The Home Brewing Thread -

[Arkangel]

This will be a thread to discuss the hobby of home brewing; making your own booze at home (beers, wines, meads, etc). feel free to discuss recipes, ideas, experiences, and many more things related to the hobby.

I myself currently have two 1-gallon batches going:

Blueberry Wine
Blackberry Honey Mead

On my "To brew" list are:

Bochet (blackened honey mead)
Dandelion Wine
Cherry Wine
Raspberry Mead

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

I don't drink due to medical reasons, but I saw a video on mead making recently and found it interesting:

 

[Arkangel]

Yeah. It's from that website stormthecastle.com. Funnily enough, It was THE website that inspired me to start home brewing. I found it while doing some research after I saw a friend make their own mead.

So, earlier today I put together a batch of dandelion wine from dandelions around the property.

Basically, you pick them, give them a good rinse to remove any stray bugs and dirt, and then you steep them in water like tea and then strain the water into the fermentor. It smelled A LOT like chamomile tea. For my recipe, I added 2 3/4 lbs of white sugar to provide for the alcohol and sweetness. I then added the zest of two tangerines and the juice of 5 of them to add more body and citrus nodes to it. Finally I added acid blend, the nutrients, and yeast to the mix; Red Star Dry Champagne Yeast. Now, I just let it sit and do it's thing.

 

[Duke Nukem]

I brew beer. I have a Mr. Beer kit and it is sufficient for my needs. I don't have a lot of room, or a basement, so I don't really have much I can do there.

 

[Coldgrip]

I'm not brewing anything at this moment, but normally I just take the fruit, mush it up a bit, add some filtered water to it and let it sit in a carboy atop the fridge. The last batch me and a friend brewed up mostly consisted of cheries with a half a ziplock bag of black berries. Afterwards, we concentrated it.

 

[Arkangel]

I'm not brewing anything at this moment, but normally I just take the fruit, mush it up a bit, add some filtered water to it and let it sit in a carboy atop the fridge. The last batch me and a friend brewed up mostly consisted of cheries with a half a ziplock bag of black berries. Afterwards, we concentrated it.

Sounds pretty crude. I want to do something with cherries, but they're not in season yet.

 

[Coldgrip]

Yeah, we know what we're making is about on par with rotgut, but fruit is cheap and it'll get us (well me mostly cause I'm the one who drinks most of it) buzzed.

I'm personally waiting for the grapes to be in season.

 

[GV 002]

The mister makes cider every other year, usually depends on the apple yield. There's this one big fuckoff apple tree in his dad's garden that's left over from the land being a massive orchard, so we're never short of apples to do things to. They also happen to be bramleys, so if the season isn't a good one, or if we have a surplus, they're still good for pressing and cooking - which usually results in a tidal wave of apple pie/crumble/cobbler/sauce/tart etc for a few weeks which certainly keeps me busy!

Recently the mister's also teamed up his best friend, who has a fair amount of previous brewing experience, and started making beer - last thing they made was some ruby ale, which was pretty decent. We also tend to find a ton of wild sloes when hiking during the right season, so the occasional bigarse bottle of sloe gin has it's place in the house too! Pretty sure we're thinking of doing some dark mead for the next booze adventure, as well as setting up a rumpot for the winter.

 

[Arkangel]

My blueberry wine is almost finished(maybe another week or so); it's almost fully clear and it smells fantastic. I just bought some bottles, corks, and shrink-caps at the local store today. I'm thankful for having a homebrew store in town; online shipping for a case of glass bottles would have been like 10 extra dollars I didn't need to spend.

 

[Arkangel]

So, I finally bottled my blueberry wine. I got 4 and a half bottles out of it (waste not want not). I am impressed with how it came out. It's very drinkable now; very tart with a good mouthfeel and a light body of blueberries. Hopefully a few months of aging will mellow out the tartness a little bit.

Now that I have an open glass jug, I'm thinking of what I want to try next. I'm thinking either mangoes or cherries.

It's amazing what you can make with frozen fruit and table sugar.