Posted on 07/27/2012 3:33:57 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good afternoon/evening FReepers. Yep, it is Beer Thirty Time Once Again!
Happiness is a bubbling airlock!
BEER
Good evening/afternoon brewers and winemakers. I have a couple of different secondary 5 gallon Carboys - Glass, PET, and Buckets. I prefer to use the glass carboy but I do use the others from time to time and all have been used successfully. The glass carboy is heavy and difficult to move but the others are easier to use because they are lighter and have spigots for racking to the bottling bucket. I am beginning to wonder why I use the glass one. I know there are pros and cons on using these different types of secondary Carboys. I would like to hear your opinions.
I hope all of you and your Brews and Wines are doing well. Stop by and share what you are brewing or let us know what your favorite brew, wine or spirit is.
Hollis’s Watermelon Barbecue Sauce
1 each 6 lb seedless watermelon
8 oz tomato paste
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sherry
2 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
Cut the melon into chunks and place in a saucepan. Cook it uncovered over medium heat until the melon is the consistency of applesauce (approximately 2-3 hours). Stir it occasionally. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer uncovered over low heat for 2 hours. Allow to cool to room temperature before using.
Options: White vinegar may be substituted for the lemon juice. Try mixing yellow tomatoes and watermelon for color variation From Hollis Harris of Porter’s Catering, Portland, Oregon
Let me know if this works out.
I started a Belgian ale last Sunday; it’s still fermenting fairly lustily, with a starting gravity of 1.07. I’m going to add a handful of cherry wood chips soaked in cream sherry to give it a bit of a cask-conditioned flavor. I tried this last year with a smoke ale, and after about six months of aging in the bottle it’s outstanding. It should be even better with a Belgian.
People joke about Mr. Beer, but it’s a really great and simple way of getting your feet wet with brewing, and giving the novice a feel for the process. Once you’ve done a few Mr. Beer batches, if you’re really serious, you’ll want to delve a little deeper. It’s not that difficult, nor expensive to get started with extract brewing, and there are plenty of web resources for reference.
Well, a very quick run-down of the process is:
1) You crush your fruit & place it in a primary fermenter with appropriate chemicals & yeast.
2) You stir twice a day to provide the yeast with oxygen.
3) After 4-6 days you remove the fruit & rack into a carboy with an airlock, being careful to leave the lees behind.
4) After 3 weeks you rack again into another carboy, leaving the lees behind.
5) After 3 months you rack again to remove the lees.
6) After 6 months you rack again to remove the lees, & continue every 6 months until the wine is clear.
7) When clear & stable you bottle & cork.
8) Age for a period - 6 months maybe - and then try it. If you like it you start enjoying.
We add sulphites every other rack to prevent oxidization, & we like our wine sweet, so we add sugar which feeds the yeast & keeps it working. The batch that took the least amount of time was a Port we made which finished in 6 months. That was a record. Generally, the process takes about two years from start to completion.
It’s a fun hobby, but there is a financial & time component. We started taking our wines to the state fair to get the comments of judges & gradually improved the result. Now we are very satisfied with what we make. But we wouldn’t have bothered to begin with if we hadn’t already been imbibers.
I think it would be interesting to try, not that I am in that position right now. There is a plum tree in the front yard though... hhmmmm... heh.
Or that other process, throw fruit and kool-aid into a trash bag and let it sit in a corner of the cell for a while. lol. just kidding.
You could certainly try that as a quick & dirty method. Just add some sulphites to prevent mold. :-)
Are tget brits willing to share their recipes?
We ferment in glass almost exclusively. The only time we use buckets is if we are afraid that our fruit will be tough to remove from the carboy.
We currently have 42 gallons of wine in fermentors this week. Not sure how much we are going to get this year but so far we have cherry, plum, and white grape.
My current batch of home brew refused to ferment.
Best I can figure is the honey I put in it was made in china sold at Costco. Apparently the Chinese super filter all the pollen out of it so it can't be traced to the country of origin and they load it up with antibiotics. I do believe the antibiotics is killing my yeast which I have added in massive amounts 3 times.
Not sure if that's what's going on but I am not happy.
i have 3 gallon jugs of cider that look like they are done. i have 2 more gallons of apple juice to go in, and in the last one i am going to try ginger beer/ginger wine
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You can get started with basic “get started” equipment for $70 to $100. This site ships for free and is good to order equipment from.
http://morebeer.com/search/102142/beerwinecoffee/coffeewinebeer/Personal_Home_Brewery_Equipment_Kits
It is easy to brew up a good beer. Boiling water and adding ingredients at the proper time. It is probably best to start with Extract kits. The waiting for the beer to ferment and age is the hardest part.
That is disappointing. I am sure you can find local produced honey? We have a FReeper that is harvesting bee hives and she has something in the area of 40 gallons of honey she has harvested from her bees. You might get in touch with her. She Posts and Hosts the weekly gardening thread - JustaDumbBlonde.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2911641/posts?page=13#13
Lacto fermenting of food can be very healthy and does not take a lot of time to do. Do you use whey?
I did a few Belgian brews when I first started out. They did not turn out well, at least to me. They may have needed more bottle aging than I gave them.
Thank you for the “homestead” link. I had seen it before and forgot to save it, so now I’ve got it on file. It makes me want to try ginger next! And thanks for the beer site too. What do you think of fermenting beer in the plastic containers they sell in their kits over glass containers? I like the picture on your thread of those huge glass bottles.
High gravity brews really do need a considerable aging time to get the flavors right. When first starting out I was following the old Mr. Beer formula of one week fermentation, one week aging, bottling and drinking after a week or two. I was so impatient to sample the final product that sometimes I could hardly wait that long. These days I generally let everything go at least a month in the bottle before attempting to drink it. Even at that, I've had ales and lagers that I wanted to throw out, but resisted the temptation and let them sit a few months, at the end of which time they were excellent. For the heavier Belgians you probably need at least three months, and six wouldn't hurt. I'm starting my Belgians now, and hope to have them ready for Christmas.
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