Process:

Added 1 gallon of warm water to my primary bucket. I then added all of the cherry juice concentrate and let it mix with the water. I added water to the concentrate bottles to rinse the rest of the juice out of them, and added this to the bucket along with enough water to bring the volume up to 3 gallons. I tested the OG and it was 1.040, so I added 6 lbs of sugar to bring it up to 1.100. I tried to test the TA% but it was hard to tell if any color change occurred due to the dark opaque color of the must. I will test it again when I rack it and hopefully it will be a bit more clear. I added my pectic enzyme and yeast, then sealed the bucket with an airlock.

4-14-12: Put into primary bucket, OG measured at 1.100 giving an alcohol potential of 13.3 %ABV.

4-15-12: Fermentation has been slow to start. Will keep an eye on it. The only thing I can think is that perhaps the must is too acidic for the yeast to perform well? Or maybe I just need to be more patient.

I was given 5 12-ounce bottles of Montmorency Cherry Juice Concentrate so I decided I would try to brew some things with them. I am making up a batch of Cherry Melomel which sounds very tasty, and I plan on doing some cherry wine with the rest. I found a couple recipes online of people who had used a similar cherry juice concentrate to brew with. The brand they used said that 32 ounces of the concentrate was equivalent to roughly 25 pounds of cherries. I assume the brand I have is similar, and so I went with a similar use of about 1 pint of concentrate per gallon (only using 12 ounces for this mead, but will be using 16 ounces for the wine I make).

Process:

I added my honey to a 1-gallon carboy. I then added some warm water and shook the carboy and water up for a few minutes to get the honey mixed with the water and to aerate it. I then added my cherry juice concentrate, some yeast nutrient, and my yeast. I measured the OG, a bit higher than I was expecting but might provide some sweetness in the finished mead to counteract the tartness of the cherries. Sealed it with an airlock and put it in my brew room to start fermenting. I will have to keep an eye on it, since my last melomel (blackberry) foamed through the airlock within a few hours of pitching the yeast.

4-13-12: Put into primary carboy. OG measured at 1.130, giving it an alcohol potential of 17.5 %ABV.

4-14-12: Fermentation has begun, and it is not foaming a lot so I don’t think I’ll have an issue with the airlock on this one.

This is a first for me in many respects. To prepare for an upcoming Septemberfest event, I decided to do an Oktoberfest style beer. I also decided, though I definitely do not have the proper equipment, I was going to do an all grain batch and then lager it, since it is, after all, a lager.

Process:

4/13/12

Now I don’t technically have a mash tun or any form of insulated cooler which would have worked better, so I just used my brewing bucket and did all the heating and boiling in my brewpot. After the mash, I struggled to pour my bucket of mash through a grain bag which was a little too small for the amount of grain I had. I got it done anyway, and then poured 3qt 20 oz of 166ºF water over the grains to rinse them. I was straining it all into my brewpot to get ready for the next step. Finally got it all into the pot and put it on the stove to boil.

Brought the wort to a boil and added the 2oz of hops. Boiled the wort for 60 minutes. I noticed at this time that cooling the wort was going to be a problem, as I had about 4 gallons of wort and I usually cool by adding ice. This was not going to happen very well, in this case. I prepared a cold water bath to help cool the wort before adding the ice. This dropped the temperature fairly quickly from 212º to 155º. Ran another cold water bath and dropped it down to about 125º. After this, transferred the wort to a bucket on top of about a gallon of ice. Perfectly hit my target range, down to 64ºF and a total of 4 gallons. Added 1.5 gallons of water to make 5.5. At this point, measured the Original Gravity to be 1.050 at 64ºF, giving a potential alcohol content of 6.6%, but I expect more around 5%, I think. I added yeast. I think my Wyeast pack was defective, because the inner pouch had a second sealed compartment that would have never broken open by smacking it. Had to cut it open. Might have thrown off my yeast pitching. That and the fact that I forgot to activate it when I started the mash. Overall, a successful day. I transferred it into a carboy and placed it in a make-shift swamp cooler to try to keep the temperature down for the primary fermentation.

4/14/12

My swamp cooler was only getting the beer down to about 64ºF, not ideal for a lager. So I made room in my fridge, turned up the thermostat and stuck it in. I bought a fridge thermometer and the carboy already has a fermometer stuck to the side of it. Fridge temperature stabilized at 50ºF, but the beer was still at 54-56ºF, so I turned the fridge down to 45ºF and the beer was down to about 50ºF the next morning. Plan to leave it at this temperature for two weeks, then step it down to 35ºF.

4/27/12

After fermenting at about 48ºF for a week of solid activity, things slowed down and everything started to clear up and drop out of the beer. After another week, I am not turning the temperature down a few degrees a day until I will get to 32-35ºF.

5/5/12

So in a couple days I lowered the temperature to about 40ºF. Seems to be about the limitation of my fridge without cranking it up all the way. I think it should be fine. Today I racked the beer to another carboy, getting rid of about an inch and a half of trub at the bottom and everything that was floating.

So this was pretty un-called for. My friends and I have a book club and in the past, sometimes when we meet we do something related. For example, we read a book about the Derg regime in Ethiopia and then ate Ethiopian food. Now we’re reading Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, a book about prisons. What better to bring than pruno!?! I looked it up and got this recipe from a poem by Jarvis Jay Masters. I decided to make a double recipe.

Process:

4/8/2012

Peeled the oranges by scoring twice around them and removing the peel. I saved the peels to make Candied Orange Peel. After that, I sliced them crossways into thinnish slices and threw all of these into an 8qt stockpot along with the can of fruit cocktail. I took my trusty pestle and pounded it a bit, but that was messy, so I used the electric mixer instead. Not exactly authentic, but a little more efficient in getting the pulp out. I now had a mashed up mess of orange pulp with a bit of fruit cocktail. Not sure where the wild yeast is supposed to come from, but I’m sure this stuff is going to rot nicely, at least. Added 32 oz of water to the pot and put it in a hot water bath for 20 minutes or so. This is supposed to help the fermentation get started. Wish I had a small 3 gallon carboy, rather than leaving it in a pot, but I’ll try to transfer it once I get the orange pulp out.

4/10/2012

Skimmed the top layer of pulp off and discarded. Added 2 1/2 Cups of sugar and 4 tablespoons of ketchup. Mixed this in. It was still looking like a big mash of orange pulp. Not a lot of liquid separated out yet. Stirred all of it up and put the pot in a hot water bath for half an hour.

4/11/2012

Placed in hot-water bath for half an hour.

4/13/2012

Skimmed mash from the top, poured into two 1/2 gallon plastic bottles using a funnel with a screen. Noticed I only had one airlock, so I jury-rigged a blow-off tube for the other. Looks Like I may have 3 quarts of the stuff.

4/22/2012

Ended up with about 3 quarts. Bottled 2 750mL bottles, and saved a little for tasting. It was very thick, with Specific gravity over 1.080! There had been no noticeable airlock activity for the better part of a week. It is tangy with strong ketchup notes coming through. Still pretty sweet as well and thick like syrup. There was really no way to get an original gravity reading, since it was just a mash of fruit, so no idea how much of the sugar has been converted. It’s drinkable. I put it all in the fridge to retard any further fermentation. I really don’t need exploding bottles in my kitchen, even though it seemed pretty done. I put the remaining 1L into a fermenter and added some yeast nutrients to see if I could get it going and use up some of the sugars remaining. We’ll see how that goes. Not much activity yet, but with a SG so high, it seems there’s got to be more potential.

4/27/2012

Even after adding the nutrient, haven’t seen much action. Also there was a slight film forming on the surface. Decided to add some wine yeast today. After swirling it around, got definite airlock action going. On further inspection later, small bubbles are actually visible moving up. I think the high gravity may be slowing the fermentation down a bit, but it’s going, slow as it is. Pawned off one of the bottles to my brother. We’ll see how he likes it. Doing some calculations leads me to believe that 1.080 gravity can be accounted for by the sugar I added. This means the sugars contributed by the 18 oranges and can of fruit cocktail have been pretty much consumed, but still no good estimate on alcohol by volume.

Time for Round Two of expanding Sterr Bros to 3 brothers. Using a Brooklyn Homebrew recipe for American (or Red Hop) Amber Ale, we had to substitute for the hops, since the original ones had long since expired. They were over a year old. Because of this, there were some interesting hop substitutions, based on what was available at the brewstore when I went.

Process:

4/7/12

Put on a gallon and a half of water, heated to 155ºF and steeped the grains for 60 minutes. While this was going on, poured the dry yeast into a pyrex measuring cup and added some luke-warm water and about a teaspoon of sugar to get it started. After about 45 minutes, we heated another gallon of water to 170ºF. After the full 60, we used this water to rinse the grains into the brewpot, bringing it up just under 3 gallons. Brought this to a boil and added the liquid malt extract.

Returned the wort to a boil and added the Columbus hops for an hour. With 10 minutes left, added the Cascade hops. Then when time was up added the Centennial. Switch the pot off and poured it into a brew bucket with an 8 lb bag of ice. This brought it down around 100ºF, so we added another bag of ice. We were using a floating thermometer to gauge it and at some point it broke into the wort, spilling shot and pieces of glass. After some quick checks on forums and a test with a magnet, we decided the shot was steel as opposed to lead. The actual thermometer part inside did not break. We filtered the whole batch through a funnel filter to get the glass out. Then we returned it to the bucket and measured the OG at 1.056 at 65ºF, making the actual OG to be 1.057 with a potential alcohol content of 7.4%. We then added the yeast. Put a lid and airlock on the bucket and stashed it to ferment.

I had bought a 5lb bottle of honey at the local Bangladeshi store a year or so ago, because it was $10, thinking I would make some mead from it one day. Somewhere along the line I had picked up another 5lb bottle, but over the last year I guess I’ve used a bit in cooking and such, so I only had 8.75lbs left. That limited me to about a 3 gallon batch for the OG I was aiming for.

Process:

3/31/2012

Put the dry yeast into 2oz of water and let it sit in the fridge. Put the bottles of honey in a hot-water bath to reduce their viscosity. Boiled 2.5 gallons of water, then switched the stove off. Added the honey and then rinsed the two bottles out with the just-boiled water to get all of the honey out. Stirred the honey in and let this sit. After a little while, I moved it to the fridge to cool faster. When it got down to 80ºF, measured OG at 1.104, making the actual OG 1.107 with a potential alcohol content of 14%. Added yeast and transferred to carboy for fermenting.

4/12/2012

Fermentation has appeared slow, I think in part to the large amount of headspace. I added 1.5 tsp of yeast energizer today and racked it to a new 3 gallon carboy to aerate it. It’s pretty full, but I’m thinking I shouldn’t have foaming issues with the mead. Definitely got action in the airlock now though.

4/27/2012

The energizer really kicked things off. The mead was bubbling steadily and gradually slowed over the last two weeks. It is still bubbling, but now down to once every 35 seconds or so.

I’m showing a friend the brewing process and asked him what style of beer he likes. He answered with IPAs and ambers, and since I haven’t made an amber in a while we decided to go with that. This recipe is a combination of our very first beer, the Dirty Lizard Amber Ale, and the only other amber I’ve brewed, the Frolf Amber Ale. Both of these beers, very roughly based on an Alaskan Amber clone, turned out very well and I’m hoping this brew is even better.

Process:

Activated the yeast packet. We heated 1.5 gallons of water to 160 F, then turned off the heat and added my grains to steep for 30 minutes. Rinsed the grains with 1.5 gallon of warm water. Turned the heat back on and brought the wort to a boil as we added the malt extract to dissolve.

Added the bittering Cascade hops when the boil began. With 15 minutes left we added the flavor/aroma Saaz hops and the Irish moss to help clear the beer. After the boil, we strained the beer into the primary bucket. I added 2 gallons of ice and enough cold water to bring the volume up to 5.5 gallons, which brought the temperature to around 85 F. Checked the OG and then pitched the yeast.

3-28-12: Put into primary. OG measured at 1.060 giving a potential strength of 7.9 %ABV.

4-4-12: Racked to secondary carboy. SG measured at 1.020; 5.3 %ABV.

4-18-12: Racked to bottling bucket and measured FG at 1.016, a strength of 5.8 %ABV. Added the priming sugar dissolved in water and bottled in 27 12-ounce bottles and 19 16-ounce bottles.

Looking over some old recipes got the original Beerskey, our second beer ever, stuck in my head. I really enjoyed that beer and how well the mix of dark malts, oak chips, and whiskey worked together. I decided to put together a similar recipe for this brew. I used several suggestions I found from a forum on HomeBrewTalk discussing NorthernBrewer’s Bourbon Barrel Porter recipe, such as a higher OG, higher IBUs, and using more whiskey. I am looking forward to drinking this one when it has had a bit of time to age.

Process:

Activated the yeast pack. Heated 1.5 gallons of water to 160 F, then turned off the heat and added my grains to steep for 30 minutes. After steeping, rinsed grains with another 1.5 gallons of warm water and then brought the wort to a boil. As the wort was heating, I added and dissolved the malt extract and rinsed the container out with another half gallon of warm water.

Added an ounce of Magnum hops for bittering at the beginning of the boil. With 15 minutes left, added half an ounce of East Kent Goldings hops for some flavor, and with 5 minutes left I added the 3/4 ounce of Hallertau for aroma. After the boil, I poured the wort through a strainer into my primary bucket, removing the leaf hops. I then added two gallons of ice to the wort to bring the temperature below 80 F, and enough water to bring the total volume up to 5.5 gallons. Measured the OG, then pitched the yeast and attached a blow-off tube to the primary bucket.

3-21-12: Put into primary. OG measured at 1.068 giving a potential strength of 9.0 %ABV (9.7 %ABV if you factor in the whiskey that will be added). Also put oak chips and bourbon together in a Mason jar and set it aside until I need to add it to the beer when racking to secondary.

3-23-12: Very active fermentation. It’s good I used the blow-off tube; the tubing has been filling with foam and the bucket lid has broken it’s seal a couple times, but no beer has escaped. I put some weights on the lid to keep it sealed and it seems to be doing fine now.

4-1-12: Racked onto whiskey and oak chips in secondary carboy. SG was 1.026, giving a strength of 5.5 %ABV, which is bumped up to 6.2 %ABV by the Jack Daniel’s. A taste test revealed that this beer is a bit on the bitter side, not surprising since it has 60.8 IBUs and plenty of roasted malts. I expect the whiskey will add a bit of sweetness, and bottle aging will mellow things out.

4-15-12: Racked and filtered into a bottling bucket. Measured FG at 1.026 giving a strength of 5.8% ABV, or 6.5% when the whiskey is taken into account. Boiled my priming sugar in 1 pint of water, then added it to the bottling bucket. Bottled into 58 12-ounce bottles.