Tangerine Honey Wine Experiment

What do you do when you don't have enough tangerines to make a batch of wine and you are too poor to buy honey to make a batch of mead?? You combine the two and make a tangerine honey wine.

I stared with 6 lbs of honey, 3 lbs of sugar and just shy of 2 and 1/2 gallons of fresh squeezed tangerine juice. I took the zest from 8 of the larger and sweeter tangerings and threw it all together in a carboy. Topped it off with water and pitched my ole stand by, Cuvee yeast. This was on Friday the 29th. By Saturday I was wiping tangerine pulp off the walls from 4 or 5 separte blow offs. Needless to say the yeast was happy. It has continued to ferment hard since then and today the gravity had dropped from 1090 to 1016. It is still quite sweet but I threw in some potassium sorbate today to stop the fermentation. Once it clears up a little I will rack it to a secondary and throw in a healthy dose of mulling spices.

This should make for a nice fall/winter drink. That's the plan at least!!!

The Sweet Smell of Porter

I walked in this afternoon and the glorious smell of a Porter-in-the-making was wafting through the air. Sweet, malty and heavy on the ginger.... It was quickly followed by the distinctive 'bloop' of another air bubble escaping the airlock. Those who brew out there know what I am talking about.

That is always a very welcomed sound but today it was even more welcoming since we seem to be off to a slow start! I wonder if it has anything to do with the chocolate. I read chocolate causes a slow start to fermentation. Not that that was the case for the Chocolate Mead I just made. I probably could have launched a rocket with that one!!

Anyways, last night I got the crazy desire to brew, so off to the home brew store I went and picked up supplies for a wild and crazy Porter.

The transfer to the fermenter went quite well except for about a dozen small splatters. What is truly amazing is how pervasive a dozen small splatters of syrupy wort can be. After wiping down the floor with a cloth and then mopping the floor is STILL sticky!!! I will probably get it all cleaned up about the time I brew again. When I design my own kitchen I am installing a central drain in the floor so I can just hose everything down!!

Confessions of a Lazy Brewer...

I admit it. I am a lazy brewer. I have never before kept a brewing log. Sure I write down my gravities and dates, sometimes. But for the most part I don't keep track of anything. I have always relied on my memory to keep track, which I'll admit is pretty good. But as I get older the ol' photographic memory is beginning to yellow. I have also been doing significantly more brewing then before. In the past I would do a batch of wine every couple months, taking the recipe out of my trusty recipe book. Now I am venturing into new territory and making my own recipes or significantly tweaking others and brewing 2 or three batches at once.

What is the latest happening that has caused me to admit my laziness?? That would be the 'mystery wine' that ROCKS but I can't for the life of me remember the technique or yeast I used to brew it. Not to mention, I am unsure if I followed the recipe in the book or fucked with it like I usually do! Then of course there is the 'Christmas in a Bottle' that I have people emailing me wanting to buy. Do I remember what yeast I used? Did I measure the amount of spice I put into it? Hell no! Why would I do something silly like that!!!

So, last night I sat down and started a brewing log. I went back and pulled all the dates for the Maple Mead I have going right now, wrote down the yeast and techniques used, logged racking dates, the whole nine yards. I also wrote down the next 3 recipes that I want to do. Instead of having them float around in my sometimes spacey blonde head, they are now officially on paper filed behind the "To Be Brewed" tab.

I suppose the trick now is to keep it up. I don't think that will be hard since I finally started it! Here's hopin'

Cold Weather and Home Brewing

Seriously??? I live in Florida and should not have to worry about this stuff. I started 3 batches of various meads and melomels on Tuesday. Today? NOTHING!!! Thinking that I must have added the yeast too early or that it was bad to begin with, off I went to the home brew store to buy more so I didn't lose all three batches. Of course, half way there it dawns on me that it is FREAKING cold out.

Thinking back, I don't think I have ever started any wine during the winter months. That is usually a spring activity. I live in Florida, monitoring room temperature is not usually an issue in the spring!!

Since I am already half way to Daytona at this point I figure it wouldn't hurt to have some back up yeast and I was almost out of acid blend anyways. Besides I hadn't been to the Daytona store yet and that is just a travesty!!!

So after discussing my 'lack o fermentation' problem with the guy at Homebrew Emporium, we concluded that it is more likely that the fermentors are too cold and not murder on my part.

He then asks me if I know how a sweat lodge is built. Umm, interesting question. Even more interesting (and surprising to him I think) is that I do, indeed, know how because I built a few in college. So, he tells me to apply the same concept to the fermentors to get everything going. Brilliant idea!!! I think I am going to market and patent it!!!

So I came home and built a sweat lodge for my mead! LOL It only took 5 minutes for the blueberry port in the secondary to become active again so I am hopeful for the mead. And if it does turn out that I murdered 100 billion innocent yeast cells, I have more... (Can you murder yeast, the aren't technically animals are they?? Where is my biology book...)