Cranberry Wine

I'm slowly making the move to greater than 1 gallon batches of beer.  The biggest expense in doing this is upgrading my brewing pots and mash tun.  Since I'm still buying furniture for my new apartment, I can't really justify those expenses yet.  However, fermenters are pretty inexpensive, and that's all you need to make wine.

I've made a few batches of wine in the past that have worked out pretty well.  Peaches made some of the best wine I've had.  Their flavor held up amazingly without the aid of sugar.  Blackberries made pretty good wine, but I had to add some sugar and preservatives (called back-sweetening).

Around this time of year cranberry sauce is pretty inexpensive, much more affordable than whole cranberries (at least down in Texas).  My idea was to use cranberry juice and cranberry sauce to make up the must.  It's always a good idea to use as much pure juice as you can.  The artificial flavors of "fake" juice will impact how the final product tastes, and a lot of fruit tastes different after fermentation.  The classic Cranberry cocktail juice is basically cranberry flavored sugar water.  Since I'm already not able to use raw fruit, I wanted to stay as close to real ingredients as I could.  I wasn't able to find 100% cranberry juice.  The juice I ended up using was a blend of 4 juices (cranberry, grape, apple, and pear) with cranberry as the main component and flavor.  The juice had a SG of around 1.040.  I was shooting for a strong wine, but the sugar content of the cranberry juice and sauce was much less than I was expecting.  Since I was expecting to have more sugar from the juice/sauce, I didn't stock up my pantry before blending the must.  I had 2 pounds of white table sugar and 1 pound of brown sugar that I added to raise the gravity to 1.080.  It means the wine will only be about 10-11%. Not quite the 14-15% I was shooting for.


I have no idea how cranberries are going to taste post-fermentation, but that's what experiments are for.

Cranberry Table Wine
//6 gallon batch

Ingredients

9.5 bottles 100% Juice Cranberry Juice (1/2 used for starter)
10 cans whole berry cranberry jelly
2 lbs white sugar
1 lb brown sugar


Additives
6 tsp Fermax yeast nutrient
3 tsp pectic enzyme (may need more to compensate for the jelly)
6 Campden tablets, crushed (to sanitize the must before pitching yeast)

Ferment
1L starter of Lalvin 71B-1122 (white, red, rose wines yeast)
With no airlock activity after 24 hours, I panicked
Sprinkled 1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 (champagne, all purpose)
OG 1.080

Notes
Blended Dec 1st
I wish I used more cranberry sauce, since it added less sugar than expected

First Tasting
Rack to secondary Dec 17th
Color is orange/pink, surprising since the juice and sauce was more maroon/burgundy
Very tart, will probably need to backsweeten this one.
Usually I'm trying to guess the final taste of my young wines through the alcohol heat, but there was none this time.

I had about a half gallon of wine and a half gallon of lees leftover after transfer.  (Lees are the wine equivalent of trub, the yeast and fruit parts leftover after racking.)  I put these leftovers into jugs to freeze and melt out some of the sugar and alcohol.  Maybe that can boost the weak body of the wine. I may end up freezing more and making a port/sherry.

Small Batch Barleywine

Before I moved, I stumbled upon a Stone Brewing tasting at my local liquor store. Since trying this year's Old Guardian Barleywine, I've been itching to try my hand at one.  It was easily one of the best complex beers I've had in a long time.  The caramel and honey sweetness was right up front, and even though it was 11% ABV there was no alcohol "heat".

I really like the idea of having a yearly brew that is tweaked each year. Anchor brewing does this with their Christmas Ale.  The Mad Fermentationist brews a dark Saison each year.  James and Steve over at Basic Brewing used to make a yearly 1 gallon (or less) barleywine and started a vertical tasting of each year's brew, although the last few years they have diverged from that.  I'm not sure if this will become my once-a-year brew yet.  It seems awfully tasty to only have 7-8 bottles a year.  Or only 1 bottle a year if I save it for vertical tastings...

This is a very "homebrewer" recipe.  I wanted to add a variety of complexities, so I threw in a little bit of everything.  Next time, I may try a single malt barleywine.  I was also trying to use up some of my stock of malts.  I really pushed the limits of my 2 gallon mash tun for this brew. I had a little more than 5 pounds of grain.  I usually shoot for a liquor/grain ratio of 2 quarts per pound.  Using basic math, that's more than 2 gallons of water needed, so I cut back a bit.  I collected a little less than 2 gallons of wort after a 60 minute mash at 150°F.

After tasting the hydrometer sample of the finished product, I am very excited about this beer.  I saved some for my girlfriend to taste the next day, and even though it wasn't carbonated or chilled, she was under the impression it was a finished product that she really liked.

Blockpoint 2012 Barleywine
//A "blockpoint" is what they call an update to a program

Grain Bill

4lbs            American 2-row
        9oz     Maris Otter
        2 oz    Crystal 60°L
        1.5oz  Special B
          .5oz  Chocolate Malt
        4oz     Aromatic Malt

Mash/Sparge
Target temperature 148°F
Starting temperature 150°F
Sparge temp 170°F
-Collected just under 2 gallons of total wort
Preboil gravity 1.057 (bigger than some of my regular brews!)

Boil (60 minutes)
15g Columbus (15.5% AA) @ 60 minutes
13g Columbus (15.5% AA) @ 15 minutes
15g Cascade (6.4%AA) @ 1 minute

Ferment
~3/4 packet Safale US05
Aerated by shaking vigerously
OG 1.100
FG 1.020
ABV: 10.7%

Bottle
4 weeks in primary fermenter
Priming sugar: 17g honey dissolved in 1 cup of water and boiled
Yielded 7 bottles

Cider Season

Living in Texas, we don't really have a lot of apple orchards like up north.  There are a few, I got peaches for my Peach Wine at Henrietta Creek, and they also grow apples.  But, none of them grow hard cider apples.  Usually these apples are more tannic, and terrible for eating plain.  Rather than going to buy fresh apples, making a press, pressing the apples into cider myself, and ending up with sub-par cider I just go to Walmart and get gallons of unpasteurized, unfiltered cider for $4.50.  It's a cheaper route at probably the same result.

Last year I made several batches. The first one developed an unpleasant sour/bitter taste after a couple months. I think this goes back to the source apples not being good for hard cider.  During batch-priming, I added a packet of Splenda for every 2 bottles. This unfermentable sweetness balanced out the bitterness well into the summer.  You can make still or carbonated versions, but carbonated it was a very refreshing drink in the middle of the Texas summer.

I also took a couple of gallons and froze it in some gallon jugs.  When inverted in a funnel over a jug, the alcohol and sugar will melt out faster than the water. It makes a drink called Ice Cider or Applejack.  Cider-makers in the northeast used to use this technique to take cider to market.  They could carry less weight and water it down before they sold it.  Unlike my regular cider, I leave my Applejack still.  It feels more like a Brandy. Basic Brewing has a great video podcast on the process.

This year, I'm trying something new that I'm calling Caramel Cider.  I boiled about a gallon and a quarter of store bought cider for an hour.  It reduced to around 2/3 of a gallon.  I always get wrapped up in how simple cider is, and after 6 batches I have never remembered to take a starting gravity reading.  The unboiled version usually gets down to 1.000.  I'm hoping the caramelization from the boil will create some unfermentable sugars so that I don't have to add Splenda again. You can see the color difference in the picture.


First Winter Cider 2012

3/4 gallon of Musselman's Cider
1/2 vial White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001)

Caramel Cider 

1.25 gallons Musselman's Cider
Boiled 1 hour, final volume approximately 2/3 gallon
1/2 vial White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001)

//Notes
Brewed 11-14-12
Did not take original gravity readings

Fig Dark Saison: Tasting

I'm planning to do a post like this for each recipe, assuming nothing goes terribly wrong with one.  I don't have the most advanced palate yet, but I'm only 22.  I only started drinking craft beer a year and a half ago, and even then it was mostly "I like that style" rather than doing a tasting analysis of it.  As with the blog in general, I intend for this to be an outlet for me to document my brews and develop my skills as a brewer and taster.  I hope you'll follow me on this journey.

Appearance:  Very dark.  Hints of deep brown around the edges.  Thin head forms around the edge, but goes away immediately.  Very small hiss when opened.  I didn't take notes past the brew day, so I can't be positive that I primed it.  It is fairly carbonated, however. 

Smell:  Malty with a hint of roast and caramel. Hops take a back note and are pretty much unnoticeable. 

Taste:  Exactly what I was going for with my original recipe.  Citrus up front.  A little bit of malt and caramel in the middle and a little bit of roast in the back.  The roast is really subtle, I guess the Carafa mostly added a lot more color than it did flavor.  Can't really taste any figs (which were a afterthought anyways).  Next time maybe I'll add more (and not blend them, that was a mess, there's fig chunks in the bottle of the glass).  Or just leave them out entirely.  

Mouthfeel:  The light carbonation works its way to the back of my tongue.  A little bit of sweetness remains, but it's very easy to drink.  Not cloyingly sweet or over-dry.  Just right.  

Overall + Thoughts:  Probably one of my favorite personal homebrews. I hit what I was expecting pretty well, since it's just a recipe I already liked with some Carafa thrown in.  It could stand to be a little more carbonated, however.  I really love this yeast (WLP566 Saison II).  It has great fruit notes, with just a hint of pepper.  Boulevard's Tank 7 (And Saison-Brett) is one of my favorite beers, and this yeast delivers that character.  Maybe I'll grab a bottle of Tank 7 and compare sometime.  

Next time I try to brew a dark saison I'm going to add something with more punch, a roasted or chocolate malt. 

Moving, Bear With Me!

Hey everyone! 

I just got a new job so I'll be moving down to the land of Aerospace, Houston Texas.  With looking for a job and a place to live, I've been insanely busy.  You know you're busy when you don't have time to drink beer.  I'm really excited though.  I found an apartment today, and the kitchen is HUGE.  Perfect for brewing.  This is great for me, great for my homebrew, and ultimately great for you as readers as well.  Unfortunately, it means I won't be able to post very much.  I have a lot of stuff in the works, but with packing and moving everything I own, my posts will be infrequent at best.  BUT: I have a lot of new posts coming up (probably next month).

Tastings:

Jaggery Dubbel (A dubbel brewed with Palm Sugar)

Dark Saison with Figs

Spontaneous Plum Wine (With an update about what I've done since week 1!)

Pineapple Pale Ale

Tours:

Messina Hof Winery in College Station, TX

Revolver Brewing (Grand Opening) in Granbury, TX

Bottling (no posts, but future tastings)

Mead (my first ever)

Peach Wine

Other Things:

DIY Stirplate build. It is awesome, I've had it 2 days and I'm in love.

Kombucha Brewing

Kombucha Troubleshooting (assuming my fix works) 

Post move, I'll be brewing a Barleywine, playing with Cream Ales (how would a porter with California Common yeast work?), a big batch of Cranberry wine, tons of Ciders (straight, ice cider, caramelized cider, and blending), and moving up to closer to 5 gallon batches!

Pineapple Pale Ale

Whenever I brew or talk about brewing, I have a few family members that always ask, "When are you going to brew the pineapple beer again?"  I've said in previous posts that I have yet to rebrew the same recipe.  Well, I finally gave in to the pressure.

The idea for this recipe started after a discussion about a friend's trip to Hawaii.  He told me about how there was pineapple-everything there. Pineapple wine, pineapple cakes, pineapple brandy, pineapple soaps, all sorts of pineapple-based goods.  Except no pineapple beer.  (This was before Maui Brewing Company started distributing Mana Wheat off of Maui.)  As an experiment, in my 4th or 5th batch of homebrew ever, I brewed a basic pale ale and added pineapple chunks in the secondary.  And my family hasn't stopped talking about it all year.

This recipe is pretty simple.  A few pounds of 2 row, a little 20L, and Chico yeast.  I decided to try out Safale's US-05 dry yeast on this batch.  I didn't write down how much pineapple I added last time, so I decided to follow the 2 pounds per gallon rule I've heard several times on Basic Brewing Radio.  I ended up getting crushed pineapple instead of chunked since it was cheaper and came in convenient 1 pound cans.  Big mistake.  The crushed pineapple was very fine, not nearly as simple as the chunks.  The additional sugars kicked of a second fermentation, and in less than 30 minutes I was having to punch down the fruit cap with the back of a spoon.  I ended up having to do this about 7 times in 3 hours.  Even though I replaced the airlock with a blowoff tube, the stopper was getting clogged.  Now, the pineapple flesh has settled, but it is very loose.  Not sure how racking is going to go.

Using canned pineapple makes sense to me.  This beer is all about the pineapple flavor/aroma.  Boiling/pasteurizing would cause some of this to be lost, and I'd have to process my own pineapple.

Abacaxi

Grain Bill
2 lbs 4 oz  2-row Barley Malt
4 oz          Crystal 20L
2 lbs         Crushed Pineapple (canned)

Mash/Sparge
target temp 150°F
starting temp 151°F
final temp 146°F
Batch Sparge
preboil: 2.5 gallons @ 1.028

Boil
20g "Magic Hop Dust" @ 60 minutes
10g "Magic Hop Dust" @ 13 minutes
10g "Magic Hop Dust" @ 0 minutes
("Magic Hop Dust" is Austin Homebrew's way to sell the debris leftover when they break up bales of hops. This batch was estimated to have 7% Alpha Acid)

Ferment
1 packet Safale US-05 "American Ale" Yeast
//sprinkled directly into wort, per instructions

OG 1.045 (not sure why it was so low compared to preboil)

Notes
Hour long cooling rest at 98°F because I got stuck on the phone with my insurance company
Bottled one plain Pale Ale on 9/24/12 (no priming sugar, hopefully it wasn't finished)

First Mead Ever

I thought it would be a while before I got around to making a mead.  For the last year, I've heard about how it takes a year to ferment and even longer to taste good.  Since then, I came across the idea of a "Staggered Nutrient Addition" which is a newer concept in home mead making.  I believe I came by this on Basic Brewing Radio.  I found Fermax yeast nutrient at my LHBS, Homebrew HQ.  One of the guys there said it's "specially formulated" for mead.

For my staggered nutrient addition, I decided to cut my additions into quarters.  The recipe I have calls for 2 tsp per gallon, so that means 4 additions of 1/2 tsp each.  I've opted for an addition at pitching (day 1), day 2, day 3, and day 7 to give the yeast a little finishing kick.  There are just as many suggestions about when and how much nutrient to add as there are mead makers.  I may change my additions for my next batch but so far it seems to be doing well.

After several recent clogged airlocks and crazy blow-offs, I cautiously backed my recipe down to around 3/4 of a gallon.  So far, the fermentation has produced very little krausen so I probably could have pulled off a full gallon.  My target was 1.100, but after adding 3 containers of honey I was at 1.095, so I decided to not open another.

First Mead

Ingredients
2.25 lbs "Organic Grade A" Honey, Kroger brand
2/3 gallon purified bottled water

Additions
1/2 tsp Fermax 9/4/12
1/2 tsp Fermax 9/5/12
1/2 tsp Fermax 9/6/12
1/2 tsp Fermax 9/9/12

Ferment
1 packet Lalvin 71b-1122
OG 1.095

Notes
Started 9/4/12
Honey via Texas Aggieland Brew Club from Kroger
Local water has a musty taste - algae bloom?
Aerated day 1 and 2 after nutrient additions (heavy shaking)
Added fourth nutrient addition early since yeast was starting to flocculate already

Bottled 10/26/12
Bottled directly from primary
4 bottles dosed with 10g of honey each
4 bottles kept still, no honey added