Merry Christmas!

Sweet! Scottie got for Liz and I a couple of books on wine and beer brewing!

Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide
The Joy of Wine Making

The date of this post is approximate.

I was about to call the pineapple a lost cause due to the apparent stuck fermentation, when it suddenly lit up like a christmas tree and started fermenting.

It had even started to settle out and clear, when suddenly (overnight), it clouded up and the balloon puffed up.

The apple/pineapple mix has died down to almost nothing.

Grape Jelly not so jelly

The grape wine turned out beautifully alchoholic. and not real sweet. That bread yeast has some high tolerance.

It was a HIT at the Crackbaby Thanksgiving. We drank a ton of it.

Paul called it a semi-sweet. My untrained palette has to agree. It's strong, but not real dry. But it's also not very sweet. Nicely in the middle. It adheres to the glass nicely. It's a mid-colored red wine, not dark and heavy, but not real light. It cleared nicely, although because it was bottled young, it did settle out a layer of sediment in the bottom of the bottles.

That's the only thing that I think I did wrong. I was a little impatient and should have let it settle out before bottling. Although, next time, I think I'll try to kill it just a little before being fermented completely dry so that it comes out a little semi-sweet like it did this time, and I'll let it settle and/or filter it when bottling.

Oh yeah, and screw putting sugar in the bottles to try to sparkle.

Rescuing the Pineapple Exp

OK, the other night I decided that I needed to rescue the pineapple wines because they were going nowhere. In what I've read, they should have had more sugar, much more initial aeration, and possibly a boost in acid.

SO! I took 4 cups water, 2 cups sugar, and 4 drops each of lemon and lime juice, and brought it to a boil. Then I let it sit covered to cool, with a handful of ice.

I also crushed two Campden tablets and dissolved in about 3/4 cup of water.

Racked all of apple / pineapple gallon into Mr. Beer fermenter. I splashed a lot to aerate. While transfering, I slowly added about half of my Campden solution and about 3 cups of the sugar / acid syrup. Then I racked a little less than half of the straight pineapple into it too.

Racked the rest of the pineapple into a clean 1 gallon jug, again splashing, and slowly adding 1/4 Campden solution and 1 1/2 cups of sugar / acid schtuff.

By the time I put the airlock onto the larger pineapple / apple one, it was working. I checked the pineapple one and it was producing positive air pressure also (the balloon was starting to inflate)((I really need to order some corks and air traps for these small jugs))

Bottled Grape Jelly wine

Tonight, I bottled the grape wine ahead of time so that it could sparkle up and carbonate by this weekend (for Crackbaby Thanksgiving!)

I crushed up two Campden tabs, dissolved in about a cup of water, and gently stirred into the wine.
I put a teaspoon of sugar into each of three plastic Mr. Beer bottles (I gotta find out how much those hold), and three of the glass 1 liter flip-tops. Ran wine off into each of these and let them sit for about 20 minutes with the caps on, but not sealed (to let CO2 replace the air in the bottles, Pat told me about doing that with the beer).

I filled a 1.5L bottle and corked it (w00T! got to use my cork press! I was surprised at how easy it was.)

I also filled two 750ml bottles, one of which I added a teaspoon of Wine Conditioner to.
(liquid invert sugar and potassium sorbate) I've read that Potassium Sorbate combined with Campden usually kills off yeast and fermentation.

I drank some of what was left. It's not killer dry, but VERY alcoholic. I wouldn't call it fuseled (rocket fuel-like), but it's strong.

Should make for excellent entertainment...

Pumpkin and Scottish Ale tasting

The Scottish Ale is well carbonated and forms a good head when poured. Tastes like beer, nothing special or amazing, but decent.

The Pumpkin Ale only has a hint of pumpkin to it, is not as carbonated, and has an almost syrupy texture, but is not syrupy tasting (it's dry like a beer should be, not sweet) Almost like unsweet, super-light pumpkin flavored pancake syrup (if anyone ever makes such a god awful beast).

But it does have a bit of a kick to it. Not so much in the mouth, but in the head. I had about half a liter and was a bit tipsy.

Pumpkin Ale bottling

Pat and I bottled the Pumpkin and Scottish Ale's.

We racked from secondary to the bucket because the spigot on the bucket made bottling SOOO easy. Added priming sugar to the bucket to induce carbonation in the bottles.

Stirring

Stirred all three gallon jugs (Maple Cinnamon Mead and the two pineapple experiments) by circleing jugs on flat surface. Moved ALL fermenters onto table in corner of basement.

I've noticed that the two Pineapple ones aren't super active. The straight pineapple's balloon has some size to it, but the pineapple / apple / raisin one blew up a little bit, and then died back off. Both are still producing visible bubbles at the surface, just not much.

Pulled-a-Recipie-Outta-My-Ass Maple Cinnamon Mead

For Paul and Leigh!

1.5 lbs Fischer's Natural Pure Raw Honey (Walmart) (Darker in color than most)
12.5 fl oz Maple Grove Farms pure maple syrup (Walmart)
approx 1/2 cup Dextrose Corn Sugar
1/2 oz chopped raisins
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 packet bread yeast

Brought honey, syrup, and raisins with three jars of water (one syrup and two honey to wash them out) to a boil.
Broke up cinnamon stick and added at end of boil
Cooled with ice

prepped yeast with a pinch of corn sugar in half a cup of water

Poured yeast and must into gallon jug. Topped up to a gallon with water. Very dark colored.

approx 1.125 Specific gravity

Pineapple Experiments

Cleaned out 2 one gallon glass jugs (from Carlo Rossi crap).

In one, emptied about two and a half 48oz cans of Walmart pineapple juice and approx 1/8 cup sugar.

In the other, the other half a can (24oz) of pineapple juice, 1.5 quarts of WalMart apple juice, one can Shop'n'Save Apple Juice frozen concentrate (plus it's three cans water), 1oz box raisins, and 1/4 cup sugar.

Mixed up 1/2 packet of rapid rise bread yeast in warm water (boiled it first and then iced it to cool it down) with a sprinkle of sugar. Added it half and half to each jug and put a balloon on top of each for a trap.

In retrospect, these needed more sugar. I wanted to make a dry wine of each, but didn't realize that generally speaking, all wines ferment dry, and are sweetened after they're done and stable.

Apfelwein bubbling like mad.

Apfelwhups

I'm stupid, those Apple Juice containers were 96oz (3 quarts), not gallons. picked up two more of them from the store. I've edited the above to reflect this.
- Added another bottle and about a half to top the Apfelwein up to the neck of the bottle. Found the top was not sealing properly for the first 20-24 hours, had to tape it down.

Pumpkin Ale third step

Transferred Pumpkin Ale and Scottish Ale that Pat started on his own to secondary's. Tasted small amount of pumpkin, was hoppy aromatic, but not overpowering, had very little carbonation feel to it. Scottish Ale tasted more refined but less flavorful. Bottled half a bottle of Scottish with half a teaspoon of cane sugar (after we all had a drink or two out of it...)

First Apfelwein

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/man-i-love-apfelwein-14860/

5 gallons of WalMart Apple Juice (in 3 quart bottles)
approx 2 lbs dextrose (corn sugar)
1 five gram packet of Montrachet Wine Yeast

cleaned carboy and put in 2 gallons of apple juice with funnel
added all corn sugar and washed down funnel with another half gallon
Shook carboy until all sugar was dissolved
added all but half a bottle
prepped yeast in half a cup of water and added through funnel
finished juice (only 3 3/4 gallons total right now) and capped

Pumpkin Ale second step

Pat and I started Pumpkin Ale
http://www.thebrewsite.com/2004/10/11/pumpkin_ale_recipe.php

• 6-10 pounds of pumpkin
• 1 pound of Vienna malt, 4L
• ½ pound crystal malt, 40L
• ½ pound malted wheat
• 6 pounds light or amber malt extract
• 1 cup brown suger (optional)
• ½ cup molasses (optional)
• 1 ounce Mt. Hood hops (boiling)
• ½ ounce Hallertauer hops (finishing)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• ½ to 1 teaspon pumpkin pie spices (see below)
• Wyeast 1056, American Ale

We made minor changes to the recipie due to availability of ingredients
- It called for 1lbs Vienna Malt 4L, we used 3.6L
- It called for .5lbs crystal Malt 40L, we used 1lbs 20L
- We didn't have a scale to weigh Wheat malt extract
- 3lbs bag was approx 9 cups, so we used 1.5 cups
- also, it was a 55% wheat and 45% barley mix of malt extract
- The MT.Hoods and Hallertauer hops were not available, but research showed that Mt. Hood is usually 4-5% acid, and the Hallertauer is stronger (5-6%)
- Used US Goldings (4.5%) for the Mt. Hood, and Sterling (6%) for the finishing hops

Pat bought a 30L Turkey Friar that worked purrrfectly for boiling the wort

Put pumpkin and grains into pot and heated.

After bringing to the initial boil, we poured the whole thing (slowly) through a wire mesh strainer to pull out the pumpkin matter, and then the grains. I pressed the pumpkin in the strainer to extract moisture. A little bit of pulp went through.

We returned to a boil and added dry and syrup malt extract, brown sugar, molasses, and US goldings Hops. boiled for 45 minutes and then added Sterling for 15 more minutes.

After the complete boil, we added vanilla and pumkin pie spice. We then cooled the wort by running cold water though a copper coil submerged in the wort (good idea Pat)

Poured wort into fermenting bucket and pitched yeast.

First step to Pumpkin Ale

Roasted pumpkin for Pumpkin Ale. Four pans on both oven racks.

Accidently left it in the oven overnight (No, not with the oven on...)

Next time, I'll just cook it on one rack at a time. The top ones are a little under-done and the bottom ones are a little burnt.

Scraped cooked pumpkin meat into two tupperware bowls, topped up with water, and put in freezer.

Make-it-up-as-we-go Grape Jelly Wine

6 cans grape juice concentrate
approx 3.5 cups sugar
dash of clover honey (leftover from Mead)
4oz Wild Huckleberry Honey
1/2 packet Fleischmann's rapid rise yeast
- activated in about a cup warm water and a teaspoon of sugar
brought all ingredients (minus yeast) to boil in 6 quart pot with water to fill it
Filled Mr. Beer fermenter to 10.5 quarts
- used a fair amount of ice to bring temp down
Added yeast

End of the first Apple Wine

Paul and Katlyn liked the apple wine, although Paul thought it was thin.
Mom said it was yeasty, and that she could taste the plastic bottle that it was in.
All of it drank now

Apple wine did harden and gently carbonate. Nice dry taste, not sweet. Not at all appley.

Joe's Ancient Orange

Started Joe's Ancient Orange Mead
http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_rapidrecipe&page=viewrecipe&Itemid=6&recipe_id=118

7.5lbs honey
- 2.5lbs of local grower clover, 5lbs ?? brand from grociery store
3 whole cloves
1 orange sliced into eighths
two whole cinamon sticks
1oz box of raisins
1 packet regular baker's yeast

disolved honey in water and put in Carboy
put orange slices, raisins, cloves, and cinamon sticks in and filled to 2.5 gallons with water
shook to death to mix and aerate
poured dry yeast directly in and gently shookup to stir
Now leaving it alone.

Early finish to the Apple wine

Apple Wine yeast worked very furiously for about three days and slowed down to almost nothing. It was starting to settle and clear on it's own, and then I needed the water trap (boiled and ruined my other one when starting new mead)

Bottled apple wine into six Mr. Beer bottles with 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in each bottle.

Will leave out on bar in basement for at least 24 hours to see if they harden. I plan on putting them into the fridge once they do.

First Apple stuff

3 frozen concentrate Apple Juices
- each one calls for three cans of water to make 48Oz of juice
1 cup sugar
1 packet rapid rise yeast

Mixed packet of yeast with about half a cup of warm water to activate
All three cans of frozen juice and six cans of water and 1 cup sugar brought to a boil.
Then mixed with enough ice to make 5 quarts and added yeast.

Brewed for about 8 days
Yeast worked very furiously for about three days and slowed down to almost nothing.
It was starting to settle and clear on it's own, and then I needed the water trap (boiled and ruined my other one when starting mead)