Second attempt at a raspberry sour. This time, allowing a few days of ferment before adding the fruit, and a cold crash before bottling for higher clarity.
What happened with the fruit the first time?
Actually nothing, turned out fine. Just experimenting with how much of a noticeable difference it makes giving the yeast a few days head start on the wort without the fruits.
There's a lot of 'folk wisdom' in the brewing world I've found. Recipes which claim "you must do X" or "if you don't do Y, it won't work". So I like to test different theories and see what's true and what's superstition.
I've got my continuous brew of kombucha going for my daily consumption.
On the more interesting side, I've got some spruce tip mead going which I'm hoping turns out well. There was a little bit of a scare where I was concerned it could be infected, but it seems fine.
Sadly, I was doing an experiment with sea lovage spiced mead which succumbed to mold and needed to be dumped. Something to retry next year.
This year's berry harvest is basically FUBAR. Global warming did a number on it so now there's near zero salmonberries and the ones which did appear are partially desiccated or only half ripe. So no salmonberry wine this year, probably even not enough for jam :(
Blueberries are way too early, but they're tasting fine at least. I'll probably try a blueberry wine or mead. Encountered a few hiccups last year because of their acidity, but I'm better equipped this year so hopefully that turns out well and I can bottle some stuff for the winter.
Last year I didn't make any cider. I couldn't find apples. This year it looks better, but they are falling unripe from trees somewhere.
I hope you didn't have to throw out too much of the mead. I usually do experiments on really small scale (~1l).
It was only a gallon. The disappointment is mostly that I won't have a really weird drink this year.
I've heard cider can be made with unripe apples. Might be worth a shot.
It is, but juice from ripen apples has about 13% sugar content and I am not sure how much it will be with unripe ones. I don't know how would it age in bottles - more acid and peptides, less sugar.
Also I will find time for it in few weeks, maybe, and they will probably pe ripen.
I've plans to brew a wheat wine. It's just so much malt that I find it hard to justify, but I really want to try. 20 years ago it was a fairly uncommon offering at a local brewery that I loved, and I've wanted to try and recreate it ever since.
I will start, this week was uneventful everything was smooth without hiccup (my boss didn't had time so I had to brew the batch alone 12 h in work yeah).
Last week on the other hand, steam generator broke (hole in pipe), we had to finish the batch and outside temperature was 36°C. So we had to let everything open (doors and windows) to not have sauna in brewery. It was exhausting brew day.
We started testing new strain of yeasts from local lab. It looks good so far, for now we were brewing from 1st but now it will probably be 0's from lab.
Just finished picking apples, so I can dehydrate them in slices to use later for brewing. I'm obsessed with apple lambic RN, but don't have to time to brew a batch. A few of the apples were suitable for storing whole. Maybe later, I can reactivate/rehydrate the lovely yeasts on the apple peels and finally get a lambic.
I’ve got kombucha going. I need to process and bottle it and get a new batch going
First try or do you brew it regularly?
Regularly. I’ve been brewing it for years. Do you brew kombucha?
Long time ago, didn't drink too much of it so it got infected after few months (irregular brewing). Since then I didn't try it.
ah, I’ve definitely had some batches go bad. Just had to dump half a gallon that I didn’t drink fast enough. Though I do drink it pretty regularly, and I pretty much always have a batch brewing.
Yes the "sponge" is happiest working, mine got mold or something in fridge when it wasn't used. (Sorry I am not too familiar in kombucha terminology)
Recently got into hoochin, just put some pawpaw wash in the primary to make wine. We also have apple juice bubbling away, was gonna jack it but I think I'm gonna buy an air still and throw it in that to see what happens.
Planning on trying my very first raw ale. So far, was thinking of doing a 3ish hour mash, finishing for about 30 minutes at 80 C, and adding something like 60g Simcoe (14.4%) to the mash. For laziness reasons I'd like to avoid doing a hop tea. Has anyone tried this before?
Brewing up a Multigrain whiskey, scaling to 600l, finding that we need to add more water than expected, which we reckon is a combo between the grains soaking up a bit more, and evaporation from larger fermentation containers
I never liked distillates, made/helped with few fruit ones (I still have ~5l of cherry made few years ago). How it is with whiskey? It has to be more work than putting it in fermenter and wait.
Yeah, more work, being that the grains generally need cooking, but I found it more forgiving than fruit so far.
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Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.
Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine