urbandryad

Cranberry honey 6kg with 1tsp acid and plenty of nutrient on the yeast cake from the truly excellent berlinerweisse cyser (previously had added a little sweet mead yeast too). Put in cold. 11% potential.

Intention mead 7kg orange blossom honey with potential to add more since it was reading weird. Maybe 11 or 13% potential, nutrient, wyeast sweet mead yeast.

Bottled this year's candy apple graff, it's very light and needs to age but may end up pleasantly light and tart for summer. Also bottled the berlinerweisse cyser which is lovely lovely tart and honeyed. Both carbonated in small bottles.

Also made rose lemonade with honey in the instant pot. Definite yes.

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.

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