Cider goes to secondary

2/14/09
I racked the cider to the secondary today. Volume is now 4 gallons of hard cider. Lost 1.5 to yeast and sediment. The gravity reading is 1.002 at 70 degrees. Current alcohol 6% by volume will bottle in two weeks. Alcohol flavor is not over powering, apple flavor and aroma are present.

Common Cider

2/7/09
Common Cider
5.5 Gallons Simply Apple juice, Pasteurized
11 grams Safale S-04 Dry Ale Yeast
2 ounces yeast nutrient

Mixed Apple juice and yeast together added nutrient.
Beginning gravity 1.050 at 72 degrees, gravity correction for temperature 1.051.

Beginning gravity says 6% alcohol by weight, 7.5% by volume if all sugars ferment.

Keeping fingers crossed and cups ready.

Mead Secondary and Bottling

1/4/09 Purchased and Juiced 12 pounds of fresh blood oranges, which yielded 1/2 gallon of juice. Transferred Mead to secondary fermenter and added juice. Fermentation continues and fruit pulp settles out. I think next time I'll pour orange juice thru screen to remove most pulp before adding to secondary. No gravity reading was taken.

1/18/09 Washed and sanitize bottles. Bottled Mead added 1 sugar tab for priming and stored at 65 degrees. Final Gravity is 1.000 all fermentation is complete. Final alcohol by weight 12%, Alcohol by volume 14%

This Mead is

GOOD, CHEERS!!

Ben's Brewskies

Welcome to Ben's Brewskies!

About 6 months ago I was hanging out with my buddy Zak, and he was just starting his very first all grain logger (this is an advanced level of brewing with many complicated steps). I was very interested in the process so I hung around for about 2-3 hours and watched, I tried to help and learn as much as possible. Apparently he had spent 3 hours before I arrived cleaning and sanitizing his equipment and getting everything set up (this is a time consuming hobby). More about Zak's Logger later, this was just a starting point for my interest.

I started to do some reading and research on the topic of home brew and watched some video pod casts about home brewing on www.basicbrewing.com. These guys explaining different types of beers and meads (mead is a type of wine made from honey, water and yeast) made me really interested. I purchased a book called Home Brewing for Dummies. After reading and getting more excited I checked out some basic starter kits online. I was looking at spending $120 online to get started.

I decided that from my research and watching pod casts that I would make a Mead for my first home brew experience. I came to this conclusion because it is one of the simplest and least expensive way to start.

I decided to go to my local home brew store and purchase a home brew starter kit for brewing my own beer, mead and cider. This was a better option for me than buying online. For instance, I could start brewing today! Secondly, I could I could prod the shop keeper for information. Third and final reason is that I got all the basic equipment from him for around 60 Bucks! I was mostly doing my own upselling asking about different products and what not. I went from a single stage fermentation bucket to a dual stage bottling bucket for a primary and a 6 gal glass carboy for my secondary. I also purchased a racking cane and hose for siphoning from one bucket to another (this is called racking) and a hydrometer. A hydrometer measures the specific gravity of your mead, beer or cyder and tells you the relative sugar content of your mixture before fermentation.

Well, with all of that said I will walk you through my very first home brewski.

This will take less time to read than actually do since I spent about 7 hours on this Saturday prepping, making, yeasting and moving to primary fermentation.


First Mead Brew Log
Saturday, December 6Th:

Wild Flower Honey Mead made with Champagne Yeast

I started out by washing and sanitizing All of my newly purchased equipment. Germs are the enemy because they can contaminate your brew and change the flavor.

After that I put 4 Gallons of tap water into my new 5.5 gal stainless steel brew pot and brought that up to a boil. The water was about 68 degrees when I started and an hour later the water was piping hot and bubbling at 201 degrees F.

In the mead time (little punny) I had the 12 Lbs of honey (12 lbs of honey is about 1 gallon) on a double boiler to get the sugar crystals in the honey to break down and also to make the honey easier to pour out into the brew pot.

So after the pot started to boil and the honey was ready to pour into the brew pot I killed the heat on the brew pot and poured the honey in. Boiling the water will kill bacteria in the water as well as the honey. This process is know as pasteurization and helps to reduce the possibility of random germs contaminating your brew and causing spontaneous fermentation. I read and heard from the shop keeper not to boil the honey directly in the water because it will make the honey release flavor and aroma that would change the outcome of the brew.

After letting the honey and water sit until it returned to room temperature (this seamed to take forever) apparently 5 gallons of 200 degree sugar water doesn't cool down very quickly. I even put it outside for a time since it was 38 degrees. I then took a small sample of the now 71 degree liquid and placed the hydrometer into it. It read that the specific gravity of the mixture was 1.091 and the "potential" alcohol content was nearly 13% if all of the sugars were fermented. Water has a specific gravity of 1.000 so you can determine how much sugar has been added with this floating gauge.

Then I racked (transferred) the liquid from the brew pot into the primary fermenter (a bucket) and added my reconstituted dry yeast and some yeast nutrient powder. It is not necessary to use yeast nutrient powder in mead but it will give it a jump start. Honey is a complex sugar and yeast doesn't eat it up very quickly. In case you didn't know Yeast is a single cell organism from the fungus family. It ferment liquids by eating sugars reproducing itself and excreting carbon dioxide gas and ether which is also know as alcohol.

Keeping in tune with how alcohol, mead, beer, wine, and stilling was done in the olden days I decided to put my fermenter in the bath tub.

Besides, if for some reason it leaks sugar water and alcohol all over the place, it should make for a quick easy cleanup and the wife will never know! I now install tubs for making your own home brew and I am even licenced to do it!

Now the wait begins, Mead take a long time before it can reach its peak flavor so, if all goes well, we will be drinking this by next Christmas!