Soda! Wait, what?

I've been playing with making soda a little bit for the past week or so.

I took a pack of Wyler's Sugar Free Cool Raspberry drink mix, half a cup of sugar, a few drops of vanilla, and about 1/16 oz of bread yeast (1/4 of a 1/4oz pack).

I put it all in a 2 liter soda bottle and shook it all up. I let it sit for about 24 hours and then put in in the fridge for a day or two. It was not very fizzy, and very syrupy. The Wyler's packet was supposed to make 2 quarts (slightly less than 2 liters), but Liz and I have found that they make REALLY strong fruity drinky thingys when mixed at normal strength. Next time, I'll use a 3 liter bottle.

I made a second one with some blackberry extract (a little less than an ounce), a whole cup of sugar, and the same 1/16 oz of bread yeast. This time I left it out for somewhere between 48 and 72 hours and then stuck it in the fridge a couple of days ago. We'll see soon how it turnes out.

Oh! And right after I bought a new thermometer to replace James's that I broke, I found mine.

Figures...

Quincy day!

We went up to Quincy to visit relatives today. TJ got to play with his cousins.
I got to see my Grandpa Wade and he got to see his great grandson.

Him and I talked for a bit about making wine. We came to the conclusion that the older 5Gal Carboy that I have now is one that he used to make wine in years and years ago (at least 20).

My aunt Laura had a couple of empty C&R 1Gal jugs that she let me have.
(I should probably mention that Liz pointed out the fact that they're actually marked 4L, which makes them slightly larger than a gallon. I'll have to pay attention to that as I continue to use them)

Apfelwein bottling!

James and I bottled the Apfelwein tonight.

It was fun. :)

I crushed up 7 or 8 campden tabs, dissolved them in about 2 cups of water, and poured it into a clean 5 gal carboy. Then we racked the wine into the fresh 5 gal.

We attacked the entire collection of bottles here : 7 1.5L bottles and 15 or so various 750ml. I chucked them all in the bathtub full of hotwater and soap. After cleaning out all the broken glass... lol kidding

5 Gal = ~ 19L -- Holy crap that's a lot of bottles...

We used all seven of the 1.5 bottles and 11 regular ones.

We siphoned out of the carboy and had a hose clamp from James's stuff to regulate and stop flow. Piece of cake.

We bottled half of it, and then I used the (Winexpert brand) Wine Conditioner on the second half. It's liquid invert sugar and potassium sorbate. It's to help ensure dead yeast and sweeten the wine a bit.

It calls for a minimum of 2oz / gal. I measured out 6oz for 2.5Gal figuring that I'm leaving a fair amount behind in the measuring cup.

I labled the bottles with my sophisticated cat-hair-roller-masking-tape labling system. (I need to start adding pics to this blog...)

It's very light and dry on it's own, and the conditioned wine has a very light, semi-sweet quality to it. AND I'm happy to say it is crystal clear.

Aluminum BAD!!!

OK, so I'm not gonna use my yellow, 4 quart aluminum pot anymore for any of my brewing activities. It's what had the water in it that *might* have had crap floating in it from when I racked everything. It's what I used to gently boil the peaches and apricots for the wassail. And it's what I used to make my simple sugar syrup last night.

I read that aluminum bad ALUMINUM BAD!!!!! when it comes to working with fruit because the acids in some fruits can react with it and produce wonderful toxins!

Funny, I'm not sure why I didn't remember this. My high-school french teacher loved to tell a story about how he almost rolled into the Mississippi once on a camping trip. He said they made jelly from wild berrys the night before in an aluminum pot. The next morning (after it sat out all night) he licked the pot and had pretty bad food poisoning. He said he was rolling around on the ground cause his stomach hurt so bad and he rolled down onto the lower bank of the river. His buddies had to come fish him out.

Fortunately, the only time I put fruit in it, it only cooked for about 2 or three minutes and then I pretty quickly took it out.

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!!

RACKINGS!!!! (protect your nuts...)

Tonight, I've been busy remedying small jug's needs.

I had Liz boil a pot of water on the stove eariler this afternoon and leave it sit covered all evening.

I've racked the Cinnamon Maple Mead to another 1 Gal jug with a campden tab and about 2 cups of water to top up and reduce air space in the jug. It's still not quite up to the neck, but it should be OK.

I'm a little worried because after topping it up, I noticed particulate stuff in the water. I'm not sure if it's undisolved campden or something from the pot not being completely clean.

Next I crushed up another campden tablet and disolved it into a 1.75L Jim Beam bottle (lol!) and racked the pineapple wine into it.

Finally I did the same with the Apple / Pineapple into a freshly cleaned 1 gal jug and filled it to almost the top. I still had enough left to fill a 1L fliptop bottle (no campden).

The mead doesn't seem very active after racking. Since it has so much air space in it, I've put a lid on the jug and will check it from day to day to make sure it doesn't build up too much pressure.

The pineapple is still gently bubbling, so I gave it a fresh balloon. The pineapple / apple is bubbling a bit more. Also ballooned. I'll have to watch the 1L glass bottle because of this.

Yay! I now have an empty 2.5gal Mr. Beer thingy to start a lager in!! AND an empty 1Gal jug.

Happy New Year!

Yay! James is moving in!

And with him comes more equipment! Woot w00t and 3riceW0O7!!!

This is good because I've realized I've made the mistake of using all but one of my fermenters. Now I don't have enough to rack items into.

The one gallon jug that I have left I'm going to put to use and just cycle a couple of containers worth.

Kruetz was in town for the new years party and he told me that a common problem with pineapple is that it's too acidic and most yeast can't survive in it. Maybe that combined with a dose of campden killed off most of it, and the survivors just took time to cross the barren wastes to reunite with loved ones and make lots more of said loved ones.

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