BellaDonna Brews

Been a long time . . .

2008-10-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

And hopefully the brews that I have been unintentionally bulk aging are really nice right now. My new roommate and I just bottled the Cranberry melomel (F.G. 1.084). Very very nice tasting.

The capsimel is next on our to-do list. Hopefully it has some heat and some alcohol by now.

We also started a new batch of JAO. Because there was 3.5 pounds of honey hiding in the pantry. Seriously. :)

Bottled some more Cinn

2007-03-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

Mmmm. When last we touched the Holiday Cinnful Cyser, it was just past Thanksgiving and the smells emanating from the bottle were amazing. Tonight we bottled them, and 4 months of aging has done them nothing but favors. Seriously, this stuff is so yummy, I just finished a glass. We decided that one of the bottles just doesn't need to be corked. It will be gone by the weekend.

Both ended up around 1.014 FG, nicely spiced, and a beautiful clear amber.

We also racked the Cranberry melomel. OMG, this stuff is going to be amazing. After 3 months, the SG is 1.080, and it tastes lovely sweet and crisp at the same time. I want to wait another 2 months, rack it again, and maybe rack it a third time if it isn't "read newsprint through the beautiful claret colored liquid" clear. And then bottle it once it is a year old.

Patience is such a virtue. I am going for another glass of Cinn.

Bottled Cinn

2006-12-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

Yup, we did it last night. We figured out how to bottle Cinn. We're gonna make a fortune! :)

Okay, so it's mead and wine, and we're not selling, because I don't want to get a license to do so. But we did bottle the Cinnful Cyser and the cinnful Apple Wine. We wanted to bottle the Holiday Cinn, too, but it was not clear yet. Oh, well. Guess it will be for next winter. The Cinnful bottles look so pretty. We bottled most of the mead in little half bottles so that my assistant mazer could give some to friends and family. One of the two gallons of Holiday Cinn is his (when we made the original batch of cyser, he waited all of a week before running out and getting a gallon of apple juice to make his own), but since it wouldn't be ready before he leaves to go home at the end of the week, I told him he could have the original cyser batch, all but 2 bottles I already had plans for (one long term aging, one a Christmas present).

With all the bottling we have been doing (especially that big batch of JAO) I'm going to need to figure out a better, more permanent storage solution. I have almost an entire case of JAO bottles sitting on the floor of my brew closet, in a vertical position. Erg. Some of them will be able to go on racks once the holidays are over (many bottles are being wrapped for under the tree, and many more will be drunk without being wrapped), but I have another 6 gallons brewing (and burping VERY loudly, I might add). I also have a lot of wine that will need much more aging, and I would just rather have that go on somewhere out of the way. *shrug* Something to deal with after the holidays.

New Brews and Learning Patience

2006-12-10T05:08:00.000-08:00

So the last few weeks have been a lesson in patieence for me. As in, "Drink no wine [or mead] before its time." Unless you are checking it to see if it is time. I opened a bottle of the Strawberry Wine last night. It was horrible when we bottled it. It was horrible when I tried some a couple of months later. Last night it wasn't that bad. It wasn't great - yet. It was drinkable, and I could tell there was a little of the same ick left in it, so I know that that is aging out. Some strawberry flavor is actually creeping in. I think in a year this will be a very nice brew indeed.

So notes to self: Drink no wine before you have given it at least 2 years. Make enough to last the long aging time. Keep the 6.5 gal bucket active with JAO or cyser so there is a steady supply of good drinkables. Bottle at least 2 375mL bottles for taste testing (I hate throwing out a full 750mL bottle just because it tastes nasty right now). My patience and forethought will be rewarded.

New brews!

Cranberry Melomel (take 2, cuz the first was so good, it's gone!)
2# cranberries, thawed and popped
4# local honey
water to one gallon
campden
1/4 t. pectic enzyme
D47

12.05.06
popped cranberries in nylon bag in primary bucket (I was out of ziploc baggies and this made for less mess). Added honey and warm water to dissolve. The honey was kind of crystalllized, but that shouldn't be a problem since we dissolved it. Stirred until well combined. Added 1 crushed campden tablet and pectic enzyme. Let sit overnight to reach room temp before adding yeast.

12.07.06
okay so I didn't get to the yeast the next day. *grins* Added yeast after rehydrating according to package.
O.G. estimated 1.150 (it was off the chart!)
This should be a very sweet mead indeed . . .

12.09.06
Pulled out the bag of cranberries and poured the rest into a jug and airlocked. It is such a pretty red. I love the color of cranberry mead. Even with the yeast and sediment still in suspension, it is such a beautiful luxurious red . . .

True to my promise to myself, the next batch is
JAO, 6 gallons
18.75# cheap clover honey
2# local honey
6 very sweet clementines, quartered
5 packages of raisins
6 sticks of cinnamon
6 whole cloves
water to 6 gallons
1 pkg Fleishman's yeast

12.05.06
mixed everything but the yeast together and left to sit overnight to reach room temp. (except we know how that went since the next activity for this was on . . . )

12.07.06
drizzled yeast over brew and actually took a hydrometer reading for once.
O.G. about 1.125 (hard to see down in the bucket)

12.08.06
Started burbling, gurgling, and scaring the crud out of people . . . *grins*

Splosions again

2006-11-29T08:04:00.000-08:00

Yup, stuff sploded. We were racking . . .well, everything. And I had been keeping several bottles of overage in the fridge to top up when we did rack, and well . . .the apple wine went WHOOSH! WHIZ! SHUSH! All over the sink and the counter and the blinds and the drapes and me and then there was none left to top up with, but lots left to clean up. Grrrr . . . Scorp burped the rest of the topping up bottles and lost nothing. It's supposed ot be too cold in the fridge to promote yeast activity. I don't know what's going on, but I am glad I store stuff like this in grolsch bottles - otherwise I would be cleaning glass and wine and mead out of my refridgerator from bottles broken by the pressure. Imagine the mentos/diet coke thing without mentos or diet coke.

Anyway, on to the stats:

Cinnful Apple Wine
S.G. .992

Cinnful Cyser
S.G. 1.012

Cinnful Holiday Cyser Jug 1
S.G. 1.010

Cinnful Holiday Cyser Jug 2
S.G. 1.014

These all tasted pretty good, getting better in order. Or the alcohol is really high right now and the little bit we were drinking to taste was getting us wasted quickly. I think it is more that we like young meads better than young wines, and the nutmeg added some yumminess. The first jug of Holiday Cyser had a very pronounced nutmeg flavor, the second had a sneaky nutmeg back flavor.

It's amazing the difference yeast makes. On the left is the Holiday Cyser (using K1V-1116) and on the right is the Cinnful Cyser (using D47):

Okay, the pic isn't the best, but you can kinda see that though the Holiday was started only a week or so later, it has a LOT more sediment still in suspension, whereas the Cinnful is fairly clear by now. The sediment is what is making the Holiday look lighter in color.

And the final rack of the evening, Ginger Capsimel
S.G. .994

Okay, this is not hot at all. Alcohol or pepper wise. In Scorp's Words, "Where's the alcohol?" I am thinking that in a couple of months I will backsweeten this and rack it onto some dried chiles to boost the sweetness and the pepper taste. It tasted like water. Thick water. I could taste some capsaicin tickling the sides of my tongue, but this was not the heat that I was looking for to appease my chile head father, husband, assistant mazer, and good friend.

Also, this was brewed in the cubitainer. This is undeniably the stupidest container I have used for brewing purposes. You can't move it. Because it is made of flexible plastic, it flexes everytime you touch it, and when you are trying to pick it up to move it to where you are racking, it ends up sucking mead into the lock and lock water down into the mead. Stupid Stupid Stupid. Don't use this. But a jug of Apple juice instead.

Future brews? Well, since my Mom got me 15 pounds of cheap honey from Sam's Club, I think another batch of Joe's is on the horizon. My Dad got me 10 pounds of local honey for my birthday, and another 100 corks. With my in-laws turning into winos (joking), I have a regular supply of bottles. So as far as supplies go, I'm pretty set. I also have almost 2 pounds of cranberries that will be starting a new batch of cranberry mead soon, and 3 pounds of blackberries in the freezer. YUM!

Cracking open a couple . . .

2006-11-24T04:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it was more of a gently releasing with the corkscrew, but you get the idea. :) I made the executive decision to open up two of my reserved bottles yesterday for Thanksgiving dinner. One was my last bottle of my original batch of JAO, and the second was my last bottle of Cranberry melomel (my second batch of mead). I can only say one thing:

Wow.

I mean, Wow.
I mean . . .did I mention, Wow?

My dad liked it. I mean he really liked it. And I could say, well, the stuff you had before was prolly bad commercial stuff, whereas homebrew is GOOD. Especially the JAO. OMG. I almost feel like squirrelling away the bottles I just bottled for another year to let other people enjoy them tasting like that! I am so glad I have enough now that I can tuck a few bottles away to age nicely. Maybe as long as five years.

As far as how it tasted (other than WOW): The JAO smelled pleasant, has some nice legs, and the taste? Well, it is just what my mind comes up with when I say "honeywine". A perfect fusion of the sweet honey and the burn of alcohol. Although the burn had largely aged out until it was just the pleasant warmth of alcohol. Words cannot describe it accurately. I shall wait longer to drink my brews. This is just over a year old and has proven to me the worth of aging.

The Cranberry is not as good (my mom thought it was the better one, though, so this is just personal taste), but still wonderful. It has a beautiful red color, and tastes a little crisp still, like a cranberry. It doesn't taste like cranberry juice at all, though. More like wine, definitely, it just has the "crispness" (not quite tart, but close) of a cranberry. I am very glad I have a couple of bags of cranberries in the freezer and several pounds of honey in the alcohol closet. I will be making more of this.

Oh, but they were both good.

Oh, wow, has it been a while . . .

2006-11-08T10:42:00.000-08:00

So I have actually been doing stuff with my brews over the last two months. I just haven't blogged them, unlike last time I was "long time, no blog". We'll go chronilogically:

9.25.06
Started a new brew, and is this one going to be a doozy!
Ginger Capsimel
2.5 pounds clover honey
3 serrano peppers, split and seeded
2 jalapeno peppers, split and seeded
1 inch of fresh ginger
4 T. lemon juice
dried lemon peel
Fleishman's bread yeast

Following a recipe by palecricket1, put 1/2 gallon water on to boil. Meanwhile, I sliced the ginger. When the water is boiling, I dropped in the ginger. while this is boiling away, I split, seeded and removed the ribs of the peppers - HOLY COW!!! I am not, nor have I ever been a chilehead, but I am married to one and have another as a roommate so I thought I would give this whole capsimel thing a try. I'll give you the warning I didn't get:
GET A HAZMAT SUIT!
Fresh peppers are insane! I think that all the chileheads in my life will be purring when they drink this stuff. (0:10)After the ginger had boiled for 10 minutes, I added the chiles. Then I proceeded to clean EVERYTHING. No lingering chile oil to destroy my eyes or my DD. (0:20)After 10 minutes of boiling, remove the chiles but leave in the ginger. (0:30)After 10 more minutes, I removed the pot from the heat. (0:45)After 15 more minutes, I mixed in the honey and added 1/2 gallon more water and the lemon juice. I poured it into a primary and covered. I placed the primary in a pot of soapy water to cool overnight.

9.26.06
I pitched the yeast in the Capsimel and aerated. I used bread yeast because I want to keep the alcohol somewhat low and the honey flavor and sweetness level somewhat high (I don't want it to go to dry!!).
O.G. 1.085

9.27.06
Prepped to bottled the JAO. 5-6 gallons. This required an emergency trip to LHBS to buy bottles because I was about 3 shy of what I might need. Then washing all the bottles, sanitiziing all the bottles, prepping the corks, cracking open the bucket and seeing . . . . really really not clear mead. I looked at my assistant mazer, and we both kind of sighed heavily and sealed it back up. We decided to ease our pain by starting a couple of new batches:

Cinnful Apple Wine
1 gal Whole Foods Organic Apple Juice
1# granulated sugar
1.5 t. acid blend
.5 t. pectic enzyme
.25 t. tannin
1 crushed campden tablet
3 cinnamon sticks
Red Star Cote des Blancs yeast

mixed everything together except the yeast.
O.G. 1.097

Cinnful Cyser
3 pounds clover honey
1 gal Whole Foods Organic Apple Juice
4 cinnamon sticks
.5 t. nutrient
.5 pectic enzyme
D47 yeast

mixed everything together except yeast. This is following a recipe created by DeltOgre, who as far as I am concerned is a Cyser God. His recipe also inspired the Cinnful Wine recipe (obviously)
O.G. 1.132

9.28.06
Pitched yeast on Cinnful Apple Wine and Cinnful Cyser

10.02.06 (Rack and Roll Day!)
Racked the Capsimel to secondary and airlocked it. I really do like the idea of making a tea with the peppers and then taking them out. I'm hoping that it will not produce the oily scum a lot of people have talked about getting with their capsimels.
S.G. 1.028

Racked the Ginger Peach Wine.
S.G. .985

Racked the Ginger Peach Mead (there was no white stuff this time - yay!)
S.G. .996

Racked the Cinnful Apple Wine over 4 more cinnamon sticks.
S.G 1.066

Racked the Cinnful Cyser over 4 more cinnamon sticks.
S.G. 1.060

Well, The Cinnfuls have been smelling and looking so good that it's been killing us. My assistant and I ran out to get more honey and more apple juice. We modifed the recipe a little, adding some nutmeg and changing the yeast we used, since I didn't have the original yeast from the recipe on hand, to make it:

Cinnful Cyser for the Holidays
1 gal Randall's O Organic Apple Juice
4 cinnamon sticks
2.5 pounds of clover honey
3/4 c. clover honey
.5 t. pectic enzyme
.5 t. nutmeg
.25 t. nutrient
K1V-1116 yeast

we made two batches of this, exactly the same, called part I and part II. Today we mixed everything together except the yeast.
I O.G. 1.123
II O.G. 1.127

10.05.06
Pitched the yeast for Cinnful Holidays.

10.11.06
Racked the Cinnful Holidays to secondaries over 4 cinnamon sticks each.
I S.G. 1.065
II S.G. 1.067

11.2.06 (Bottling Day)
Bottled JAO. 10 375mL bottles, 21 750mL bottles
Bottled Ginger Peach Wine 5 750mL bottles
Bottled Ginger Peach Mead 4 750mL bottles, 1 375mL bottle

Before I do anymore bottling I need more corks. I used 100 corks in almost exactly one year (since I got the corks and corker as a birthday present last year). I didn't bottle 100 bottles, but it was close.

Mmmmm and ICK!

2006-09-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Last week, I got to play around with my brews! It was time to rack and bottle and stuff.

The Pumpkin Wine and Treat were both bottled, although there was QUITE a difference in taste. The wine was a nice, young, dry white. It will be good in another year, prolly. The Treat, though - still tastes like crud. I bottled it, though, and I'm not touching it for at least a year. Maybe it will age into something.

The Ginger Peaches needed racking. Both had a huge pile of sediment on the bottom. The mead had something white floating on the top. I racked around it, and plan on asking about it on GotMead. If it comes back, and the experts don't indicate throwing out the whole batch, I will prolly rack next onto some campden. Both peach brews needed some serious topping up (3 cups of water for the wine, and 2 c. leftovers from the fridge and 2 c. water for the mead).

Ginger Peach Mead and Ginger Peach Wine before racking (notice the HUGE pile of sediment!):

The white ICK floating on top of the Mead:

Finished bottles of Pumpkin Wine (left) and Treat (right):

Next up? Still planning on a "Cinnful Cyser", and possibly an apple wine to go with it, but first I plan on bottling the JAO this weekend (woohoo, 25 bottles!) and I have a couple of jalapenos and some serranos with "Capsimel" written all over them. That should make the boys happy . . . . .

Last week's work and musing on the next batches

2006-08-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's the rest of the brewlog from the Peach brews from last week. Sorry I don't do this everyday, but I did mention the brand new baby, right??? :) He demands a lot of attention, and as much as I love messing around on the computer, when he needs me, I run. Well, okay, I walk but you understand what I'm saying. Anyway, here's what I did:

Ginger Peach Wine
7.24.06
added pectic enzyme and stirred well.

7.25.06 morning
Put water on to boil after cleaning and sanitizing and rinsing equipment. Added 5 c. white sugar, almost 1 t. citric acid (all I had), 1/2 t. tannin, and 1 heaping t. ginger to carboy. Strained must into fermenter through mesh bag, then strained again into carboy. Topped up to shoulders with hot water, corked, and shook until sugar was incorporated.

evening
pitched yeast.
OG 1.092 (inaccurate, prolly, due to fruit)

7.26.06
replaced airlock after wine blew up into the old one.

Ginger Peach Mead
7.24.06
Cleaned and sanitized and rinsed equipment. Put one gallon water in a pot to boil. Put honey in fermenter. Cleaned, cut, and removed stones from peaches, then squeezed them into the honey. Before water was boiling, poured enough to cover honey and peaches and stirred well until the honey was incorporated. Added 1 t. ginger and rest of water. Stirred well.
Temp 140F
OG 1.070 -> 1.084 (after temp adjustment) (again prolly inaccurate due to fruit)

7.25.06
added pectic enzyme and pitched yeast. I used one rehydrated (according to package directions) pack of D47 for both brews.

for next two days, I stirred vigorously twice a day.

7.28.06
racked into secondary
SG 1.050

And here is a visual update on the clearing Pumpkin Wine and "Treat", the pumpkin pie mead that has fermented pumpkin in it. Time will tell if it really does turn out to be a treat to drink. But I really like the concept (borrowed from Miriam on GotMead) of making a wine and a mead of the same flavor at the same time. So far I have matched pumpkin and peach. More on this later.

And here is one of my future bottle washers and equipment sanitizers. Heck if she gets really good at bottle washing, I might let her try her hand at brewing . . . . when she's 18, at least. I have the feeling she'll be on the torch before she's mazing or brewing. :)

And here is a shot of typical Bella behavior. This would be Bella of "BellaDonna". Donna is our other cat. :)

Musings on Future Brews
So, I have been thinking about what is going to be next on my brewing calendar. I am going to try to rack the pumpkin wine and mead at least one more time, after a month of clearing, and let it sit for another month more, then depending on the sediment level at the bottom, either rack them again, or bottle. Because of how clear they are right now (the wine really looks amazing - I might have to take a pic with newsprint behind it), I am thinking that I will be bottling these at the end of the second month.

Also, the Joe's Ancient Orange should be finishing at about the same time - whew, that's going to be fun, bottling 8 gallons, 6 of which in one night. That will free up my 6 gallon fermenter for a new batch.

So in October I will probably have my 6 gal bucket and two 1 gallon jugs available. I have been thinking about either doing an apple wine and a cyser or a blackberry wine and a blackberry melomel. Both sound really good, but I think that I will prolly do the apple ones simply because we are on serious budgeting right now and apple cider/juice is a heck of a lot cheaper in the quantities I need than blackberries.

One of the gentlemen on GotMead posted a recipe that he started recently for a cyser using cinnamon as an accent spice (his wife named it "Cinnful Cyser" *grins*), and that sounded really yummy to me, but I also wanted to try to make a "poisoned apple" wine and cyser (with almond flavoring). I am not sure how well apple and almond would mix, however, so I think I will go for the cinnamon apple. Once I have that recipe perfected, maybe I will try for the poisoned apple.

And for the 6 gallons? I think either another batch of JAO, just so that I won't be out after Christmas gifts have been given out, or a new moon traditional mead, nothing but local honey, water and yeast. I could rack it over various things once it is done fermenting. Maybe finally make that capsimel I have been promising my husband and roommate. *grins*

Peachy Keen! part 2

2006-07-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

So peaches are in season and on sale right now. Yummy yummy yummy! And at 97 cents a pound you can't beat the price with a stick, so I decided to go ahead and get almost 5 pounds of them and make one gallon of wine AND one gallon of mead. I mean, heck, the peaches for both gallons cost less than the honey for the mead! :) I am using recipes from First Steps in Winemaking (for the wine) and The Compleat Meadmaker (for the mead). Ken Schramm's recipe is for a Ginger Peach Mead, which sounds so yummy that I am modifying the wine recipe to make it Ginger Peach, as well! :) I know the recipe in the book calls for fresh ginger, but I'm on a budget, here, and I already have a ton of ground ginger, so that's what I'll be using. Not sure how much yet, probably on the order of a tablespoon per batch. Here's the brewlog start for the wine, which was started last night (mead gets started tonight):

Ginger Peach Wine
2.25# peaches
.5 t. pectic enzyme
??? ground ginger
2.25# white sugar
1 t. citric acid
.5 t. tannin
1 gallon boiling water

7.23.06
Set water to boil on the stove. Cleaned the peaches and hands well. Cut peaches into half and removed the stones, managed successfully to avoid eating any (they smelled sooooo good!), and placed into a plastic fermenter. Squeezed the bejeezus out of them. Poured just enough boiling water over the peaches to cover them well (have to save room and water to boil for the sugar). Covered the fermenter with plastic wrap, and put it in a pot filled soapy water and left it overnight to cool. I am not going to have an ant problem this time!

Schedule for the rest of the week:
Add pectic enzyme today. Leave overnight again. Tomorrow strain the liquid off the peaches, pour liquid into a carboy, and add the rest of the ingredients, except the yeast, and fit with an airlock. Let must cool. Pitch yeast and refit airlock.

Ginger Peach Mead
2.25# peaches
2.5# raw clover honey
.5 t. pectic enzyme
??? ground ginger
water to one gallon
D47 yeast

Haven't started this one yet, but I plan on using the standard fruit in primary method, and am going to make sure the fermenter is ant-proof. I am not going to add the peaches to the secondary, because I don't want to be cleaning peaches off of everything in the kitchen. :)

Oops, gotta change the template . . .

2006-07-22T07:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, guys, give me a second, I know the pics have taken over the entire page here. I was planning on messing with the template soon, anyway, but I guess I get to do that now. Yes, I am going to change the template rather than changing the pic sizes. *grins*

Pics and Progress

2006-07-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

I love my new camera phone. Bluetooth is a wonderful thing that means I no longer have to wait for DH to upload pics form his camera to his computer to my computer. And since I mostly want pics for the web, I don't care that they would print small and unclear. They're perfectly sized for blogging! :)

Here are the bottles of Strawberry Wine and Cherry Vanilla Mead. I think I am going to stick with more descriptive names and less "cute" names for now. Unless they are really good, like Trick and Treat.

This is a shot of my "wine cellar" after last weekend's bottling and racking session. Scorp and I bottled the Trick and racked the Treat and Pumpkin Wine to get them off the pumpkin particles. In about 3 weeks, I'm going to see if they need to be racked again, or if they can be bottled up at that point. Both needed to be topped up a little (Treat needed to be topped up a LOT, after the explosion).

Here's a shot of the Pumpkin Wine and Treat. Treat tasted horrible, I'm hoping that it will get better. Pumpkin Wine may turn into a star. It tastes like a nice, but very young, wine right now. It is so good, in fact, that DH said he would drink it, and he's more of a gin and tonic kind of guy.

And I started a 6 gallon batch of Joe's Ancient Orange cuz that stuff is so dang good!

JAO - 6 gallon
20# raw clover honey (cheap from grocery store)
5 valencia oranges
4 1/2 packs of raisins (about 150)
6 sticks of cinnamon
5 whole cloves
1 pkg. Fleishmann's yeast
water to 6 gallons

7.18.06
I followed the recipe, dumped everything but yeast in after dissolving the honey in warm water. I added water until there was only about 4" of headroom left. Left it overnight to cool to room temperature.

7.19.06
Pitched the yeast, lidded and airlocked it. It was happily burping by the end of the day. I plan on opening it in a week to top up, and then ignoring it until October or so. That will give me plenty of time to gather up bottles - I will prolly get 25 out of this batch. Yay for cheap and easy Christmas presents!

Peaches are on sale right now, so I am planning on making Peach Ginger wine and mead. I love the fact that I can make really wonderful wine for about 75 cents a bottle and wonderful mead for $2 a bottle. I wish I could find a cheaper source of honey. :) The good news is that my grocery stores are starting to have more than just clover honey. I've seen Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Orange Blossom, and Wildflower. I've seen a couple others, too, but forget what they are right now. The only problem is that we are talking about $5 a pound for these honeys. Which more than doubles my cost. *shrug* One day I will have a coupon or I will just have enough spare grocery money to be able to grab enough to do a show mead.

So it's been a while . . .

2006-07-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

Wow. Okay, I have an excuse. Being pregnant and completely unable to sample your wares as a brewer (and as a beadmaker, too - more on that later) - if you're being good anyway! - kinda takes the fun out of racking and starting new brews. But I am back.

Bottled the strawberry wine and the cherry vanilla mead last night with Scorp. The wine smells divine, tastes awful. I hope it ages to match the smell. The mead is extremely hot right now, but it tastes a heck of a lot like the batch of Joe's Ancient Orange did right out of the carboy, so I am very hopeful. The AO was delicious, I mean, DELICIOUS at Christmas and better at Art Camp in March. I still have one bottle left, and that one is dedicated to long term storage, which may mean I am cracking it at my birthday (after one year) or maybe waiting another four years. Don't know yet, but I am now making sure I bottle at least one bottle of everything in a dark glass bottle for "Long Term Storage".

Now that my computer is finally set up in a way that I can use it, I am going to play around with the tablet I got for Christmas and work on labels. That's my plan for as much of tomorrow morning as the kids will let me have.

I am planning on dealing with the various pumpkin stuff sometime this week or weekend. More important to me to take care of this weekend, though, is to get my lampworking bench set up. I have missed torching almost as much as I have missed brewing. Hopefully I will have pics of beads to post next week. :)

Here is a pic of the kids, from the hospital:

Eruption

2005-10-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I think that if I ever do another pumpkin mead (and this one had better turn out REALLY good for me to even consider it at this point), I may give something mentioned on GotMead a try - using a seeded pumpkin as a primary fermentor. As it is, I am sick unto death of this one.

I would like to thank, publicly, whatever deity or deities (does anyone know of a god or goddess of mead? *grins*) were watching over my house the last couple of days. Thank you for:
-causing the small eruption to occur in the cabinet, so that I moved the carboy into my water bath so as not to have to clean that cabinet twice
-giving me the idea to stick the water bath under the overhang of a pennisular counter in my kitchen so people wouldn't walk into it
-causing the airlock to be blown off the top of the carboy when no one was looking at it
-having most of the explosion go in the water bath or under the counter instead of all over the floor and the ceiling
-having the eruption be in this house with the old cruddy carpeting instead of the house we just moved out of with the brand new carpeting
-only losing about a quarter of a gallon
-making sure I remembered to cap the extra mead I put in the fridge for topping up this time.

Ick, what a day. I am not topping that stuff up for a while, as I don't want a repeat. I think I am going to have to get some lids for my buckets and use them for putting fruit in the "secondary" for melomels. This is the second time this has happened, and both times were right after transferring to a carboy over fruit. The brew is still bubbling happily, though, and my house still smells like mead in the kitchen and living room. I took pictures, but I have to beat my husband to get him to find the cord for the camera and take the pics off of it. Might be easier to do now that the World Series is over. *grins*

2005-10-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

Okay someone PLEASE smack me the next time I consider transferring onto fruit before fermentation has slowed drastically. I don't think I will be doing it again for a while, I am still cleaning pumpkin guts off my kitchen.

Transferred both meads last night to secondaries. The one with pumpkin went nuts and gooshed up into and out of the airlock all over the cabinet and kitchen floor. Changed out the airlock, and will have have to do it again once I can get the other one clean and sanitized. I have it sitting back in the water bath (ant free zone) to make cleanup easier. The Trick is doing fine, bubbling happily and NOT coming out of the airlock. *grins*

Forgot to bring my brewlog upstairs, so I can't give you the exact S.G.'s right now, but they are around 1.080.

Eight batches?

2005-10-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

Whew . . . Next year will be happy indeed. I already have 8 bacthes going, and I plan on doing an apple wine and a cyser next month. Looks like I'll have a huge selection from which to pick presents from for next year. Also, I'm thinking about changing the layout of the site. I like Having a list of what currently fermenting, but I would also like to add a list of what's bulk aging (nothing just yet), and what's been bottled (planning on bottling the AO sometime after the beginning of next month). And I need to find where my printer cables were packed so that I can start designing my labels (it has a scanner, too), and put those as well as the few pics I have taken up in a gallery somewhere. Well, gotta go unpack some more boxes and take care of the baby . . ..

Pumpkin Marathon

2005-10-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

Whew. What a weekend. So Friday night I decided I was going to get the pumpkins out of my pantry and get my pumpkin brews started. And deal with the cherry limeade while I was at it, too.

So, even though it was the last thing I did Friday night, I'll tell you about it first, because it is the quickest to tell. I was going to top it up with another gallon or so of sugar water, but as it was cooling down to add it to the must without killing the yeasties, silly me forgot to cover the pot, and it got contaminated. "Ummm, brewmistress, there is a fly in my limeade!" So, I got fed up with it (I needed the space in my ant-free water zone, patent pending), moved it to a corner of my kitchen and had my roommate knock the lid on it. Airlocked it and left it alone. It's gurgling away, slowly, but noticeably. It took me until this morning to realize what that strange gurgling noise was, I was wondering if my new house had a leak in it somewhere. Thank goodness it's just a happy batch of limeade!

So now for the pumpkin marathon: For all three batches I started by chunking up a couple of pie pumkins I had bought, sprinkling the small one with brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice, just brown sugar on the other, shoved it all in the oven to cook for and hour and a half at 350. The smaller pumpkin, with sugar and spice, was then shelled and put in a ziploc to keep in the fridge until I transfer the mead into a secondary. The larger one, with just sugar, became the base for my pumpkin wine:

Midnight (recipe from Jack Keller)
5 lbs. (ish) Pumpkin
3 1/4 lbs sugar
1/2 oz. citric acid
1 t. nutrient
6 1/2 pts. water
K1V-1116 yeast

Removed cooked pumpkin flesh from shell and put in a hops bag. Brought water to a boil, and stirred in sugar to dissolve. Removed from heat. Placed bagged pumpkin in primary and poured boiling water over it. Allowed it to cool overnight, covered, until it was at room temperature. Then added 1 T. citric acid (I don't have a kitchen scale yet, so I spent about 20 minutes looking for the conversion) and nutrient. Rehydrated yeast according to package directions. Pitched yeast.
Temp: 78 degrees
O.G.: 1.120 (not adjusted, gotta find my charts . . . it's a pain finding one online with google)

Halloween Trick
3.5 lbs local honey
1 c. brown sugar
1 T. pumpkin pie spice
1 t. nutrient
water to one gallon
D47 yeast

Put honey in primary. Add warm water and stir to dissolve. Add brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice, stir. This is a pain in the patootie. Like adding tannin, the spice just wants to float there in clumps. When it came to room temp, added nutrient and rehydrated yeast. I split the rehydrated yeast between this batch and the next, because I was originally planning on getting a 3 gallon bucket or carboy to start these batches, so they would be the same until I added pumpkin to one. Pitched yeast.
Temp: 90 degrees
O.G.: 1.130 (again, not adjusted)

Halloween Treat
3.5 lbs local honey
1 c. brown sugar
1 T. pumpkin pie spice
1 t. nutrient
water to one gallon
D47 yeast
1.5 lbs (ish) pumpkin

Okay this one was done exactly the same as the one above, except for preparing the pumpkin to be added later, as I said above. I don't know how, prolly inaccurate honey measurements (honey is hard to measure by the cupful! I want a measuring cup like Alton Brown has), but the two batches are already slightly different:
Temp: 85 degrees
O.G.: 1.125

I will prolly be transferring the wine to a secondary tonight, and the meads tomorrow night. That way I have a chance to clean the plain pumpkin flavor of the wine out of the racking cane before I contaminate the meads with it.

Hard Cherry Limeade

2005-10-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I am trying out a new recipe. This is based on Miriam's Hard Lemonade recipe, posted in the GotMead forums. Unfortunately I had some major problems with just getting this one started. First I messed up the calculations. I converted the units to American units for a 1 gallon batch, and wrote that down in my recipe book. But I had planned on making a 5 gallon batch. So when I went to the grocery store for supplies, I bought enough for 5 gallons. When I started mixing up the must on Saturday, I dumped in the limeade, put the cherries in a bag, then proceeded to add the amount of water and sugar specified in the recipe. The recipe for ONE GALLON. Then I wondered why my 6.5 gallon bucket looked less than half full. I checked the O.G. and it was way too high, so I added water until it was brought down to the recommended 1.060. This was about the time I looked at the recipe and realized what I had done. I was so frustrated I wanted to scream, so I decided to fix it the next day. Besides, I had to wait to add the yeast anyway, since I added campden.

The next day I started boiling more water and adding sugar to it, and then dumping it into the bucket, 5 quarts and 5 cups, respectively, at a time. I did this twice before I realized I was going to run out of room if I added any more. So I stopped there. Rehydrated the yeast and pitched it.

Final recipe for what's in the bucket:
7 12 oz cans frozen limeade concentrate
1 6 oz can frozen limeade concentrate
3 t. nutrient
1 campden tablet
2 16 oz jars maraschino cherries, with the syrup reserved for sweetening and flavoring later
4 pounds of sugar
13 1/4 quarts of water
Premier Cuvee yeast

O.G. 1.070 at 94F (not adjusted because all my charts are still packed away somewhere)

I have been stirring the bejeezus out of it. I am kind of worried about the temp, because this is supposed to be kept warm to counteract the high acidity of the must. Our house stay at about 74F, on the cool side. I guess it's doing okay, though, because when I stirred it this morning I got lots of nice foam.

Updates on my other brews:

The 3 other brews I have here at the house (Cranberry Mead, Strawberry Wine, and Cherry Vanilla Mead) have all slowed down a lot. The moving prolly did it, along with temp shifts and whatnot. I am not overly concerned though, as they were all looking good at last S.G. reading. They are really quite pretty, and look to be starting to clear.

The leftovers from racking the Cherry Vanilla Mead were deemed unsuitable for topping up purposes because I left them in the fridge uncovered for too long (24 hours). Therefore, they were drank. OMG! Yumminess! My roommate said "Now, that's some good beer!" He hates beer, so I guess this was a complement. But now he wants me to make my meads sparkling, because these bottles were carbonated from stopping the fermentation in the fridge. *shrug* I told him that if he wanted to help with capping the beer bottles, I'd think about it.

I finally took a peek at my Ancient Orange over at my mom's house. About two weeks left to go, according to the recipe, maybe more, and it is BEAUTIFUL! It has already cleared a huge amount, but the orange and raisins are still floating. I think it will definitely be ready for bottling at the beginning of next month. Just in time for my birthday!

And in other brew news, I have my pumpkins sitting in in the brew pantry ready for baking and turning into Pumpkin Wine and Pumpkin Pie Mead. I am going to make one gallon of wine, one gallon of mead with just pumpkin pie spice, and one gallon of mead with pumpkin pie spice and pumpkin. It should be an interesting taste test next Halloween.

Also, I finally got a hold of a bottle of Chaucer's Mead. $11 at my local liquor store. Wow. It tastes really good! And from everything I have read on the forums, my brews will more than likely taste even better. YAY!!

Geyser!

2005-10-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, so not much of one, but this morning as I was walking through the living room to the kitchen, I said to myself "Hmm, that's odd. The whole house smells like mead. It should have dissipated from racking by now." As I got closer to the kitchen, my mind started going back to posts I had read on the GM forums about fermentations being so vigorous, they blew off the airlock and painted the ceiling with mead. I started getting scared of what I would find in my kitchen.

Imagine my relief when all I saw was mead in the airlock and a little on the counter. Thank goodness! I cleaned up the counter and bottle, and fitted a new airlock, set a little higher in the stopper to try and avoid having mead get into it.

But the Cherry Vanilla mead is going STRONG! One and half blips per second, maybe more, because they were going so fast, and running into each other sometimes, so it was hard to keep really good count. Them are some happy yeasties! I'll just have to remember to check the airlock before I go to bed and see if I have to change it out again.

Cherry Vanilla Mead: Now with cherries and vanilla!

2005-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight we transferred the plain mead into a carboy over one and a quarter pounds of dark sweet cherries (frozen, then thawed) and three vanilla beans (OMG - the smell left in the bottles!!!! I think I'll put some sugar in them and make a weak vanilla sugar) split lengthwise. It filled the carboy, a 750 ml wine bottle, and half a Grolsch bottle (16 oz). Whew. I put the two smaller bottles (no fruit or vanilla in these) into the fridge to stop fermentation, so I can cap them up in a couple of weeks and use for topping up as necessary. Or maybe I'll wait for the smaller one to clear and drink it. Dunno. This stuff tasted soooooo good. A little "green", young, but it was definitely not rocket fuel. Very smooth and sweet. I hope it stays like this, with added goodness of cherry and vanilla. I'm thinking of adding a maraschino cherry to each bottle when I bottle this stuff.

Current Temp: 78 degrees
S.G.: 1.050

K1V-1116 has an official alcohol tolerance of 18% (so it would chew through my original amount of sugar and be ready for more), but apparently usually poops out around 16% in practical terms. I hope the cherries add enough sugar to make it end slightly on the semi-sweet side. Yeah. I like sweet drinks. Sue me. *grins* Worse comes to worst, I can just add some more honey at the end.

Racked Cranberry

2005-09-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-09-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2005-09-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2005-09-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-17T15:13:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2005-09-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-09-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2005-09-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-09-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-09-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2005-09-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-09-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2005-09-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-06T06:49:00.000-07:00

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.