Our Brews

Now that we have a couple of varieties bubbling away we decided to keep a digital brew log. One where you can also comment on the taste of our brews (much appreciated unless they turn out to be vinegar), To cut the story short, here’s the link to our brew log, and you can also find it permanently on the ‘our brews’ tab on every page of my blog.

The Mead update

Today we finally bottled the Forest Fruit Mead, alcohol was still at 5 %, and the lingering taste of the yeast had completely disappeared. So the taste was great and it had cleared out almost completely. Definitely a recipe we’re trying again.

We also re-racked the  Apple Pie Cyser. The hydrometer dropped into our measuring flask and disappeared completely; no alcohol, no sugar. The taste was pretty dry. So in order to bring the alcohol up and to sweeten it a little more we added two tablespoons of normal sugar. In a couple of days we’ll measure again. But for now this cyser is a complete disaster.

Forest Fruit Mead (part two)

After starting the forest fruit mead on the 29th of August, it was now time to put it into a new carboy and add the herbs. While we were transferring the mead (not the sediment and fruit) we passed a little of it through the hydrometer. It read 5%, not bad after two weeks! We used a fine cheese cloth to secure the clove and the 3 cm vanilla stick. Now we just have to wait again for a couple of weeks (and taste the mead frequently) to make sure the herbs do not become too strong. By the way, it already tastes like a great mead!

P.S. Keep emptying those beer bottles, we’re going to need them soon!

Forest Fruit Mead (part two)

After starting the forest fruit mead on the 29th of August, it was now time to put it into a new carboy and add the herbs. While we were transferring the mead (not the sediment and fruit) we passed a little of it through the hydrometer. It read 5%, not bad after two weeks! We used a fine cheese cloth to secure the clove and the 3 cm vanilla stick. Now we just have to wait again for a couple of weeks (and taste the mead frequently) to make sure the herbs do not become too strong. By the way, it already tastes like a great mead!

P.S. Keep emptying those beer bottles, we’re going to need them soon!

Apple Pie Cyser

That bottle of mead we made a couple of weeks ago is still bubbling away. However, we thought it was a little lonely and would love the company of a bottle of Apple Pie Cyser. Cyser is very much like mead, and I just love apple pie. We found the recipe here.

INGREDIENTS
3 — gal­lons apple juice (use only 100%, pas­teur­ized juice with no preser­v­a­tive other than Vit­a­min C-ascorbic acid)
2–1/2 — pounds honey
2  — pounds dark brown sugar
1 — Table­spoon McCormick Apple Pie Spice
3 — cin­na­mon sticks
2 — cans apple juice concentrate
1 — 5 gram pack­age Lalvin 71B-1122 Wine Yeast

HOW TO MAKE THE CYSER
Make sure you have san­i­tized your con­tain­ers! You don’t want wild yeast or bac­te­ria get­ting in to your mix and ruin­ing your mix.  You can do this by: wash­ing them in a dish­washer at high-temp, heated dry, and NO SOAP or soak­ing them in a  light bleach solu­tion (2 Tbs per gal­lon of water) for 20 min­utes and then rins­ing well with cold water.  This is essen­tial to get­ting good results.

Put the first half of the juice in your pri­mary fer­men­ta­tion vessel. Acti­vate your yeast.

Start 1 quart of juice warm­ing on the stove. Stir in the spices and add the cin­na­mon sticks. All it to sim­mer but do not boil! This will cause the pectins in the juice to react and it will make the cyser taste bad.
Whilst the juice is warm­ing and sim­mer­ing, aer­ate the juice in the jugs/carboy/pail.  Put your hand over the top and shake the heck out of it. The impor­tant thing is to get it bub­bly, which shows you’ve stirred air through the juice. This is impor­tant for later, because the yeast will need it to con­sume the sug­ars and make alcohol.

Once the juice reaches sim­mer­ing tem­per­a­ture, take it off the heat and stir in the honey and sugar. Mix the sugar/spice mix into the juice well.
Add the acti­vated yeast. Top off your container(s) with the remain­der of the juice.
Don’t for­get to get the cin­na­mon sticks into the mix!
At this point, you’re ready to go. Install the fer­men­ta­tion locks on the ves­sels, and put every­thing a fairly cool place where the tem­per­a­ture doesn’t vary much.

Now, you wait. Within 24 hours, you should have some lively bub­bling going on as the mix starts fer­ment­ing.  Let it bub­ble away. In 2 to 3 weeks, the yeast will have fer­mented itself out; when the bub­bling in your fer­men­ta­tion lock is at less than 1 bub­ble per minute, you’re ready for the next step: racking/bottling.

Pour the two cans of apple juice con­cen­trate into your sec­ondary container.
Dis­solve the remain­ing 1/2 pound of honey in 2 cups of warm water, and then stir into the apple juice concentrate
Siphon the cyser from the pri­mary into the sec­ondary, leav­ing the sed­i­ment behind.
At this point, you have two options:

Let the cyser clar­ify — leave it in the sec­ondary for a week or  so and the remain­ing sed­i­ment will set­tle to the bot­tom. Then, bottle.
Bot­tle the cyser. It might be a lit­tle cloudy, but this is not a prob­lem. Once bot­tled, let set for another 1–2 weeks, and the cyser is ready to drink.

We decided to make only a third of the quantity mentioned in the original recipe, and we translated it into a more metric system, with more rounded numbers. The ingredients then became the following:

• 4 litre apple juice
• 450 grams of honey
• 300 grams dark brown sugar
• 1/3 tablespoon speculooskruiden
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 200 millilitres apple juice concentrate
• 1 package of champagne yeast from Vinoferm

Since we now own a wine cellar: Mead

This week in an effort to clean the inside of the house (yes, that is that ugly C-word again), we decided to muck out the wine cellar. Besides finding a vintage sink, ancient Stella glasses, and a bottle of holy water from Lourdes, we dug up a pretty nice space. And, since our been making stuff was already close we decided to give making mead a shot (don’t mind the mess in our kitchen, we’re still living out of boxes, do have a look at that ceiling – love it!). I found a recipe online that we followed:

1 package of Red Star "Premier Cuvee" yeast
4 pounds of clover honey = 1.82 kg
1 gallon of spring water = 3.79 l
8 ounces of Black berries - Frozen = 226 gr
1 whole clove
inch and a quarter ( 1 1/4 ) long section of a vanilla bean. Split length-wise.

First set your black berries out so that they have enough time to thaw. I try to pick out the darkest of the berries at this point. I use about half a pound for this recipe. This amount gives the mead a wonderful dark red colour and just enough taste of Blackberry to make it special. Once they have thawed crush them in a bowl and set aside.

Pour about one third of a gallon of spring water into a pot. Gently heat the water on the stove to about 90 degrees (= 30 Celsius) ( a candy thermometer is very helpful here ) and add your honey, being sure to keep stirring evenly so the honey doesn't get burned and the mixture becomes homogenous. Remove from the stove and stir for another minute, adding spring water until you have used about a half of your gallon jug. Let this sit to cool to room temperature.

Using a funnel, pour your honey and water from the pot into a 1 gallon carboy. Pour in enough of the remaining spring water so there is about an inch left until the gallon mark. Now you can add the yeast and the nutrient. Shake for about 4 minutes and add blackberries. Shake for at least another minute so that all of the ingredients are mixed and the batch has an even dark red colour.

Let this ferment for 2-3 weeks. Siphon into a clean 1 gallon carboy leaving behind as much sediment as you can.

Take your section of vanilla bean after it has been prepared and place it into a muslin tea bag. Steam the bag and place into the mead. After 4-5 days check the taste of the mead. If there is enough of a vanilla flavour remove the tea bag. Repeat this process with the clove. I like to leave it in until there is just a hint of clove. [from here]

In stead of blackberries we used a frozen ‘forest fruit’ mixture from the Colruyt. So far it’s bubbling away nicely in our wince cellar.. waiting for lots of other bubbling friends to join him.