Apples, APPLES, ALWAYS with the apples

Matthew made wassail for us back on the 7th (Crackbaby Thanksgiving). He kept it virgin in the pot for all to enjoy the way they wanted to. Much was leftover. I stashed it in the garage with the rest of the leftovers that night.

It has been left out there freezing and un freezing for the past month. I had half forgotten about it until Matthew asked on New Years. We opened the pot and the entire garage INSTANTLY turned into an apple cinnamon stick. He dipped out a glass, drank it, said it was good, and was still alive 32 hours later.

Last night, I decided to use it up. This really turned into a cowboy'd recipie.

It's in a 4-Gal pot and about 2/3rds full. I started heating it up.
I took a can of peaches and a can of apricots, both in heavy syrup, and put them into another pot with about 2 cups of water and just brought it to a boil and then allowed it to cool for about 15 minutes.
Then, I took the big pot off of the stove and strained / mashed the peaches and apricots though the old conical colander that I found in the basement. (It's an old aluminum one with really wide legs and a big wooden pestle) I put it back on the stove and the hydrometer measured about1.050 (I think... damit, I should have written it down. Oh well, it didn't matter at this point, because I further modified it as we go here. Keep reading)
I added enough water to bring it up close to the top, and added some more sugar. (again cowboying it, I just grabbed the sugar container and poured for a couple of seconds. It *might* have been about two cups, maybe more.

Remind me next time not to have a few beers before doing this...

Anyway, I put the heat back on while stirring occasionaly and brought it just to a rolling boil and then killed the heat and covered. There's still a number of cinamon sticks and other things down there. Maybe a couple of rinds?

I wrapped it in a cold, soaked towel and put a fan blowing on it to cool it down some. Left it like this for half an hour and it was cool enough to stop steaming when the lid was opened.

I racked it into a 5-gal carboy (to try to avoid the cinamon and other things in it). As it siphoned, I added 1.5 Gal of cold Wal-Mart applejuice to help cool it all down and top it up. It still wasn't full enough, so I boiled a few more cups of water and topped the jug up.

I wrapped the jug in the wet towel and left it for about a half-hour with a fan on it. It was then at about 100F at the top and 90F at the bottom, perfect for pitching the (fill in the type later) yeast. (Blue colored packet of Red Star yeast) It called for that temp to start, but it wanted to be mixed in a small cup first. I just threw it in the jug and shook.

I left it overnight with the cap just sitting on it to cover it but not sealed. It's not room temp yet, and even if the yeast take off, the thermal contraction would still probably be enough to suck the air trap water back. This morning I popped it on, and it's progressing forward. Yay! Little bubbles!!