The new computer

The awesomeness of my new computer cannot be put into mere words. Yes, it's tiny, and I have a hard time relearning where all my fingers should go, but the space-saving properties and the mobility this baby will offer me just can't be denied. It's well worth the ten pages of writing I had to do just to earn it. A reward to myself.

A few updates on the beer and wine front. I didn't submit the braggot to the state fair, for the reason of consistency. OUt of 3 drank bottles, 2 were good the 3rd was a little iffy. They tasted fine and a lot like the Curmudgeon, except way darker in color and astringent in texture. It looks more like coke. I think I might just submit it to the Renaissance Faire instead. I have to bottle 1 batch of beer this week and another next week and start that partial mash sometime this week as well. I'm not sure how long the grains are going to hold up, but the scale arrived even if the 5 gallon pot didn't.

I had to start a dispute with paypal for non-delivery from brewsterbrown.com and I'm not pleased because not only am i out money I also don't have a pot to brew in. I'm hoping the notice from paypal will push this guy to contact me and let me know one way or another what is going on. I most likely will not buy from him again but I won't bad mouth him publicly either.

Monday! Beer day!

I woke up this morning knowing that I was going to have to get up and head to Northern Brewer and pick up a new fermenter and some odds and ends. I kind of have to make the beer today because I left the yeast out Sunday morning and so had to smack it because it had already begun to swell. By this morning it was a huge tight ball of yeasty goodness and it needed to be put into something yummy.

I've got the AC cranked to avoid the really high humid temperatures we've been having. I have 2 beers going. One is the honey bee ale from midwest, which I'm keeping my fingers crossed will be ready in time for the wedding. At least if it isn't completely ready I have enough boxes to mail the beer to folks in the wedding party.

I put aside the spent grains from the steep in order to try my hand at making those dog biscuits that folks on the homebrew forum have posted. I don't have a dog but my neighbors do and it's not like I haven't already eaten some of the grains. I don't want to make something and feed it to a living creature without making sure that it is perfectly safe.

I forgot to post the MW Honey Bee Ale Recipe
here it is:

8oz Carapils
1oz Glacier @ 6% (60min)
1oz Argentinian Cascade (5min)
3.3# Gold Malt
3# Clover Honey
Wyeast #1056 American Ale

Gettng a jump on my day.

I can't decide if I need to go to get a new fermenter bucket or just wait for the one I ordered to come in the mail. I'm running a little behind on the making of the Honey Bee Ale I planned for a friend's wedding on September 4. I planned on making this as gifts to give to her and her new husband and the wedding party. I don't want to hurry it but if I don't then no one will have anything to take home.

I have a lunch date this afternoon with my friend Brian, who really got me started on wine. Roundtrip to Northern Brewer in St. Paul by bus should take me about 1.5-2 hours which won't get me home in time to start any beer today before I have to do lunch then work my shifts at the fringe festival and then see a couple of shows tonight.

But if I go today and prepare to make the beer on friday morning then I'll still have a few hours until before I work again. Three weeks in primary and then bottle, no secondary should make it just in time to get it to the folks. Of course, they couldn't drink it for another 2 weeks, and considering everyone I don't think the beer will last.

Talk about fast service

I ordered grains from NOrthern Brewer Thursday and boom I opened my door this afternoon as I was leaving and found a box sitting at the door. I hurriedly grabbed it and put the yeast in the fridge and checked the grains. I was on www.brewtools.com and was playing around with the recipe creator. I made one for a belgian ale that looked relatively easy and was partial mash recipe. I found an easy to follow tutorial for partial mash on a stovetop on the brew forum, called www.homebrewtalk.com and I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I am hoping to get to it some time this week, like Wednesday or Thursday. I've got to volunteer at the Fringe Festival in the afternoons, and I'm writing but that's all. I am hoping that the new brew kettle I ordered will be here by then, and then I think I'm done with buying equipment for a few months. What I have should see me through making two batches at a time for the next few months.

I definitely want to try as many easy recipes in as many styles as possible.

Belgian Ale

2.5# Belgian Pale
1# german 2-row Pils
1# Belgian Caramunich
3# Light LME
1.85 Alexanders wheat malt
1oz Styrian Goldings @ 60 (4.5% AA)
.5 oz East Kent Goldings @ 15
Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier

Yesterday

I was at Pracna with my friends Mark and Dean, having a beer and a bloody mary. I was looking over the drink menu and saw there was a new Surly but when I asked for it they were out. Seems this one went fast. They had a new one on tap, a strong ale called Curmudgeon made by Founders. This bad boy came out in a beautiful snifter glass, dark amber color, with a beautiful head which was a very light shade of amber. I took a long whiff and was pleasantly assaulted by the sweet aroma. To be honest, it immediately brought to mind the braggot I had made and gave me hope that in a few months mine would also be a pleasure to drink. This is the first strong ale I've had in the Minneapolis area. I will definitely go back for it.

I couldn't resist

I couldn't resist pressing down slightly on the top of the fermenter. When it really starts fermenting any pressure sends bubbles into the airlock and so I pressed and *bloop*bloop* there were bubbles coming up. It wasn't a lot but some shows me that fermentation has started, it's not strong but it is way faster than I expected. I was hoping that would be the case, that the yeast was still very much active.

I think rather than racking another brown on this yeast I'll wash it and store it. Maybe make something else with this strain. To be honest i wasn't sure if it was going to work. My greatest concern still is contamination. I tried to keep everything as clean and sanitized as possible. I kept the lid on the fermenter, with the airlock on while I prepped the new batch. I made sure to clean and sanitize all equipment that came into contact with the wort.

I guess I can only do so much and just hope for the best.

I have to remember to post this success on the forum.

Brown Ale recipe

Brown Ale

6# Gold LME
2# DME
1# Crystal Malt 60L
1/2# Chocolate Malt
1oz Nugget pellet hops (12.5% AA) at 60
1oz Willamette leaf hops (4.5%AA) at 30
1oz Willamette lef hops (4.5% AA) at 15
3tsp yeast nutrient (hey couldn't hurt)

OG 1.056 or 058 ( had a hard time reading it), which was a little high for this particular recipe. The range I had was between 1.045-1.055.

Racked onto the yeast at around 72 degrees. Turns out the reason my water pressure was a little low and not as cold, was that my neighbors were watering the yard. I'll have to take that into consideration next time.

The yeast was Wyeast 1028.

Now I just have to wait and hope that this yeast will take. Dang, this is going to be a long 24 hours.

Brown Ale, my version.

I started a new batch of brown ale using the yeast from the previous batch. I didn't use a kit instead I found a recipe, it's still an extract with grains but it uses DME. This was the first time I have used it and I can honestly say that adding DME to a hot wort is absolutely a pain in the ass. I tried the sifting method but the steam rising up from the boil made the powder condense into hard knots that clogged the sifter. I poured it in and spent lots of time breaking up the clumps I only used about 2# of DME instead of the 3# that I had originally planned because I just got too fed up. Experience teaches. I know that cold water doesn't cause the DME to clump up as bad so I think maybe I'll pre dissolve the DME in cool water and add it to the wort instead of trying to add it dry. I'll end up using less water in the initial boil.

I'm also going to add this to the yeast of the previous batch I just racked to the secondary. I read that this can be done. Now I'm just waiting for the wort to cool enough to pitch it into the fermenter, add a little nutrient and see what happens.

Passing the time at work

One thing I've noted about myself and my hobbies, is that I am meticulous in outlining needs, costs, plans. For example, I spent a large chunk of my shift writing out recipes in my beer notebook, then taking post-its and pricing out from my Midwest catalog all the ingredients for each and every item. I also keep a running inventory list of equipment I own and what I need to buy, who I give bottles to and how many. Because I carry both my wine and my beer notebook with me I have taken to dating any changes I make and then cross-checking them with the other. I have a computer inventory of all of my wines, types, yeasts, fermentation and racking dates, and how many bottles each batch yields. I'm going to build a new spreadsheet for beer soon.

I don't keep this good of track for things that go into writing my dissertation. Obviously, I know where my priorities lay.

So I was cruising the internet and reading through various forum posts on the Midwest brew-wine forum, which is my second favorite forum, after winemakingtalk.com. I spent hours reading the online version of the magazine Brew Your Own. I wrote out a few extract recipes and played with the brew calculator and chatted to know one in particular about the greatness of learning to make beer and wine. No one being my co-workers who have gotten used to listening and asking questions periodically. It keeps them on my good side and guarantees that they continue to reap the benefits of my new hobby by getting free bottles of wine and eventually beer.

While making an inventory list for a brown ale I found on the Brew Your Own site, it occured to me that I should really consider upping my budget for the month from 50.00 to 75.00. I would love to have it at 100.00 but I don't make enough at my job and I really can't justify spending that much on a hobby right now. I might reconsider in the fall when I'm teaching again and have a little extra cash. I priced out how the brown ale not made from a kit would cost me around 30.00. That is not a bad deal. I guess when I get enough beer made the cost will even out because I'll be entertaining more at home instead of going out.

I wonder if I could exchange beer for meals by inviting my friends over for potluck?

The kit I just brewed was from Northern Brewer called Nut Brown Ale. Those are the pictures from various points during the preparation. I think next time I brew I'm going to have a friend come over and take pictures of me working so I can post them in a step-by-step blog post.

Just moved fermenter to the bathtub while i'm at work...a precaution.

After adding the hops and setting the timer for 60 minutes I settled down to do some cleaning up and preparing the fermenter. I chilled about 2 gallons of water in the fridge, because the sink was going to be a little busy with chilling the wort down and I didn't want to chill it, then risk bacteria while I was trying to fill the fermenter up with cold water.















This was the first chance to use the wort chiller I bought from BrewsterBrown. I wasn't sure how well it was going to work since it was pretty small diameter and didn't have a large number of coils. I have budget and I know i can't afford a bigger wortchiller. Plus, I didn't want to go all out to early in this hobby. After an hour, I plopped the pot into the sink, put the chiller in and hooked it up and turned it on. I could immediately feel warm water coming out of the hose. I set a sanitized thermometer in it and prepped the water, fermenter, airlock, and yeast while I was waiting. It cooled to under 100F in under 15 minutes.

I poured the wort in, making sure to splash , used a large spoon to stir it up, added more cold water and took a SG reading. Since I had sanitized the hydrometer I just twirled it and left it in the pail. I use the refractometer to my wines anyway. The reading was around 1.042 and the Brix was 10. I added the London Ale yeast and set it in the living room. Hopefully it won't have crazy fermentation but I might just prepare a blow-off tube just in case. Unfortunately, I leave for work at 10:30pm and if it's going to go nuts I'd rather it do it while I'm home and not while I'm at work.

This should sit for about a week then I rack it to the secondary until it clears or two weeks I think. Then bottle and wait 2 weeks. It should be just in time for the BBQ I'm wanting to have in late August.

NB continued

Next I added the grains to the cool water and turned on the heat. They needed to steep for 15 minutes or until the water started to boil (or reach 170F) which ever came first. I set the timer for 15 minutes then started prepping the cold water for the fermenter and the gold malt that needed to go in to the pot after it started to boil. I put the malt in a pail and ran some hot water to soften it up. After 15 minutes I took the grains out and then let it boil. After it started boiling I removed it from the heat and added the malt and put it back on to boil before I add hops.

Nut Brown Ale

I got off work this morning, came home to a big puffy bag of yeast. I pulled out the kit and read through the ingredients and instructions at least a dozen times. First I straightened up a bit and mixed up a sanitizing solution. I use StarSan. I sanitized the buckets and fermenter and washed out the pot.












I then crushed the grains and and put them into a mesh bag, tying the top up. I really need to get bigger ziploc bags, I had to crush the grains in two batches, so I could use the ziploc they cam in.

Everything is clearing up nicely.

I checked on the wines I have going so far and did a little adding of KMeta to the muscat since I had forgotten to do that when I racked it a couple of days ago. The sack mead is looking mighty clear now. I was a little hesitant to use the bentonite and I think in the future it will not be my go to way of clearing but I really want to get this into bottles and down to the basement and out of my mind as soon as possible. It's about 4 months old at this point.

The muscat directly to the right is looking beautiful and clearer than I expected since I topped up with the leftover muscat that had added sugar to it. I still have even more left which is currently in an airlocked bottle I think I might have to rack this a fourth time in a couple of months. I'm not sure about bulk aging this in my kitchen over the winter. I would rather get it as clear as possible and bottle age it in the basement over the winter in preparation for my graduation next May.

The red is the 2nd attempt at grape wine and that cleared better than the first one.

I just need to get on the ball and get these bottled and labeled (at least working labels, not presentation labels) and stored away.

I see two kit wines in my future, a red and a white, for an event in October, so I guess i should take a look at the new Midwest catalog and start picking stuff out.

Today is also Brew Day! I'm planning on starting that Nut Brown Ale I smacked the yeast activator and hopefully I'll see some activity in a couple of hours and can get this started before I have to go to bed this afternoon. Otherwise I could do it in the morning after work and before I go to the Farmers Market.

What constitutes blog worthy

I guess that I'm sitting on my porch at 1am with my laptop and drinking from a bottle of my own wine fits the criteria of what I put on a blog about wine-making. I just got home from a night of dancing and hanging out with friends. I walked in the house and didn't feel like going to bed or watching tv or sitting in the living room with my computer. The weather is so beautiful out and I'm not really tired or intoxicated and this seemed like the perfect wind-down activity. I opted not to grab a glass since there's only about a glass worth in the bottle, so I'm drinking straight from the bottle.

It's good wine and quiet night and my worries and people are left in a club somewhere.

These musings are in fact blogworthy because I took the time out of m very fast moving life and just stopped to drink the wine.

What I'm growing to hate about being the lone..

Granted I am not as skilled as others who have jumped into the whole wine/beer brewing thing, but I'm not an idiot. I do my research and ask questions that make sense. I do not just buy random items and jerryrig a setup and then ask questions in forums and expect that I should get answers, having not done my homework. So I think I get to be a bit of a bitch when I think someone is being condescending towards me.

What brought on this little rant?

Braggots. Not well documented and pretty much not as widely made as beer or mead. So my decision to focus on making braggots with a definable beer styles and with discernable mead characteristics and not call it a 'honey' beer is not just pulled out of my ass. I read what I could find and what was out there on all available forums. I'm not a rocket scientist, but I'm not some guy who does this because his buddies or his grandpa did it. I grew up with good beer, I've had an interest in making beer, and I have the time to learn how to make it...right.

So treat me like I know generally what contributions alpha and beta acids make to beer. I may not completel understand the whys and the hows but I know enough to make educated guesses and to know how to best proceed, whether it be jumping in with a trial and error and just make the batch and see how it goes or asking more questions of individuals who I know have more knowledge than myself. I also am very much aware that it will be years before I will be anything other than an amatuer and honestly I'm fine with that. I mean I do have a career and beer and wine making in no way reflects my capabilities as an academic.

Course my knitting, well that's a different story.

Feels like forever

Since I last posted, though it was only a week ago. My new job keeps me busy and exhausted and to be honest I've been too tired to try and tend to my wine more than I already do. Thankfully, it's a very hands-off kind of hobby and less is more is better.

Last week the Muscat had cleared up but I hadn't gotten around to racking it a third time. So today I decided to head over to Northern Brewer to pick up a faucet adapter. While there I bought a Nut Brown Ale kit and then kicked myself when I got home and realized that the yeast I had was the Belgium Abby not the London Ale I thought. So now I have to go back to Northern Brewer and get the right yeast in order to start the Ale. I hate making more than one trip in a week. I'm pretty sure that my kit would last a week if I get home and decide that I'm just too tired to go to St. Paul.

I racked the Muscat to a new 3gallon carboy and topped it off with what I had in the 1 gallon and managed to get an extra bottles-worth into a 750ml. Of course even as I write this I remember that I forgot to put some campden tablets into it. Oh well, I'll do that tomorrow. No worries I'm generally ok with as little sulphiting as possible. I'm down to a few bottles of the Pinot Blanc left. I have to remember to give some away to key folks. I suppose I should see how the rest of my 1 gallon batches are doing.

I had most awful scare this afternoon while racking. I needed a bottle for the leftover and so I went to the box of empties I keep for just such an occasion and I saw a green one upside down so I stuck my hand on it, placing my thumb in the depression and went to pull it out. I felt something soft and squishy and I FREAKED I dropped the bottle faster than greased spit and as it fell something dark fell out of the depression. I'm pretty sure it was a spider. It was HUGE. I kept checking my thumb to see if there were fang marks in it. I later picked it up with a damp paper towel (damp with sanitizing solution, just in case) and a leather mitten and threw it away. Spiders creep my shit out.

That said I look forward to a cool apartment and some beer-making maybe Thursday or Friday. I still have to move that Dead Bunny Braggot to the basement. I've been playing with ideas for another braggot made in a strong ale style using that Belgium Abby or in an American Barleywine Ale style. Both styles use the Abby yeast and since I don't know enough about them I figure I should follow the suggestion of yeast styles from Wyeast. I'm not seeing nearly as many braggot yeast recipes, which cements the idea that most people don't make them.

It's nearly been a week

So much has been happening. Last week was crappy and I really only had one day off. I've been feeling run down have been having trouble going to sleep. Which has put my body in the 'preparing for illness mode' and I hate that. I tended to my wines last week, adding KMS tablets to all my 1 gallons. Better safe than sorry. After I clean the kitchen up a bit and put in the AC, I'll rack all the wines into new jugs. The muscat is clearing up nicely. I was worried about what the heat was doing to it but i managed to keep the temp to 74 in the house for a good chunk of the time. Once the AC is going I'll be able to maintain more constant temperature.

This week I opened up a bottle of the Pinot Blanc. Not bad. I moved it into the office (much cooler than the kitchen/dining area. I was a little concerned with the cranberry-raspberry because they stayed upright a day longer than I had wanted and I didn't have an empty bottle box so they are scattered under the cupboards in the kitchen until I can get labels made. Might to that tonight at work.

Today I opened up a bottle of the first braggot I made. I know it's not really ready but I just couldn't wait the required two weeks for a first taste...I should have waited.

I was hopeful that the sweetness would mellow out the harshness of a highly alcoholic drink (this baby clocks in between 11-12% ABV) but that hope was short lived. Granted it does taste pretty good for being really, really young but after half a glass and the slightly woozy feeling that accompanied it, I know that it won't be ready for the fair. It'll definitely take at least a year to age out.

I will not be making anything with that much alcohol my next batch. I think something with an alcohol range between 6-8 would be good. I think anything higher I will have to make sure I have the room to store it for a year. This case will make it's way to the basement after I get home from work. I'll leave them inthe plastic containers until I'm sure there's no chance of exploding bottles.

My hopes for a showing at the fair have been dashed but that's ok because even from this early taste I can tell that in a year this will turn out wonderful.

No Mango but I did get the cranberry raspberry bottled

I ended up doing many things I hadn't planned on today. The first was getting up to go to the backyard and pick mulberries. Of course, there were no ripe ones. Those damn squirrels eat them and knock others to the ground. I hate squirrels.

The second was I ended up bottling the cranberry-raspberry because after i racked the muscat into the secondary 3 gallon I couldn't find a bung to fit. I had a universal bung but that didn't work. It kept popping out. So I had to scrounge up bottles, and then open up my new box of bordeaux bottles (I was saving those for something special, or at least a kit wine and not a fruit one). I had to get those washed and sanitized. In the end, I had about 14 bottles. the leftover I tried and it was much better than I expected it to be. The wine conditioner really helped. It's not drinkable right now but in about 6 months I'll try a bottle. I really need to get an accurate inventory, decent shelving for my work area, and bottle rack. Everything is so cluttered in the kitchen. If I just got off my butt and cleared out the dark cubby in my office I could store everything in there. It's cooler and out of the way.

I decided against starting the mango melomel until I bought a faucet adapter and picked up a few more pounds of mangoes from the market tomorrow. I'm going to try and go when my friend Katie goes so I can buy more and get a ride home. She's also interested in going berry picking but not for raspberries but since I want to try a chocolate blueberry port we might go do that later in the summer.

So far everything I have are all in secondary or bottled. Nothing on the horizon except a mead for Danielle and Jason's Wedding, another Braggot, and a beer kit. I'm still trying to decide what that will be.

And the bonehead Award of the year...

OK so even though I was pretty sure I was on top of my game, my current bottling experience has pretty much guaranteed that I will never miss a step like this one again.

I bottled the braggot. I got 18 bottles out of it. I added priming sugar...guess what i forgot to do with said priming sugar..oh yeah, boil it. That one HUGE important step...Dissolving said sugar in water...so I can pretty much kiss the chances of carbonation good-bye. Oh might get a little because it was still fermenting and had a 14 brix last time I checked but not beer worthy. I could have sworn my mind was in the game this morning. Did you know that priming sugar is non-fermentable when not dissolved in water first. Yeah, go figure.

I woke up. I ate breakfast. I even got a little work done. I did all this before I went into the kitchen and decided to bottle and stabilize my passion wine. Then I thought while I'm at it I should just stop doinking around and just do the braggot. I think I'm going to call it Dead Hoppy Foo Foo Braggot.

Mango Melomel

I am not a big fan of mangoes.

I am a little obsessed about making wine.

I have a problem with buying over 5lbs of fruit from a store.

I do not drive.

These and a few others are reasons why making wine from fruit poses a bit of a problem for me. I know that it's cheaper to pick your own fruit, but by me not being able to drive, I'm kind of at the mercy of friends who may or may not want to get up at 8am and drive to a farm in rural minnesota to spend a few hours picking fruit that will see no immediate gratification.

That said I found a deal on what looks to be about 4 pounds of mangoes, which are now currently sitting on my counter waiting for me to chop em up and put them in a nylon bad and soak them in hot honey water. Ok, well maybe they aren't dreaming about that. I'm sure the idea of some woman approaching them with a large knife and slicing them into small bits, isn't the goal of every mango.

Why mangoes, if I don't particularly like them? Because they were a good deal and fruit is fruit and by the time the process of making them taste like sweet alcoholic goodness rolls around, they really don't taste like mangoes at all. I can live with that.

The other thing is that I have a hard time having empty primaries sitting around. Though my 6.5 gallon one is currently the home of my muscat, I have 3 one gallon primaries that are begging to be filled with something other than sanitizing solution.

Mango Mango Mango Melomel
4lbs of ripe mangoes
3lbs of honey
1tsp pectic enzyme
1.5 tsp acid blend
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1tsp yeast energizer
1/2 tsp tannin
Montrachet or CHampagne yeast
1 tsp pectic enzyme

I feel like once everything has cleared

I can go ahead and start bottling that one grape wine and maybe think about stabilizing the passion tea wine and back sweetening it. I did add a little tannin. I'm torn between wanting to bulk age some of the wine and free up a jug or two for that 4 gallon of Muscat that's going. I've yet to have a finished bottle of wine (non kit wine) because everything is still in carboys or jugs waiting to hit their stages. The good thing about this is that I'll have plenty of wine come the fall and winter but really nothing but kit wines for this summer.

Considering, I don't know where I will be next year, it isn't a good idea to have a lot of wine just sitting around because then I'll have to move it when I move it.

No Port in a Storm

Well I won't be making that elderberry into a port style wine. It didn't have enough umph from the get go to do well. I should have started out with a high brix of about 32 and I wasn't close to that. Then arrested the fermentation with the addition of brandy before it went to dry, to keep some residual sweetness. I know this now so I will try again as soon as I have a free carboy and jug.

Guess that will have to be a Christmas gift for the special folks in my life and not a birthday gift for Brian. I broke down and bought a that brew kit from Brewster Brown that guy who makes and sells immersion wortchillers. All of his stuff is really affordable, so I'll probably be buying from him more. I mean the wort chiller doesn't look nearly as professional and lightly coiled as the ones I see on Midwest or other sites but it's a hell of a lot less expensive and I'm more for the affordable right now. I'm doing this for fun and out of my own apartment, so it's not like I can invest lots of money and time into this.

What sucks most about this particular hobby of mine is that I feel like I'm the only black woman out there who makes wine and that can feel isolating. Of course I should be used to the feeling of isolation, I am one of a handful of black women in my Ph.D. program. Luckily, as a whole there are more women of color in my program. I went ahead and joined the MN HOmebrewers guild and will probably have to gear myself up to go to the meetings where I will most likely be the only person of color there. Yeah. I wish any of my other wines that weren't kits were ready to drink, so I could at least feel good about that accomplishment.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the braggot being bottle ready soon.

Eruption!

So I was reading how bentonite can be used to clear mead on the Joy of Mead website. So I took out the sack mead I was working on and added 1/4 tsp of bentonite and stirred. All of a sudden it just erupted into a fizzing mess,barely contained by the kitchen sink. I barely had enough time to pick it up by the neck and move it. I only lost about an inch worth of space, but it did tell me one thing: Something is alive and still kicking in this mead. Hopefully, there's enough life that won't be stunted by the addition, and I can go ahead and prime/bottle ferment this next week. Who knows I might get more life out of this one than I expect to get out of the braggot. I'm going to have to try the ol flashlight through the jug to test how clear it is because it's hard to tell because it's so dark.

The muscat (pictured above) is fermenting nicely. I stirred it just a bit today and probably won't stir it again until I think it's almost done fermenting. A good week should be enough if the weather holds like it is.

I went to the farmers market this morning and picked up a box of large mangoes for like 6 bucks, there were like 8 in the box. I don't know if that's a good deal or not, but I think because mangoes are kind of expensive, it must be a good deal. Anyway, I have to swing by the store tomorrow morning and get some freezer bags and the mangoes aren't completely ripe, so I popped them in the fridge. I'll cut them up and add them to the bags and toss them in the freezer and next week when I go back t the market I'll pick up some more. I also found a place that had 12# of basswood honey for 35.00. I was all set to buy it but I was a little suspicious. I had just been to the vendor from Ames Farms, and they said they didn't have basswood yet and what they did have was from last year, and that 12# was going to be pretty expensive. Plus when I looked at the honey, it looked just like the picture from the Honey.com website. The honey from this other place had a kind of reddish hue not a milky white. I wasn't going to spend 35.00 on something I wasn't absolutely sure was basswood.

Today is suppose to be 85 and I think it might have already reached by the time I'd left work at 7am. Well at least when I wake up again tonight to go to work it'll a lot cooler. I debated on taking my pappa-san chair onto the porch, grabbing a trashy novel or one of my wine books, cracking open a beer, New Glarus' 'Organic Revolution' and just kicking back until 4pm when it's time to go to sleep. Instead, I'm in my office with the lights off, because it's damn cooler that way, looking up books for school, updating my wine notes and blog. Sounds like a productive afternoon for an aspiring academic.

Today as an act of procrastination (and the fact that I have two computer screens) I wasted a bit of my morning going from the one screen that had my dissertation on it to the other screen which had open windows forFacebook, MyYahoo, and my wine forum. Thank goodness I'm good at multitaksing or this would not be a workable setup. Anyway....back to procrastination. I decided that I wasn't going to get anything done after reaching a wall. I have a three page goal for the day. They don't have to be quality but they do have to be 3 full pages of something written. I hopped off my pilates ball and trudged to the kitchen where I grabbed my 6.5 fermenter and started a cleaner and some sanitizer.

I grabbed the cans of Alexanders concentrates and thgouth maybe I'll try that fortified wine idea.

I did not know that a Muscat was not a red grape variety. It is a white. I played with the idea of trying to make a fortified white wine and promptly threw that idea out of the window...cause I just don't have the courage to screw up semi-expensive concentrates. At 3 gallons I had a brix of
25 but added more water to get it to 4 gallons and sugar to get a brix of about 21. So I"m looking at a wine with a potential alcohol of about 12%. Most of the wines I've made have all been around the 11-13% alcohol range.

Dissertation Libation
2-46oz cans Alexanders Muscat
4tsp bentonite
3tsp yeast nutrient
2tsp acid blend
Lalvin EC-1118
Water for 4 gallons
OG is 1.088/Brix 21

Pinot Blanc! Bottle!

today we bottled the Pinot Blanc. I really shouldn't be trying to update my blog after I've been drinking. We bottled about 26 bottles...28 bottles worth because I had like 2 pony's filled (1.5 liters) as well as 24 regular wine bottles and one weirdly shaped 375ml bottle. We ended up with about a glass worth of wine left in the bucket after we were all done.

My friend aimee put the labels on the bottles. As you can see on the right, I had to resort using the clear bottles.

Currently, I'm sitting in my living room a little intoxicated because I started mixing the merlot wth the strawberry soda and find that it's really good. I've made it through half a bottle of wine on my own. I'm thinking about moving onto the pizza and ice cream. Who thought that this post would devolve into an intoxicated rambling.

We went to Midwest today and I picked up a few airlocks, some wyeast to make another braggot but I need more malt because I think I'll make a larger batch. I'm fine tuning the recipe in my head but I don't want to put it into play until after I bottle the cranberry-raspberry so I can have an extra carboy available to rack and bulk age. It looks like time is the only thing that helps meads and I'm afraid to start these amazing meads because I'm not sure what or where I will be in a year.

I have 12 pounds of clover honey waiting to be made into a nice sweet mead. I want to use a basswood honey for this braggot and a lighter malt but I think I'll wait until I get a big brew kettle and wortchiller.

Feeling a little antsy

Wednesday I'm suppose to do some major bottling with my friend Aimee of the Pinot Blanc. I also need to get some supplies from Midwest, that are just too heavy to try to lug on a bus from NOrthern Brewer and which I don't want to pay shipping. So many things have reached the point where I can do a lot of stuff with them all in one day if I had another pair of hands. Luckily, my other friend Brian said he could spare a few hours to come over and bottle some of the smaller stuff.

The sack mead is finally fermented to dry but it hasn't cleared andI think I'm going to rack it again in hopes that will help with the clearing before I add any fining agents. I gave it a taste and it's not too sweet but it tastes highly alcoholic, which it is. So that bad boy will probably have to sit for a year, but I should be able to bottle it sooner than that.

The elderberry fermented to dry as well and I'm going to double check through some of my books and online whether or not it needs to age a couple months before I try to port it with brandy. I've been studying the Pearson's Square to make sure I understood it before I tried to test it out. I'll have to sorbate and metabisulphite it and backsweeten before adding the brandy.
I'm thinking of giving a bottle to a friend for his birthday since he holds homemade wine in such high regard. One other bottle was already claimed by friend Ilene before it had even finished in the primary. I'm keeping the last 2 for myself.

I might need to invest in small 375ml bottles for leftover wine that doesn't fill a full 750ml bottle and then I can give them away as gifts or take them some place and let folks try my wine but not feel like they have to drink a whole bottle.

Mental list: More wine books. Upgrade my kits to include stuff for wine (that'll be in my July budget since I can't afford it for June. Bottle Pinot Blanc, rack and let clear the sack mead and the elderberry. Make a batch of simple syrup. That sounds like enough for this week.

Steel CAge: 3 Yeasts Enter...1 is Victorious!

This is the racked elderberr/pyment/grape concoction I threw together from the leftover wines, all with different yeasts. As you can see I have some serious fermentation going on here.

Once this settles down I will rack it again into something else and maybe add some oak chips to it. I figure with the way it's going I won't need to think about it for at least a week. I'm planning on a marathon bottling session with some friends next week as well. I want to get that cran-raspberry bottled and cellared for the summer before the weather starts to get too warm for extended periods of time.

I have a growing book list...I'm sure that I with the writing of my dissertation and the reading of new material I won't have time to read for pleasure about wine. That really does suck because I've had no luck with any responses about starting a home winemakers group here in the Twin Cities and I've posted on both Northern Brewer's site and the Midwest site.

I wish I had time to start going to the MN HOme brewer's meetings this summer but with all the work I have to get done I just can't justify the outside time. So it's kit wines for the summer and hopefully some cider when the apples are ripe and ready.

OH.

So a couple of days ago I racked the Elderberry, the 2nd run pyment, and the grape part deux into gallon jugs and some aging. After doing this for all three I ended up with alot of extra wine and not enough airlocks to put the remaining into bottles for topping up later. So in a moment of madness I just dumped all the wines into a bucket...the pyment and the elderberry went in with the grape part deux. I popped a bit of sanitized towel into the hole and decided to see what happened.

I checked on the wine this morning and saw a layer of yeast on top. It was a yeast steel cage match and I'm not sure which one won. All of the wines had a different yeast: EC-1118, Montrachet, and Red Pastuer.

I'm planning on racking it into a carboy and taking the airlock on the braggot and capping the braggot with a solid cap until I move it or bottle it.

Elderberry is done fermenting

DANG! That's FAST!

I posted the picture of the elderberry on Thursday and I had just pitched the yeast. I checked it last night (Sunday) and it had fermented to dry. I am a little surprised by how quickly that happened. I'm heading home after work to add more honey to the must and up the gravity. I figure I could get the alcohol up to 16-18% percent with gradual feeding.

The 2nd run pyment is fermenting nicely and I'll be adding more honey to that one for sure. The recipe I had called for 2.5 pounds of honey and I only put in 2 pounds. At first I was a little uneasy about whether or not the color would be the sickly greenish it looked when I put it together, but it's not. Now it's a slightly lighter rose color than the grape wine part deux that's fermenting next to it.

Pinot Blanc has slowed down I hope to rack it into a new carboy by Thursday.

Cranberry-Raspberry will get degassed and stabilized today and finally racked into bottles next week. I"m going to add glycerine to this one because it has a very weak body.

Elderberry Must

Here is the elderberry with the montrachet yeast. OG is around 1.080. I think I might be happy with just letting this go because i've never made elderberry wine before and I don't want to try and do something new until I've had a chance to see what a unadulterated recipe looks like.

Elderberry Wine or Port?

I couldn't resist. I came home and immediately rushed into the kitchen and started pulling out stuff in order to start up a batch of elderberry wine. I cracked open the dried berries I had bought and prepped them for yeast innoculation tomorrow.

I'm happy with a medium or light bodied wine since I didn't use the full 8oz of dried berries. It makes a serious purple color. I might decided to port it later but I have time. It' s only a gallon.

Recipe:

60z of dried elderberries
2oz golden raisins
2lbs of sugar
1 gallon of water
1tsp acid blend
1tsp pectic enzyme
1 campden tablet (KMeta)

i'll probably need to add more but since I'm going to gradually feed the wine to up the alcohol, I'm not worried about having so few raisins. Actually I don't like raisins.

Well I have one empty Secondary

I added the yeast last night to the grape must. I checked it out this morning because I couldn't see any noticable airlock activity. Opening the lid I saw a layer of foam on the top, so the yeast is going at it. The last time I made this, it had to sit for close to 3 weeks in the primary. Well I have to push down the ferment bag at some point.

The problem is that I wanted to start the elderberry wine from the dried elderberries I bought yesterday, but I don't have a free gallon fermenter until I bottle the passion or the first batch of grape wine, neither have cleared yet. Both are still as yet unnamed.

New Recipe

I picked up a few items from northern brewer this afternoon and got some information about homewine making clubs in the area.

8oz of dried elderberries
Unhopped malt 60 wheat/40 barley
Yeasts
airlocks

I have an idea for a different batch of braggot. This one with more honey and using a wine yeast instead of an ale yeast. No hops this time. I'm shooting for a lighter mead than the braggot.

I definitely want to start a batch of elderberry wine.

I started another grape wine with the last remaining four pounds of grapes I had in the freezer. This time I got wise and decided to put the grapes into the nylon bag instead of leaving them to float free. The last time I made this wine and tried to rack from the loose the grapes floating i had to stop so many times to try and clear the seeds and pulp that was clogging the tube.

This picture is of the must. It's too hot to add the pectic enzyme and the campden tablet so I put it into the fridge to cool it down. then tomorrow I pitch the yeast. I need to make a run to northern brewer and pick up a few more airlocks and maybe a different yeast. I have EC-1118 and Pastuer champagne and the EC would work but I may see about grabbing a montrachet.

recipe:

4lbs red and black grapes
2lbs of sugar
1 gallon of water
1tsp acid blend
1tsp tannin
1tsp yeast nutrient
1tsp pectic enzyme
1 campden tablet
Pasteur red yeast

Brix reading of 21, roughly 11.75% PA.

I racked one of the braggots off of its lees in hopes of stimulating ferment by getting just a smidge of air in. It looks like it's working. Airlock is bubbling. This was a really successful rack, only the lees were left, about an inch.

I"m drawing a (Pinot) Blanc

Vitner's Reserve's Pinot Blanc is on deck and bubbling away. This was the first time I've made a white wine and I was taken back by having to add bentonite in the very beginning. I asked the wine experts on my online forum and it turns out by adding it in the beginning the wine will clear faster and will be drinkable sooner. Which I guess is a good thing and one of the reasons why people buy kits. I did this kit with my friend Aimee so she could get the feel of making wine without having to cough up a few hundred dollars in start up. Besides she's willing to let me store bottles in her cellar, with its constant temperature and easy access.

The OG was 1.070 with the corresponding brix reading of 16, giving me a PA of about 9%. I'm torn between adding about 2lbs of sugar or just letting it be. I suppose if I'm going to make that addition I should do it now while it's fermenting really well.

We're due to rack it to the secondary on Monday but if the reading haven't gone down I'm not sure if that wise.

Successful Bottling

I finally bottled the Joe's Ancient Orange mead today. I was only able to get 4 bottles, due to sediment and floating oranges. It's really sweet though. The FG was 1.030. I think I might do this again without the whole orange and just use fresh squeezed OJ.

This one is a quick drinker and with age it'll taste better but I don't plan on letting it sit too long. I want to do another one maybe not with the bread yeast though.

Love this hobby.

Taste Update

Ok so after racking the Passionfruit to a gallon jug and setting it aside in a cabinet with the grape, I took a few pipet samples of the braggot and passionfruit to taste and measure the SG.

I'm totally impressed with the flavors I can already taste in the braggot. It's very hoppy at first but settles to a nice carmel sweet and the end note is slightly bitter, like the hop flavor is trying to make its way back. The end result will probably be sweet, which would be best, I think. I decided to bulk age this ( I can spare a few jugs) because I didn't want to chance uneven aging by bottling too soon. So hopefully by the end of summer I will bottle. The passionfruit on the other hand will end up being sweet are fermentation. Both batches are slowing down so I suspect that after a couple months I should check it again.

i wish i had taken pics of the passionfruit must after I had racked. SG dropped but didn't ferment to dry. I'm not even sure it will.

Home

Well I'm back in the Twin Cities after going home for a week.

Lots of updates on the wine front:

To the right is the grape wine I racked into a gallon jug and it's sitting in a nice dark cabinet in my kitchen. I still have about 4 pounds of grapes and a 1/2 pound of ripe bananas in my freezer. I suppose I should get started with those but I don't have any empty secondaries at the moment, or dry yeast at the moment.

Passionfruit- cleared and looks beautiful. I will be racking that into a gallon jug later today. It looks a lot like this grape wine but rosier in color and not as deep.

Braggot- That's the beauty pictured on the side, still looks fantastic. I haven't the courage to taste it though. I'll probably do that today as well after I take care of the other wines. It'll eventually need to be racked again but I want to wait until I've practiced the art of creating a siphon, without the auto-siphon.

Cran-raspberry- that 3 gallons has been sitting for over a month and I should check it to see how it's doing.

It's an addiction

New recipe using the passionfruit tea I had in the cupboard.

4 bags of TAZO Passionfruit teabags, tied up but with the metal removed.
2lbs clover honey
2 cups sugar
Montrachet yeast
2 tsps yeast nutrient
1/2 tsp acid blend
1 campden tablet
OG 1.100

So now I have 3 primaries going in the living room, of course they're staggered so that it I'm not going to be racking them all on the same day. I think I'm going to be racking the braggot to gallon jugs either later this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon when I get home from work.

The readings I've gotten from the refractometer and the hyrometer have been consistent so far.

I just checked on my package. It is now on a truck and out for delivery and hopefully I will be seeing that snazzily dressed fedex person putting a box on my door step. I am also hoping that my package of longer pipets will be arriving to day as well, so I can check SG of my meads in the jugs.

I hadn't checked the SG of the grape must yet because I added pectic enzyme yesterday because I forgot to do that when I put the grapes in because I just wasn't thinking that grapes needed it. I knew that other fruits especially apples really need the enzyme to break down the pectin; I assumed I need to add it to the other fruit wines but didn't occure to me that grapes needed it.

Oh a funnier but kind disappointing note. Remember I added the hops to the fermenter and I posted my recipe on my forum. Turns out I should have boiled the hops with the honey or at least boiled them separately and added the water and the hops to the fermenter. So besides smelling great a few folks figured that the hops wouldn't apart too much flavor at all. So next batch I will boil the hops before hand and add that water to the fermenter.

The must is fermenting much faster than I expected. It must be because of the malt and ale yeast because I think honey is slow to ferment down.

update on the braggot

I held off from pushing down the must yesterday and waited until this morning to check the SG and check on the fermentation. It has a really strong hoppy aroma and though I really wanted a sweet hoppy mead I am not sure if the smell is an indicator of the level of flavor. Only time and experience will tell me what I need to know. I still can't tell a whole lot from jsut tasting as I go. partially because it usually just tastes awful but I know I have to keep tasting in order to identify the kinds of flavors at the various stages. I'm debating about racking it into gallon jugs to finish fermenting to get it off the hops.

The SG of the must as of today is around 1.050 and I'm hoping it'll drop to under 1.000, fermenting to dy, which would mean the yeast went above it's alcohol tolerance of 10% .

I woke to the pleasant surprise of a bubbling airlock on the grape must. It still have a few more days in the primary maybe more and I was going to check the SG reading. I was dreaming of wine last night. I think I was more worried about it than I needed to be and this hobby is an exercise in patience.

I'm still waiting on my shipment of new jugs and I want to get this pinot grigio in the fermenter before I leave town so I can rack it when I get back.

On a front not directly related to the wines I have going, one of the forums I'm on the administrator posted a picture of himself so we could put a name and a face. This prompted a bunch of the regulars to post their pictures. No one looks like what I expected, though I had assumed they were all white and older. I think I was the biggest surprise. One of the guys said he pictured me as this long haired girl with a cowboy hat and on a horse. I thought it was funny.

Ancient Orange Mead

It's been a month and I looked at the mead and it was suddenly very clear, with this golden honey hue. it's not as golden in this picture as it is in real life. The comparison between that first picture(the one in the bucket list and this one) is like night and day. I was thinking I was going to use EC-1118 yeast and try to referment the yeast to get it a bit drier, but instead I think I will just make a new batch with this same recipe with the only change being the yeast. This still has another month to sit before I should rack it.

The Sack mead is still lemony and I added 1 tsp of energizer in order to jump start the yeast and continue fermenting. I know that honey is slow to ferment out and I've read that it could be at least 6 months for fermentation to stop and then you have a year before it's drinkable.

Grape update!

Notice how purple my must looks! It's fizzing but not bubbling so I know it's fermenting just not in the same crazy way the braggot is going. I pushed down the cap of must, I'll take a SG reading at the end of the week and hopefully I will be racking this bad boy into gallon carboys.

I am not a killer...

Of yeasty beasties.

I woke up this morning to the sweet sounds of a bubbling airlock, the sign of fermentation coming from the braggot.

So looking at the recipe I realize that the only difference between this as a beer and it as a honey wine with beer accents is the honey and the fact that I don't use grains and it won't be carbonated. I could have done it without the hops and I think the next one will be less malt, honey heavier with hops but with a mead yeast.

There are recipes which use ale yeast and some with mead or wine yeasts. I think it's too early. This recipe is one I found on Gotmead.com and I had to modify it from 5 gal to my 1 gal and even then I ended up with a 2 gal recipe because I don't like really sweet meads and the PA was off the charts.

The Grapes

Just as I finished punching down my must and snapped on the lid I thought "I should have taken a picture." Well, the good news is that this one looks pretty good for being my first attempt at making wine from grapes, and not even good grapes. There's way more color than when I first put them in and there's bubbling and a nice smell. I figure a good 7-10 days in primary and then I'll check the SG and rack it.

Chela my official wine kitty has taken to laying in front of the fermenters like they are going to do something interesting but she doesn't bother them. I've blocked the cabinets in the kitchen that have bottles of wine in them, since she thinks hanging in cupboards is cool.

The latest bottled batch, teh IRC was a bit of a bust, it tastes really alcoholic and thin and turns out I run the risk of oxidation if I try to open them, add glycerine and rebottle. So these might just be sangria wine or wine spritzers for the summer. The advice I got on my wine forum was that fruit wines from purees are tempermental and that I need to use more than what they suggest because they often aren't sweet enough and the acid levels are high. I'm going to start reading up on acid levels to go along with trying to figure out how to read the dang ph test strips I have and how to adjust based on those readings.

I kind of wish I had paid more attention to highschool chemistry. Well there's an idea, maybe if students were making some thing interesting that they could apply their knowledge to, maybe they would pay more attention. Useful knowledge and all.

I'm a murderer

I think I killed the yeast I pitched into the must. In my impatience I might have not waited until the must was cool enough to put the yeast in and it hit me like 3 hours later. I have to wait a couple days to make sure it hasn't taken hold and then buy more yeast. The must should be fine for a few days, especially if I throw in a couple campden tablets if nothing starts by Sunday.

BRAGGOT!

Well I prepared the yeast yesterday so I didn't really have a choice but to push forward and start the braggot. I put it all together in a 2 gal fermenter and the Brix measurement was sky high, upwards of 36 (20.7), which would have been too much for the yeast to handle and would make the drink much too alcoholic. I added water to it before I moved it to a much larger fermenter it was at 30 (17.25) and ended up with a brix of 24 (13.8 PA).

It looks a little weird but that's all the hops floating on top.

Braggot

3lbs Wheat Malt
3lbs Clover Honey
1oz Cascade hops
Wyeast London Ale
2 tsp yeast nutrient

No acid blend because of the hops. I boiled the honey and the malt so I didn't add campden tablets because I had skimmed as much of the impurities as I could. It smells really hoppy, which is good because I like hoppy beer.

My first grape wine

Taking a break from work and doing a quick post about the grape wine I'm starting. It doesn't look like something that has started wars or made grown men and women do things they only write about in letters that generations later their children's children marvel at.

So far the problems I've encountered are not insurmountable. The grapes weren't as sweet as I thought. I ended up putting 6 cups of sugar in the must, the ph was about 3.2 and I'm not sure what that level acid needs to be at, so I didn't put much acid blend in. The brix scale read at 27 after all the sugar which turned out to be 15.5% potential alcohol.

Recipe:

4lbs black and red grapes
6 cups of sugar
Montrachet yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 cup white grape juice
2 campden tablets
1/2 tsp acid blend

REFRACTOMETER!!!!!!

My new refractometer just arrived today! Perfect timing since I started those grapes and supposedly they should have enough sugar that I wouldn't need to add 3 pounds to reach a significant alcohol content. I think I'm going to shoot for 14-15%. I calibrated it and tested it out with the juice of the grapes and then with the sugar water added. Tomorrow when I add the yeast and acids and tannin I'll bump up the sugar, right now it looks to be at about 10.5% PA.

On the mead front the Ancient Orange suddenly took an interesting turn and cleared up a lot. I I can see about an inch of lees on the bottom. It'll be about a month on the 13th of April and it needs to sit for another month after that before I can think about racking to a secondary fermenter or even bottling. I was thinking that bulk aging would be a good thing to try with a 1 gallon batch, but I'm not sure I want it to be the Ancient Orange that ages in a jug and not a bottle.

Dissolution, that's the sack mead, is looking clearer but not crystal and that one needs at least 2 more months in the cabinet.

I finally racked the blueberry spice into bottles last night and tasted it. It was watery and had a strong alcohol taste but that was all. I'll admit I was really disappointed in this first batch of my own wine, not made from a kit. Partly, I think problems arose because I wasn't sure what I could or should add to fill the carboy with and often water is on hand but not the best choice. I also think I am too conservative when it comes to ingredients and rather than adding over the amount of puree or juice I top of with water.

Lessons learned.

Racked into new carboy

Today was a relatively productive day. I finished grading the bibliographies and managed to get all my clothes washed. I just have towels and sheets left.

I took a look at the cranberry-raspberry at it was looking a little odd. It was really cloudy and there were white streaks falling through it. I quickly racked it to another carboy and I'm hoping that when it settles again, I'll rack and then let it sit for another month or so.

I started the grapes I'd frozen a week ago. It took forever. I had to pluck them from the stems, put them in a mesh bag and they sat for a few hours thawing, but I hardly got any liquid from it. I took the grapes out of the bag and just crushed them in the bucket, poured a little hot water over them, added some sugar water and campden tablets, set it aside until tomorrow.

GADGETS!!!!

Ok I just ordered a refractometer on Ebay. I am a little concerned about buying something so technically specific (kinda) on Ebay but it was like 20.00 less than if I bought one at Midwest or anywhere else. I figure if I could get a good 20 batches out of this then it would be worth what I paid.

I recently bought close to 9lbs of grapes and I really want to make a grape wine, and I woke up this morning thinking today I'll start that wine, but now I'm thinking I should wait until the refractometer gets here and do it up right.

Is it Monday already?

The last few days have been a blur. Between work, school, and going out with friends, if I'm not careful my body is going to rebel against me. I awoke with a hangover. Not a bad one, but the really irritating one, it's small enough to make everything I do uncomfortable but not bad enough that I can just stay curled up in bed.

Well I headed out and to get some work done around 9am. I came home around 1030am. I was not going to be productive today. I did manage to rack the cranberry-raspberry wine that had been fermenting wildly for over a week into a 3 gallon carboy. I thought I had enough for 4 gallons, but I didn't. This is the cran-rasp still going strong in the carboy. It hasn't fermented to dry yet and I debated whether or not to move it but I left plenty of room and I made sure to splash a lot when I racked. It's this funky pinkish color and it had formed a few floating caps and serious sediment on the bottom. It had reached a SG of 1.010 and I figure in a few weeks I'll rack again and hope it clears a little better, but I'm not shooting for early drinking I'm making some of these fruit wines for summer drinking.

A better Tuesday

Well I locked the cat out earlier so I got two good hours of sleep instead of just one when the early AM crazies struck my cat. Right now I'm sitting a coffeeshop with friends working on a cover letter and reading posts from one of the wine forums that I'm on. Right now the big thing is trying to figure out the science of acids in wine-making. I wish I was more scientifically-inclined and that I had a little more space where I could do some experimentation. My science goes as far as keeping fairly good track of the SG and the dates of when I make changes to my wine, like moving from carboy to carboy or adding spices. I created a spreadsheet for that which should make keeping my life in order a ot easier.

My new fermenters and carboys should be coming to the house within the next couple of days, and I'll then rack the IRC Blueberry to a new carboy to wait out the final bit of fermentation then degas and stablize it. Hope to have it bottled by the middle of April. I wasn't sure if I should degas then stablize it all in one sitting or not.

Iron Range Cutie Blueberry Spice (1 gal)
3lbs Blueberry Puree
2lbs of sugar
1tsp acid blend
1tsp yeast nutrient
1/4 tsp tannin
Montrachet yeast
SG was 1.120

Ended up moving this to a larger primary fermenter and added more water to make 3 gal, another 1 1/2lbs of sugar, more acid blend.

That one has been sitting for about 4 weeks now.

Jealous of a good night's sleep

A good night's rest was what I was hoping for last night. I think it was too much to ask because from about 3am until 7am when I finally shut my bedroom door, my cat kept coming into the bedroom and finding new ways to make me hate her. I spent four hours just dozing because she'd come in, climb on the windowsill and try to squeeze herself through the minibinds, which are already coming apart due to her last few attempts. I'd wake up and shoo her off. She'd come to the bed, lie down and I'd fall asleep, only to wake to her meowing or jumping on the dresser. The first time I got up I went into the living room and opened a blind, thinking that woud make her happy...No. The second time I got up and gave her food and water and pet her, thinking this would help...No. This last time I threw a sock at her...No. Finally, I closed the door and the next time she tried pushing on it and meowing I threw a shoe at the door and scared her into going away.

I got maybe an hour of uninterrupted sleep.

Hello Monday. I hate you.

I visited Hawaii

Well not literally, one of the meads I'm making I named it Hawaii. It's been sitting for about 3 weeks and slowly fermenting away I decided to just move it to a gallon jug today and check the SG. It's dropped to about 1.060 from 1.068 so it's slowly making it's way through fermentation. I know it's going to be at least a couple of months before it's done. I'm worried that the yeast will stall. It's this pretty lemony color, and clearer and than when it first went in.

This is suppose to be a Sack Mead from Wild Wines and Meads. I used MN Clover Honey and it's meant to be sweet, though I'm partial to dry wines and meads. I doubt I'll get it to under 1.000 even with the Champagne yeast, which can tolerate higher alcohol levels. I'm still working out the how the acids effect the overall flavors.

I probably didn't need to rack this one into a jug but I felt better after doing it. There is something soothing about tending to my various projects in all their stages.

Another Batch Started

I wish I had taken a picture of the cranberry-raspberry I started while I was adding the yeast and getting an SG.

Recipe: Cranberry-Raspberry

2 liters cranberry-raspberry concentrate
3 pounds of raspberry puree
3tsp acid blend (went for less because cranberries and raspberries have alot of acid I read)
4tsp pectic enzyme
4 pounds of sugar
3 pounds of wildflower honey
4 tsp yeast nutrient
4 campden tablets
Pasteur Red

Enough water to make 4 gallons. SG is 1.094

I made sure to add the enzyme because the last time I didn't with a fruit puree I had a cloudiness that I'm still waiting to clear.

First Official

I guess this is as good a way as any to begin my first official post about making wine. I've been making beer for a few months with other people but not on my own. I hope to change that. I thought about keeping a diary of my process and see where it takes me. I finally got around to doing that and so here is my first official post.

I have a longstanding love affair with beers, being from the Pacific Northwest, where even the most modest dive bars will have amazing microbrews on tap. Where in my sleep I imagine rolling hills of hops, rivers flowing with dark wildflower honey, fruits are bursting on vine, branch and brambles, and bees are lazily pollinating. Unfortunately, where I live now is less than the dreams I have, and has left me starved for good beer.

In 2002 right before I left PNW I started hanging out with a friend whose husband homebrews. I mean whole grain brewing, outside in a huge vat. My contribution was to taste beer while he worked, keep up lively conversation, and pass items. I enjoyed that kind of learning and probably would have worked my way into being more of an active participant if I hadn't moved to the Midwest. After about 4 years in MN I met up with a fellow student's roommate, and together we did our first batch of homebrew. I was hooked. The late summer of 2008, a friend had a beer setup and we did up batch. I was rehooked. I talked about how I had wanted to do beer but it didn't make sense to buy equipment when I could just borrow his, but I wanted something that I could do in my own home, so made the decision to buy wine equipment instead and that we would just split up labor and exchange bottles and fruit picking.

Money, equipment, and space have kept brewing just out of my reach but when I decided to get the winemaking equipment I knew that brewing was just around the corner.

My first wine was a Vitner's Reserve Merlot because I love Merlot. I broke down and bought all the gadgets that would make my life a little simpler: the stirrer, the thief, the italian floor corker (oh baby was that a pleasure to use when bottling came), etc...I think I knew it was going to be something I enjoy, not just for the end result but for the peace it seems to bring me, when I realized that after a month into my wine making I was out buying more equipment. I had joined three online forums, I was picking up used books about wine, and generally annoying my friends with picture texts of my latest.

I'm 2 months into this and I can't wait to go out and pick fruit this summer.