Brown Hard Cider

Once again Supe and I have teamed up for another brew session. This time we are making a batch of really hard cider, using apple cider from Hudaks Farm.

Recipe:
2.5 gallons of cider
5 lbs. White sugar
2 lbs. Dark brown sugar

When we went today to get the cider today we were able to get it fresh off the tank because they had not gotten to filling jugs yet. Upon getting home I put the sugar in the carboy and poured the cider on top. 1 gallon at a time so I could shake it up and help get the sugar dissolved faster.

After a few hours and shake sessions later, the sugar was finally dissolved. So I gave it lots of good vibes and took the gravity reading.

1.150! That's right this is indeed the largest thing I have tackled by far. A whopping 20% potential abc. So I pitched my wine yeast and now I wait.

With this one I have not added any other flavors and right now it is a beautiful dark brown.

Wild Wine

A friend of mine has an enormous tree covered in wild grapevine. Needless to say I climbed my scrawny ass up there and got a large paper bag full of grapes (after asking permission from both tree and grapevine). I put the bag into my freezer to for two reasons. 1st, to kill off any creepy crawlies that may have come with the berries. 2nd, to freeze the juice inside the berry, which breaks the cell wall, to help extract the juice.

After freezing for a few days I sat down and pulled the choicest berries from their clusters and placed them in a bowl.

Recipe:   Sept. 21, 2011
2 1/2 - 3 lbs wild grapes
1 lb white cane sugar

The sugar went into the jug first, then the frozen berries. Over that I poured near boiling water. Then shake till sugar is mixed. I gave it a little while to make sure that it was "blood temperature" then I added a dash of red star wine yeast. I want some highly flocculent yeast to hopefully help pull some of the wild yeast out of the wine. But I want the wild yeast present on the grapes to hopefully be dominate to fully showcase this particular grape.

Another Round of Hard Cider

So the family and I went out apple picking at Shelburn Orchard last friday.  While I was there we grabbed some unpasteurized apple cider. 1/2 gallon of this was mine to do what I do.

Recipe:
1/2 gal. unpasteurized apple cider
3/4 lbs white cane sugar
1 tsp. mulling spice (This is a blend bought from my local herb shop. It has some dried orange peel, cinnamon, clove, and all spice.)
10 whole allspice (on top of what was in the mulling spice)

I put all this together and added a small shake of wine yeast, then shook the crap out of  the jug. I capped it with an air lock and set this next to the spiced viking in the kitchen.

It started slow but picked up speed after a couple days.

An Idea!

This is something that struck my brain today (Tuesday Sept. 13, 2011). If soaking grain helps predigest the gluten and other inhibitors found in the grain, would soaking the (beer) grains before the mash do the same?

My family has decided to go gluten free because of my son. This could have put a dampener on my brewing if I did not totally enjoy wines and meads as well. But the desire for a good beer is still there.

I have known about sour dough starters for a while now. I have also known that soaking grains (wheat flour usually) over night pre-digests the anti-nutrients and gluten (as well as some other stuff) present in the grain.  Now I am thinking about applying this to my brewing, but some questions I have are "will the gluten be broken down enough?" "will there still be enough starch to convert to sugar?" "will this even work?"

I plan on (someday soon) trying my hand at a small batch and feeding it to a friend with celiacs (and yes he will know about it before I even get the grain).

If any of you have tried this or know someone who has or even have experience with fermented grain bread and sourdough starters let me know, I would love some help here.

Spiced Vikings

For a Viking good time.

So two of my friends (Supe and Travis) decided to have me make them a Mead.

Recipe:
10 lbs local raw honey
4 6inch long sticks of cinnamon
5 whole nutmeg
2 tablespoons of all spice

The first 1 1/2 cups of honey were offered to the Great Fay on Saturday September 10th 2011 in a half gallon growler with warm water. I then "blessed" this with about 2 minutes of shaking before putting the cheese cloth on top of the jug. This is the starter for the yeast for this mead.

By Monday night it was noticeably cloudy with trace amounts of settlement on the bottom.

Tuesday after work I decided to cap it because the settlement has gotten more noticeable and it is far more cloudy than on Monday. Hopefully by tomorrow or Thursday I should be able to actually pitch it into the rest of the mead with the spices.

I am not going to decoct  the spices this time, they will go into the primary with the rest of the ingredients.

More to come soon.

TreeBeer(d)

So I have started a fermented beverage that I am dubbing TreeBeer(d). This is because it is a combination of Pine, Sumac, and Maple.

Recipe:
2.5 gallons water (plus some to get to a full 3 gallons)
2.2 lbs of Maple Syrup
1/2 lb of Pine needles (I actually left them in clumps, still on the last bit of branch where the needles all stick out)
1/2 lb of Longhorn Sumac drupes


I boiled the pine needles for 30 minutes in about 2 gallons of water and tossed in the sumac drupes during the last five minutes. Cooled that in a cold water bath then strained it into the carboy on top of the maple syrup. Then I added a little cold water to bring it to full capacity.

The gravity reading was 1.040 right before I pitched the packet of Fermentis US-05 yeast.

Before the maple syrup it was a lovely dark red. After the maple it became a sort of maroon.

Homemade Hard Cider

So this year my apple tree out front actually produced some apples. They are small but really sweet, and since they were falling off the tree I decided to harvest some and make some hard cider.

Recipe:

1 Basket full of apples

1 lb. white table sugar

After juicing the apples I was able to get about 1 gallon of juice and some pulp. I let this settle out over a day and then transferred the juice to another gallon carboy and added the pound of sugar. The natural yeast on the apples got this going really quickly but it still took about 2 weeks to finish out.

I crashed it for a couple nights in my fridge and racked it to a half gallon growler to go to a friends house where we all drank it and thoroughly  enjoyed it.

I also have a second batch going with apples from another tree (not mine) but this group yeilded only 1/2 gallon of goodness that is still going in a clear half gallon growler. 

Unfortunately I did not get a gravity reading on either of these but im guessing it to be around 4.5 to 5 abv.