the homebrew blogtrain

[MadJohnShaft]

I'm going to the national homebrew Association convention next week in Baltimore

[MadJohnShaft]

Which was super fun, probably will do MPLS next year.


I started some sauerkraut finally, oh yeahs

[MadJohnShaft]

Started some strawberry rhubarb hooch with some champagne yeast and some elderflower open fermented hooch with a shot of the yeast.

Yeah!

I think the elderflower stuff is going in a second ferment with Kombucho unless it tastes great alone.


The Mulberries are ready on the tree at work, trying to pick enough to do something with them - I handily picked a quart yesterday but probably need a gallon

[MadJohnShaft]

The Elderflower stuff is amazing, wish I would have logged what I did. It's way over-carbed so I cracked the top on the bottles and two were ready to explode.

A win!

[khoomeizhi]

it's not actually 'homebrewing' in the normal sense, but i've got a batch of nocino that i started last month - it's an italian liqueur made with green (shells still soft, hulls still on) walnuts.

also started my annual july 'starting basic' mead, so i have something to rack onto whatever local fruit there's available in october. hoping for another good pawpaw year.

[MadJohnShaft]

Making some mint wine, we'll see what happens. I have a choice between dry and sweet white wine yeast,  leaning toward dry.


I have frozen about 6 pints of red mulberries I picked and another quart of black raspberries to add that will be made into wine once I figure out what to do


Might finally go to the Evanston HB club meeting this Thursday, they keep inviting me.

[khoomeizhi]

been picking lots of wild blueberries in the highlands near here. kinda crazy amounts - i think i've brought home upwards of 5 gallons all told to date in two trips in the past three weeks. just got back from the latest trip - going to start a 3-gallon wild blueberry mead tonight using mostly the wild yeast on the berries. pretty stoked.

[MadJohnShaft]

My strawberry/rhubarb wine got a white peccile after transferring, think I'll transfer again and use a camden tablet to kill everything.

[khoomeizhi]

yup. my kousa mead has got one at the moment, too, like they always do. it's about time to do a campden/bentonite thing.

[MadJohnShaft]

I should do another one about now.


Hey - almost hop picking season from the big long fence at work. Monitoring daily.

[khoomeizhi]

good season for wild yeast around here.

just started my 50th batch of mead - sourwood traditional. rolling along really well on a yeast bug made with local concord grape and persimmon.

[MadJohnShaft]

Car full of hops

[MadJohnShaft]

My last little bit of PITA on brew day solved - use Sous Vide with the temp off to stir the wort while chilling.

[khoomeizhi]

i successfully started one batch of mead per month this year. really need to bottle a few things  - though we bottled 3 gallons of a rooibos-mugwort mead tonight, and racked the other 3 gallons of that batch onto oak.

[MadJohnShaft]

I should try some of that bad mead from 2 years ago and see if it's better.


Today I brewed a Düsseldorf Alt outside in the snow. 0n tap I have Yuengling and Bells 2 Hearted clones and a new Pilsner carbing up. Since I started messing with water additives my beer has improved.

[Pissy]

Yuengling?  So you're lagering?

[MadJohnShaft]

Faux Lagering, which works fine for me.

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/fake-cold-brew-faux-lager/?type=success&msg=You%20have%20been%20logged%20in%20successfully!

[MadJohnShaft]

Heh - I love reading my old posts in this thread because it logs my progress in Homebrewing from the point I started up again in 2014 - like with every gear-heavy hobby, you over-reach and then dial it back to something much more optimal.



My last changes - I don't put hops in bags, I sparge with room temp water, play around with water chemistry, cold crash with gelatin, stopped using the dangerous glass carboys, clean with PBW and starsan, boil outside on deck but everything else is inside, and use a lot of dry yeast instead of the smack paks.

My brew day is about 5.5 hours now from start to putting everything away. I usually start about 6 AM and finishing up before noon is awesome.

Yeah Homebrewing!

[MadJohnShaft]

In 2016 I did

60 gallons or 12 five gallon batches of homebrew
10 gallons or so of wine/cider/mead
2 five gallon batches of soda
4 small second running batches of homebrew.

[khoomeizhi]

i still love my glass carboys - and still haven't broken any (knock something aside from them on wood).

anyway, looks like my full count for 2016 was 12 batches/18 gallons started and something like 6.3 batches/12 gallons bottled, all wild-yeast meads of some sort or another.

[MadJohnShaft]

You should participate in the Reddit on this topic, I learnt lots of helpful things from the beer Reggie.

[khoomeizhi]

bottled a gallon of chaga-birch mead i started last year - kind of fancy-ass rootbeer wine? just started another batch of same.

[MadJohnShaft]

I bottled up my strawberry rhubarb with some white and corn sugar, it was really really dry and I wanted to sweeten it up so it tastes more fruity. Will age for a while and see what happens, I killed off the yeasties first so no exploding this time.

[khoomeizhi]

just bottled 3 gallons of oaked lapsang souchong mead, and started three gallons of an experimental wild mead made with the slightly sweet (but also kind of bitter) water from processing kudzu starch. have a wild hare to rack it onto tamarind in a few months.

been bottling a fair bit so far this year from older batches - 10 gallons so far. also started doing a small number of 12oz beer bottles each time, for smaller more tradeable/giftable units.

[MadJohnShaft]

I made a wheat beer with
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen Beer Yeast
And like last time it took off like crazy and needed a blow off tube.