Ooo... Tomato Wine and Absinthe...

OK, long damn time since posts have been made.

Today I put together a tomato wine! (huh?)
 ~ 6lbs of tomatos chopped up
 ~ 4lbs of honey
 - 1 lb of sugar
 - 5 tsp acid blend
 - 3/8 tsp tannin
 - 2 yeast nutrient tabs (DiAmmonium Phosphate)
 - 2 tsp GhosteX yeast growth enhancer (yeast hulls)
- 1.5 tsp pectin enzyme
I put the tomatos in the Mr. Beer thingy with the tomato chunks in a straining bag. Gordon helped me boil some water with the honey and sugar in it. I poured it over the tomatoes and almost scalded my feet off by spilling a bunch of it all over the place, thereby lowering the sugar content somewhat. I mixed up the acid, tannin, and yeasty helpers in a big glass of water and then poured it in. I topped it up with water to fill the container up way past the 10 quart mark, probably about 11 quarts total. Once it was cool (not very long) I added 1.5 tsp of pectin enzyme. In a week or two I'll rack it into a 3 gal glass carboy.

On a side note, I started a small thingy of fake absinthe. I got a kit from the brew store of wormwood and other spices. I got a bottle of Burnett's Vodka and put the wormwood in it to steep for a few days. I need to strain it out tomorrow, and then add the other spice stuff.

I don't think it's gonna turn out very good though. I did some reading about absinthe after it started it, and found that I should have gotten stronger stuff, like everclear.

What I've read tells me that absinthe should be made by soaking wormwood and other spices in a very high alchohol liquor, like everclear, and water. Then, after straining out the materials, it's supposed to be re-distilled. The idea is that the alchohol content needs to be high enough to keep the oils from the wormwood disolved and the liquid clear. When served, it's supposed to have very cold water poured over a sugar cube into it so that the oils start to precipitate out and cloud up the drink.

I don't intend to try to distill at all, but I'm gonna do this different next time.



happy birthday to you
you smell like a jew
chicken stock and the matza
mixed up in a stew

Raspberry Ale! (All by my sulf!)

I started this one on 03-29-09. I WAS SO HAPPPEEEEE!!!! I brewed it aww by my sulf!!!

Ahem...
I had some time two Sundays ago to myself and decided to use up some of the scraps of grains and such that we had. Plus, I had gone out and bought a packet of Wyeast Irish Ale (1084) at half price and needed to use it.

(Back story!) James, Pat, and I started and Irish Red on the Tuesday before and pitched the yeast too hot (apparently). It was still not active two days later, so we decided that we needed another packet of yeast. We didn't check it for a couple of days, and then on Saturday went HOLY SHITBALLS!! WE NEED YEAST. I went to STL Wine and Beer that afternoon and got there too late. I went over to Worms Way and they had just gotten their shipment of supplies in the fridge and they have 1/2 off slap packs of Wyeast that got activated in shipping. $3.50? ROCK! I also got a couple of Mutton's dry ale yeast. I got home and they Irish ale was working like mad.

Fuck. Wasted trip. Oh well, I'll make the most of it and come up with another beer. Pat had some hops in his fridge, so I got crackin'

Anyway, Recipe time!!

7lbs 2oz Ida Pils Cargil Malt
1lb 13 oz Torified Wheat
6 oz Carafoam
1oz of Willamette leaf hops at 5.1 Alpha
- half at start of boil, half for the last 10 minutes
3lbs 12oz frozen raspberrys

3 gallons of water heated to 180F for mash-in dropped to 165F and I started a 60 minute timer. After a half hour (during which I went and got the hops from Pat) it had dropped to 145F, so I warmed it back up to 163F.

I lauterted for over an hour and occaisionally added some 160+F water from the sparge bucket. Then I sparged with 158 - 164 F water for about an hour.

Boiled for 1 hour with half the hops at the start and half at 10 minutes left. It had a starting grav of 1.045.

I cooled it to about 85F and pitched the yeast packet. Two days later, it was still not active (damn 1/2 off yeast...) so I dumped in one of the dry Muton's ale yeast packs. The next day, screamin'. Two days later, after the krausen fell (04-02-09), it was raspberry time!

I slightly thawed them and ran them all through the blender with a little bit of hot water. I boiled another 3 quarts of water and added the raspberry slurry and heated it to about180F or so. They I let it cool for a couple of hours and just dumped it in the beer. Now we hope and pray.

YAY! cell phone update!

I'm writing this post on me blackberry!

James and I have been buisy. The Belgian Wit turned out to be much lighter than we had hoped for because we did a poor sparge. It came out nice light and crisp. After about three weeks we noticed the last 10 bottles or so had speckels all over the inside of the glass and a funny haze that hung on the bottom half inch of the bottles. We were worried that they had spoiled, but each one of them have been just as good as the first.

James's new stout turned out excelent.

We started an Irish red on 3-24 that we are going to rack to secondary this weekend.

I started a light raspberry ale last weekend. My next post will contain details on it.

The blueberry wine is still happily bubbling away, but the spearmint methaglyn is either stuck or done. I need to rack it this weekend too.

Liz and I also started a grapefruit wine. There's about three gallons of it brewing now in a secondary.

More on all of this soon.

JAMES SUCKS DONKEY BALLS

Because he hasn't posted anything about the awesomly failed attempt at a Belgian White citrusy wheat beer that still turned out damned good. Nor is there a post about his new stout that tried to boil it's krausen out of the primary fermenter bucket.