urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
So far:

Apple sauce, 2 slow cookers of apples on low 12 hours, run through chinois, sugar added to taste (2.5 cups per pot, the pot makes roughly 3.5L)

One each of four kinds of vanilla applesauce, with 2 beans per slow cooker cut up and put in with the raw apples: tahitensis bourbon cure, madagascar boubon cure, madagascar mexican curem ugandan bourbon cure. 500ml jars, 20 min water bath.

Two caramel applesauce: boil sugar until dark brown, let cool slightly, add water to make a syrup, put into slow cooker with apples, finish as above. Roughly 1 cup of caramelized sugar per liter of finished sauce.

Two apple jams:

lime apple marmalade (chop a potful of apples with peel, chop 5 limes with peel, combine with 6-7 cups sugar, let sit so sugar draws the juice out until it's covered in liquid, simmer until it starts to gel, water bath.

saskatoon apple jam: chop whole apples and saskatoons (6 cups total maybe) and cover with 4 cups sugar. Let sit until sugar has drawn juices out and they're sitting in liquid. Simmer until soft. Put through chinois. Simmer until gels. water bath.

Dilly beans:

4 cups vinegar, 4 cups water, salt to taste. Boil to make brine.

Fill jars with 1 head of dill, 1 clove of garlic, 2 peppercorns, a sliver of horseradish, a hot pepper, and green beans (can blanch first). Maybe dill or celery seeds. Pour boiling brine over. Water bath.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
 Did testing today and came up with:

Candy apple: it's basically gone to dry, it tastes nice and smells better, I need to bottle this.

Flanders Red Apple: I can't get a good read on this, it has maybe 1-2% left, tastes like the kind of awful that will age into magic. Added a handful of French oak chips, need to rack it to a secondary. Not sure whether to bulk age it or bottle soon.

Sweet cyser: at 7% remaining, tastes like cyser and green alcohol, chugging along quietly.

Berlinerweisse: this was a stroke of genius. It did the tart thing I wanted it to do, it is beautiful, is at 1% and should be bottled soon. I have no idea what its alcohol is like, but I'll bottle it carbonated so it doesn't matter as much anyhow. It's basically apple lemonade.

Quince cider/wine/whatever: is at 2%, there's still a lot of bubbling string the quince pulp, it tastes really aromatic and flavorful against the backdrop of green alcohol. I'm excited about this one.

Dark graff: no measurement yet but it's clearly done bubbling, time to bottle. Smells nice but needs aging.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
So here's what I'm ending up with:

Apple quince wine(melomel):

4 yoghurt containers of quince pulp from jelly
4.5kg wildflower honey
apple juice to fill
dextrose to 15% potential abv
pectic enzyme as directed
wyeast english cider pitched Nov 4 2016

Lighter (?) cyser
I was going for a much lower abv than this but I guess the honey and juice were both stronger than expected. The intention is to carbonate this. The yeast is supposed to max out at 5-10%, very curious to see how it goes.
applejuice
3kg mixed honey from the honeybee center (ended up at 12-13% potential)
tannin
acid
wyeast berlinerweisse pitched Nov 4 2016 plus a titch of sweet mead yeast from the cyser

may have been contaminated by a foreign object falling in, good thing it's potentially such high alcohol.

Candy apple graff
This one is a bit of a mess, I'm not working in my own kitchen and so things are weird. I was trying to mash high but the stove was uneven and ended up with more water than I would have liked during the sparge.

Put in 1oz williamette hops at 30min left on the boil
Reads 6-6.5% potential abv

Nottingham yeast direct pitched Nov 4 2016

Ended up with 6.5gal

Tastes bland, but I remember the last time I made this it tasted bland at the beginning too. We'll see how it tastes after primary fermentation and again after a year or two.

Rye graff
Same kitchen but this one wants to mash high.
1oz williamette, half at 30 min half at 5 min left

It's somehow reading 15% abv. Is still pretty warm, but that's pretty weird. Where did the sugar come from? Will check again.

Ended up with a full 6 gal, think this needs a different primary than a glass carboy, it's gonna blow off the airlock.

Wort is tasty, I'm happy with it.

Taking it home to put it in a bigger pail.

Finally pitched on Nov 5 2016 in a pail (no airlock). No sign of wild yeast fermentation before pitching.

Flanders Red

Smaller boil. 1oz Kent Golding hops 40 mins. I am expecting this to be a big beer and I'm excited about the flavour.

And yes, it came in at 11% potential.

Pitched Roeselare Nov 4

Sweet cyser

Honey is crystallized. 7kg. Took some word. Barely warmed it in apple juice on the stove, added it to more juice with tannin, acid, pectic enzymes, and yeast energiser & notrient.

pitched sweet mead yeast Nov 4.

17% potential.

urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Yesterday was the applejuice buy from Vanbrewers. I came home with 22 gallons of mixed granny smith/jonagold/honeycrisp juice. It's got a little bit of acid tang but is still pretty sweet. We didn't get the juice till 8 or 9 at night, so it was a long night. Here's what i did.

Spiced Apple Wine.

5 kg sugar.
yeast nutrient, yeast energiser, pectic enzymes as per package directions
3/4 tsp wine tannin (according to minimum package directions)
2tsp acid blend (according to minimum package directions)
375g sultanas
Top up to 6 gallons with apple juice

Stir till mixed, didn't heat it or sanitize it on anything since my stove was full of other things and I was gonna be pitching right away.

I was sleepy when I was pitching, so I pitched the wrong yeast. I had meant to pitch Cote des blancs, but accidentally pitched Wyeast Cider smack-pack 4766. On later research I learned that maybe that was fortuitous. Some folks have said that yeast doesn't hold aroma and I really, really don't wanna lose the aroma on the quince. Hopefully it holds arome, but I am gonna add a bunch of spice in the secondary, so there'll be supporting flavours. I'll be adding

Sassafrass
Rose petals
Cinnamon
Star anise

in the secondary, maybe with a little oak and williamette hops. I pitched the yeast into (pretty cold) must last night, and maybe 20 hours later I've just had to put it in a primary bucket because it was blowing the top off the carboy.

16.5% potential alcohol.

Strong sweet cyser.


Redo of the one I did last year that is now starting to taste pretty amazing but would probably be even better in another year or two:

~8 kg honey (I may have poured a little heavily)
tannin, acid, pectic enzyme, yeast energiser, yeast nutrient as per lowest package directions
apple juice to fill (about 4.5 gallons)

I heated the honey briefly on the stove till it was liquid enough to pour through a funnel into the carboy, topped it up with the (very cold) apple juice, stirred a lot, then pitched the same yeast I used last year, the Wyeast smack-pack sweet mead yeast 4184.

Last year I hadn't added the tannin or acid, but I really liked its effect on the juice.

18-19% (!) potential alcohol.

Apple quince wine.

Half a shopping bag of frozen quinces.
5kg sugar
tannin, acid, energiser, enzymes, nutrient
fill to 6gallons apple juice (about 5 gallons)

Stir till mixed. Pitched Red Star Cotes des blancs because I had accidentally pitched the cider yeast into the spiced apple. The quinces were still frozen solid so I didn't break them up much or anything, so I 'll be poking them when I stir it from time to time.

Potential alcohol 17% (measured quite cold).

Candy apple graff.

Steep in 1.5 gallons water at 150-160:

0.75 lb Crystal 60L
0.65 lb Special B
1 lb Carapils
1.5 lb Acidulated malt

Pull the grains out, rinse them in a little hot water. Put that hot water in there too. Toss the grains. Add

3 lb pale dry malt extract

Start boiling. Add

0.5 oz Williamette hops.

Boil for half an hour. The Williamette hops smelled so good I added

0.5 oz Williamette hops

right at the end, then chilled the whole thing down a little and poured it into 18L apple juice to make up the six gallons. Pitched Safale - 04 yeast to keep some sweet in. I really liked the taste the acidulated malt lent the wort. I'm considering adding some tannins and acids in here too.



I just pitched some nottingham yeast directly into the last cider, I am making another graff out of it but ran out of time and figured that was the best way of preserving the juice, so that's what I'll go do now.

Apple juice info: Tank A: Brix = 10.8 PH = 4.6 EC = 1.7
Tank B: Brix = 11.0 PH = 4.3 EC = 1.6
Mix of Apples : 4 parts Honeycrisp; 5 parts Jonagold; 1 part Granny smith


urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Moved, so I can get back to it. In preparation for bottling, which is in turn preparation for refilling carboys with new stuff:

Rose petal mead: very sweet and gorgeous. Rose and honey aroma play so well, just enough clove to balance. Might benefit from that orange peel I skipped. Need to be sure it's stopped. A little bit thin - feeling, I think to counteract that and the sweet I'll bottle it sparkling. I hate the rapey awful term 'panty remover' but yeah. Have two carboys full, might bottle one sparking as is, try adding orange peel infused vodka to the other and tasting to see if it'll be good still.

Apple mead: crazy apple aroma, again sweet like candy but with enough other stuff going on I'm not worried about needing carbonation to complexify it. There's some sort of secondary fermentation going on with this, it's sucking air very slowly in. I will filter this before bottling therefore. Weird taste disappeared.

Barleywine: wouldn't be bad if it hadn't oxidized. I understand what they mean about a flat papery taste at the end. I'm not sure if adding some raisins would help? It's ok but not great.

Kousa: I love the taste of this. Lots of yeast flavor, which plays in a super fun way with the taste of the kousa itself. There's a lot of alcohol in here, which a touch of bitter finish, that could maybe usr another six months. Good to be bottled though.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Racked everything except kousa Dec 24th.

Apple mead had dropped to 5% potential alcohol, started at 18% (note my readings are not incredibly accurate due to temperature). So it's 13% booze right now and sweet as a summer day. There's no airlock activity but I'm letting it hang out in the carboy till I figure out what I'm bottling it in (something tiny!). It's gorgeously amber and clear.

Juniper apple wine is crisp, lovely, and settled in at 0.995 specific gravity (0% potential alcohol) from 1.1 or 14% potential. So let's call it 14% alcohol in there, really intensely clear and I'm pretty much a fan. It does taste a little hot, gonna let it carboy age for awhile as per the mead and bottle it.

Because I'm not moving for a couple months I might just have one big bottling day near the end.

Ciders tasted really bready, I'm hoping that'll drop out of them. I've given some thought to adding honey-water to clear them faster, to boost alcohol and thus preservation ability, and just to play.

Kousa is hanging out, I need another 5gal carboy to rack it into. It's clearing some into an amazing warm pink.

I love the way the colours change when the yeast drops out.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Quick notes:

Made the coffee cake from my fallen-apart Betty Crocker cookbook. Is still excellent.

Racked and tasted everything.

Apple mead is at ~9% potential alcohol by volume, tastes amazing.

Apple juniper wine is at 1% potential, has some sitting to do but tastes nice. A little retsina-like.

Added straight apple juice to top up the above two.

Kousa wine tastes like hooch. Racked it down to a 5 gallon. It'll take some time.

Graff did not get bottled today because me & brewing partner got distracted. Tastes awesome, better with the not-sour.

Started two ciders today: straight juice with Safale-04 yeast, one with Big Gin-soaked juniper berries, one without. Considering adding some honey to them at some point maybe, but curios where they go on their own. they were right around 5-6% potential alcohol, it was more juice from upvalley straight from the farm. Apparently it's UV-pasteurized there, but not boiled.

Have six full carboys, two empty ones. There will be one more empty one after graff is bottled. Also have half a bucket of honey (one bucket plus the apple juice made 6gal mead), some sweet mead yeast, some narbonnes yeast, and some lambic brett in the fridge.

Hmm, hmm, hmm.

Sorta drunkish from tasting everything, so notes are half-assed but here while I remember them.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Alright, so, brewing time. I am currently making Brandon O's Graff ( http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/graff-malty-slightly-hopped-cider-117117/ ) with of course some alterations.

Also: my apartment smells like malt and hops.

Okay, so I basically followed the base recipe with a bunch of alterations and details: I used 1.1 kilos amber liquid malt extract instead of 2 lbs dried malt extract, and 1/2 lb crystal 120L, because I like those dark roasty tastes a lot. Instead of buying apple juice, I used a can of Vinter's Harvest apple wine base, so basically apple juice concentrate, diluted up to 4 gallons. The hops I picked were wakatu, because I loved their smell. Yeast is Safale-05.

For my first official wort-making, it's going well. Things taste good. I'm not sure I like the intensity of hop smell in here. Wish me luck! Will record specific gravity later on.

[Edit: 1.04 specific gravity or about 5% potential alcohol]

[Edit on Nov 04, 2013: I went to bottle this pretty late, end of last week, and I hadn't transferred it to an airlocked carboy. It tasted distinctly sour: I kind of liked the taste, did some research, consulted, and ended up priming and bottling half of it to see where it goes. I am worried that it will form a pellicle in the bottles, in which case I'll throw it out. If not, and it carbonates, and I like it, I will drink the half I kept. But: I think my primaries are scratched enough to harbour bacteria, and I trust cleanliness of glass, so I'm running everything in glass for awhile. Next update will be when it carbonates.]

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