper, as I have heard that you can get apple juice in one gallon glass jugs. I don't do this myself, because I have a 3 year old running around who loves helping in the kitchen, so plastic is good. It bounces when dropped. When she's a little older, I might consider doing it this way if I keep brewing. The supplies that I needed to buy from the grocery store: the orange, honey, cinnamon stick (I only had ground on hand), and yeast (I only had Red Star baking yeast on hand, and I did not want to deviate from the recipe on my first mead). Again, you might already have some of this stuff on hand, or buy it as an automatic in the grocery store. The only part of the recipe that cost a lot of money was the honey, and that is sheerly for the amount involved. I spent about $7 on 2.5 pounds of goodish honey (from the grocery store) and $3 for a pound of the store brand. I could have gotten 4 pounds of the cheap store brand for $8 or so, but I didn't want to mess with measuring.

Total outlay for my first gallon of mead: $23 (ish)
If I bottle in 16oz bottles, cost per bottle: $3
Next batch I make, cost per bottle:$1.50 (assuming I use the same type of honey)

Not bad, not bad. Chaucer's Mead, the most widely available commercial mead, sells for $12 a bottle at their online store. Granted, it is prolly a 750ml bottle (standard wine bottle size), and their 1.5L bottle sells for $22. 16oz is about 500ml, so 1.5L of my mead would cost $9 for the first batch and $4.50 for subsequent batches. Definitely cheaper to make your own.

Now as for some logistics. Joe says very explicitly not to shake or stir or even look hard at this particular mead after you stare at it. Well, we just sold our house, and are packing to move within the next couple of weeks. Even if I were as gentle as possible, carrying the jug in my arms like it was my dear daughter, I live in Houston, where potholes are a fact of life. And we don't drive luxury cars, especially not when moving. We call in all available friends and relatives with pickup trucks so we don't have to rent a UHaul for more than one day.

So I decided to go ahead and start this mead over at my mother's house (with her permission, of course). Started Sunday morning (September 4, about 9:30am), and by the time we left after brunch it was starting to bubble (about noonish). I think I may have left too much head space in the jug, because it was bubbling very very slowly. I need to remember to call mom tonight and have her check on it for me, and maybe top it up. Anyways, it's fermenting! And hopefully it will be drinkable by Christmas.