Homebrew Lager Kit

As mentioned in a very recent post, I got a lager making kit for Christmas. Yesterday I went to see my sister and brother-in-law and he has recently made the same kit so I had a chance to taste it before actually making it. I must say I was impressed with the flavour and decided to waste as little time as possible starting my own brew. I couldn't start it the same day so as soon as I'd let the chickens out this morning I got started.

The process was really easy as it was from an all in one kit. All I had to do was sterilize the brewing bucket and provide 1kg of sugar then make up with water to 23l.

1kg of sugar

The contents of the tin of lager mix.

Pour the contents into the bucket

Once sugar and mix are added put some water in to dissolve sugar.

When all is dissolved add water to make to 23l then sprinkle the sachet of yeast into the brew.  I then took a gravity reading of 1.034 at this point so will know the strength of the lager.

The whole process was really easy and I would encourage people to have a go themselves. The next thing to do is wait 4-8 days until fermentation has finished and then bottle it, then leave a further week or 2 for flavour to develop. I'll let you know how it goes. At some point in the future I will aim to make beer or lager without the aid of a kit but this will suffice for now.

Raspberry Wine From Frozen Fruit

I have started a new batch of raspberry wine, mainly to free up some space in the freezer but also because I like wine!  This will probably taste different to my first batch of raspberry wine (which can be found at this link) for a couple of reasons; the first reason is I didn't use the same technique to make the wine and secondly (and more importantly) the alcohol content will probably be much higher, I'll explain why later.

The method I used for this batch was as follows....

Firstly I defrosted a large bag of berries; they had frozen into a large block and when defrosted a lot of juice had already been released. I didn't weigh the berries but have an idea in my head of how large the bag was, slightly smaller than a bowling ball!

The next step I did was to pour a kettle of boiling water over the berries, approx 1.7 litres, to encourage more juice to be released. Then I poured the mix through a sieve in an attempt to catch any seeds and reduce the amount of pulp going through. With the pulp that was left over I poured the same amount of boiling water again and repeated the last step. Satisfied that I had got a good amount of juice from the berries I discarded the remaining pulp, it had lost most if it's colour anyway.

The pulp still full of juice.

Below is a video of me shaking the juice out!

When the mix had cooled enough I added a teaspoon of pectolase to further help break the fruit down and covered the bowl to leave it overnight. The next day I added the sugar, this is another area that I differed from the previous raspberry wine; instead of measuring the amount of sugar that went in I just measured the gravity and stopped adding sugar when I was happy. It was roughly 1.75kg of sugar but the main point is that the SG was 1.111 which will give a much higher alcohol level if all this is converted. For example, if the final gravity is .99  then alcohol level would be over 16% which I'm more than happy with!

When all the sugar was dissolved I moved the mix into a clean sterilized demijohn, again passing it through a sieve to collect any pulp. Once it was in the demijohn I added a teaspoon of yeast before putting an airlock on. The demijohn was then put to one side in the kitchen with plenty of kitchen roll underneath, just in case it overflowed like my plum wine did!

While I was waiting for this wine to start working I racked the plum wine. It seemed to have stopped bubbling and has been fermenting for about 3 months. There was a think layer of sediment in the bottom of this demijohn, partly from the fermentation and partly because I left a lot of pulp in the juice. This seems to have formed into small balls and sunk to the bottom. Now it is in a fresh demijohn and its clearing nicely. I had a small taste of the wine and am impressed with the flavour so far. Give it some time to mature and it'll hopefully taste great!

The debris in the bottom of  the plum wine.

Once a couple of days had passed the raspberry wine was bubbling away very happily. It has got an amount of pulp that has formed into balls, similar to the plum wine and due to the strong fermentation these are all floating at the top. Luckily there isn't as much as was with the plum wine so haven't had a eruption like before.

The raspberry wine at the front and plum behind

An Update on Homebrew

Over the weekend I decided it was time to bottle my second batch of mead, which was started all the way back in January. I didn't have a hydrometer when I first started so no gravity reading was taken, which means I won't know the alcohol level of this batch.

This batch was a really large one so I have four demijohns of it to process,three are unaltered and one has been sweetened with extra honey. The unaltered ones were all that I had time to do. I started by sterilizing the vessels that the mead would be going into, in this case I am using my earthenware demijohns for this; the two earthenware vessels hold the same as the three glass ones I'm transferring from. I also added a campden tablet to the mead before in the glass demijohns; this helps by killing off wild yeast and bad bacteria. When everything was sterile I started to transfer the mead into the stone vessels.

A campden tablet crushed ready to be added.

Once completed I put a rubber bung into the larger of the two and attempted to put a cork in the smaller one. I say attempted as the hole was slightly too large for the cork. I had picked up a tip from a friend to make corking easier, which was to soak the cork first to make it go in the hole easier. I thought that this could be why the cork was too small so I tried a dry cork and found this to be same. As I had no other corks at this stage I had to start getting inventive. I thought the most suitable thing to use would be beeswax. I quickly melted some wax and then poured it around the cork making it a complete seal. I'm not totally sure if it's worked so will check it again later and use more wax if needed.

The only thing to do now is wait. During the process I have tried to mead on several occasions and unfortunately it hasn't tasted too great, in fact it tasted pretty bland though ageing the mead is supposed to improve flavour. If after a year the taste is still poor then I will still drink it but use something to mix in it, possibly ginger ale. In the future when experimenting with recipes I will make smaller batches so not as much honey is used. I still have plenty of honey that my dad acquired for me so will keep using that rather than experimenting with my own honey!

Racking

Due to recent death of my mother this is my first post in a couple of weeks so my blog has fallen behind a little. She was an exceptional mother and grandmother who always encouraged me to do the things I'm passionate about so would have wanted me to carry on with my blog. I have several things I would like to post about and the first is the racking of my mead and wine.

I had several days at racking as I have a lot of mead on the go at the moment. The 30 litre batch that I started at the beginning of the year was split into 4 demijohns a few months ago so that took a couple of days to rack. This batch is just a straight mead with no other flavourings apart from 1 of the demijohns which I added extra honey to sweeten. Though I didn't have a hydrometer to begin with I have since roughly worked out the starting gravity or S.G. to be 1.060 and the current gravity is 0.97 which would give a ABV OF 12%. This batch is also clearing nicely and will be bottled next month and then set aside to age, hopefully this will make it taste nicer!

The dandelion wine, which is in a 3 litre pop bottle, was also racked and that has a nicer smell than it had before! The colour is still similar to red wine, due to the red grape juice added, but it appears a little clearer. No gravity readings have been taken at any point on this wine so will be a wild card when it is drunk.

The lemon and ginger mead I started in March was the next. This had a S.G. of 1.090 and is now about 15-16% ABV. I did mention in a earlier post that I would bottle this at 12% but as it's already gone over I will now leave for it to run it's course. I didn't taste this while racking so am unaware if it's got a nice taste yet but in time will find out.

Finally I bottled my second batch of JAO mead. This followed the same recipe as the first batch I did but am unsure what it tastes like yet as I haven't tried it yet. I didn't write a post about this when it was started and  haven't recorded the gravity at any point so again I am unable to tell how strong it is. Oh well, that just adds an extra layer of fun when drinking it!

The dandelion wine.

Racking from the earthenware "johns"

MEAD!!!!!!

Raspberry Wine

As there was a huge glut of raspberries again this year, along with jam, we decided to do a batch of raspberry wine. I did a quick Google search and came up with a recipe found at this link. I didn't fully follow the recipe but used it as a guide.

A small section of raspberries, there is about 30 metres of them!

8 kilograms of berries!

We started with a huge container of raspberries and started straining the juice out for use in seedless jam. First off we filled a muslin square with berries and once a knot was tied in the top we started squeezing the juice out. When we had 3 kilos of juice we put that to one side and used that to make the jam. What was left in the muslin was then squeezed out into a bucket along with 7 pints of water, a crushed campden tablet, a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, half teaspoon of pectic enzyme, half teaspoon of citric acid and about enough sugar to bring the mix's starting gravity to 1.092. I then left the mix over night and then squeezed the bag before adding a teaspoon of wine yeast. After 5 days the mix had reached a gravity of 1.020 so I squeezed as much juice out of the bag as I could and then racked it into a glass demijohn and added a airlock. I will now leave it a few months before racking again.

The mix in the fermenting bucket with the hydrometer to measure the gravity.

The wine in the glass demijohn.

Mead!!!!

I have finally bottled my first batch of mead, the JAO. It produced approx 3.5 Litres. The recipe I followed doesn't mention adding anything to stop secondary fermentation, however I added a campden tablet prior to bottling just to make sure no further fermentation took place. I did this as I really don't want exploding bottles of mead; one reason being I've waited a long time for it but more important is I don't want to risk hurting anyone, especially my young daughter.

This picture shows the bottled product. These are 1 Litre bottles. The mead at this point is rather cloudy but I'm advised that it will clear if left a couple of months and the taste will be better. I'm not sure I will be able to wait this long as I have already opened one of these bottles!!

In these 2 glasses are the last bits to be syphoned out of the demijohn. It is cloudier than the bottled product as part of the sediment was sucked through the tube. It was still very tasty but had a slight off taste that my unrefined palate couldn't name, but I'm putting this down to the sediment as further drinking from the bottled product had a much nicer taste and cleared appearance. If I was to try to describe the taste of the bottled product I would say it was sweet but not overly sweet, with subtle orange flavour and a warming after taste. I will certainly be making more!

The hard part now is saving at least one bottle to allow to mature. It's recommended to leave at least 2 months but I'm not sure I'll be able to. As I consider this batch a success next time I may make a larger batch, that way I would have more chance of saving some to mature. Also when I finally get some bees and am harvesting my own honey, the mead produced should be better quality. At the moment I am still using bulk commercial honey.

Update on Second Batch of Mead

While searching the net for more mead recepies I came across the following guide on High Wycombe Beekeepers Association website

2 lb. honey in 1 gal. gives S.G. 1.060, potential alcohol 7.8%.
3 lb. honey in 1 gal. gives S.G. 1.090, potential alcohol 12%.
4 lb. honey in 1 gal. gives S.G. 1.120, potential alcohol 16.3%.

Dry Mead: Starting S.G. 1.085-1.105. Finish S.G. 0.990-1.000.
Medium Mead: Starting S.G. 1.105-1.120. Finish S.G. 1.000-1.005.
Sweet Mead: Starting S.G. 1.120-1.130. Finish S.G. 1.005-1.015.

Using this bit of info I tried to work out roughly how much alcohol my second batch of mead would produce. I started off working in litres and kilograms so my first step was to convert to gallons and pounds.

Using google to convert:-

6kg > 13.2lbs
30L > 6.6 gal  (in my original post it says 25L but later I checked and it was closer to 30L)

This would give a 2:1 Honey:Water ratio and approx S.G. of 1.060, potential alcohol 7.8% which is much lower than I originaly thought. I should really have used upto twice as much honey in the mix. Due to this and the lack of activity over the last few days in the recently racked mead I will be doing a hydrometer test on it soon. If the gravity reading is 1.005 or less then I believe the fermentation will have stopped and the mead will be ready, even though slightly weaker than anticipated.

Ginger and Lemon Mead

I have started another batch of mead. This one is very experimental and again I haven't followed a strict recipe. This mead (as it contains honey, lemon and ginger) will be called medicinal mead!


To start this one off I copied instructions I had found for making a yeast starter. This involved putting a teaspoon of wine yeast in a jam jar with a couple of teaspoons of ginger and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. I then gave this a good shake and then added the juice of a whole lemon. The next thing to do was to put a piece of kitchen towel over the top to stop dust getting in. Within half an hour it was fizzing quite happily.

The next day I added another couple of teaspoons of grated ginger and the same amount of sugar. By this point it was fizzing like a freshly opened can of ginger beer and smelling like one as well!! I left the jam jar for about 12 hours then made the mead. To start I boiled a large pan of water and left it to cool; this is done to get rid of the chlorine in the water. I then weighed out 1.5kg of honey. This was easier said than done as all my honey has now solidified and I did bend a spoon or 2, I eventually went for the wooden spoon option. The honey was then dissolved in about 2 litres of the pre boiled water which was still warm so dissolved fairly easily. This honey water was then put in to a 1 gallon demijohn. The juice of 2 lemons and the rind from 1 was added into the demijohn along with a handful of sultanas and about a tablespoon of grated ginger (I didn't measure this and just added to taste). The last thing to go in was the contents of the jam jar. When all the ingredients were in I put further water in the demijohn to make it up to 4.5 litres.

Using my newly bought hydrometer I then took a gravity reading that was 1.080; this is known as the specific gravity or SG. When the mead has fully fermented I will take a further reading and then be able to work out roughly how much alcohol is in the brew by using a formula. The formula is quite complicated so I will be using an online calculator. About half an hour after adding all the ingredients and looking on the Internet at different SG levels I decided my level wasn't quite high enough so I added sugar to make my SG level 1.090. After I applied an airlock I checked back on it after about half an hour and found it to already be bubbling away very happily, almost worryingly fast!

I will now leave this in a warm place for a few months and then rack it and take another gravity measurement. If the alcohol level is 12% or above I will probably bottle it then.

This picture was taken a day after everything was put in the demijohn and you can see a layer of foam forming at the top as it is fermenting so rapidly. The bottle that is partly in the shot, to the right of the main bottle, is my first mead which is still not quite ready.


I would also like to add a note thanking my proof reader and editor, Steph, for the work she does correcting my grammar before I publish new posts. She has started writing her own blog about chickens, I think you should follow this link and have a read!