Out With The Old...

In November 2012 I received some bad news from my Dad and I have been putting off posting about it until now. The news was in relation to the allotment my Dad has held since 1984, which is also the one that I keep my Bees on, stating that he will have to give up this allotment at the end of January 2013. The reason they have given him is that because he already has another allotment he is not allowed a second. The other one is withing walking distance of his house and has his greenhouses on so I can't expect him to give this one up however it is right next to a school so Bees will be a big no on this site!

Between me and my Dad there were a few mixed emotions, mainly a feeling of slight anger from my Dad and panic from myself. My Dad has many well established trees in the allotment that won't be easy work to move not to mention that he had just spent a good many hours digging in the manure to prepare the soil for next years growing season and then there's the Bees. In the small time frame from receiving notice to end of January there is not much time to find a new site, prepare the site and the move the Bees.

Now for the more positive news. I have been mentioning my problem to a few people and have a few friends who have said they will keep an eye out for places but so far no luck. I have also sent an email to the allotment committee to ask if it is at all possible to either sign the allotment over to my name, or split the allotment in 2 leaving me the half with the Bees or get an extension to give me more time. They have not got back to me yet. In the mean time my Dad has been far more successful than me and has found a friend with some land that he's willing to let us use.

The land is approximately 1.5 miles away from my dads allotment as the Bee flies and few hundred feet further travel from my home but the best thing is that is on my route to and from work so if needed I can visit straight from work. The land is slightly bigger by my reckoning using google maps to measure the boundaries (roughly), but not by a great amount. There is a good water source right next to the land in the form of a stream. The land has been used to raise pigs in the last few years so there is plenty of well rotted pig muck just under the surface.

I have included some photos below, including an attempt at a panoramic, and in these photos you'll be able to see that there is still a load of work to be done but with some hard work I'm sure it'll look excellent in no time and be producing loads of food and room for plenty of Bee hives!

  

Weeds, junk and tree stumps

The first tree planted! Baking apples!

Access to the stream

More of the stream

More weeds!

The twigs sticking out of the ground  in a row are raspberry bushes

Home Made Lager and Other Homebrew

This is my first post of the new year as I have been too busy to write up what I've been up to. You may (or may not) remember that I started a batch of home brewed lager in my last post. Since then I have bottled and started drinking it. I didn't get any pictures of the bottling process as it was a little tricky to keep control of the siphoning tube while getting the next bottle ready and making sure the bottle I was working on didn't overflow! The process was fairly simple and at the end of it I had about 20 bottles with a litre of lager in them. Prior to bottling I had added a teaspoon of sugar to each one to allow it to ferment a slight bit more; this is what gives it bubbles. After that I put the bottles in a box and placed them next to a radiator for a few days then moved them somewhere cooler and like magic a couple of weeks later I had a lager that was not only drinkable but also quite nice!

A box of litre bottles

Bottles after being sterilized

The lids being sterilized

The finished product (and I was worried it wouldn't have enough fizz!)

I have also racked a demijohn of wine and a couple of meads. As it would be a little repetitive posting pictures of it I haven't done so. The wine I racked was my second batch of raspberry. I had a sneaky taste while I was racking and I believe this will be a strong tasting wine, my partner didn't approve too much of it. The meads I racked were a JAO mead and the ginger mead I started in late February last year! The ginger mead is tasting nice but will be better when it has aged a few more months, I intend on bottling it fairly soon. The JAO is looking like the best I have made so far. It is very clear and has a lovely golden colour to it, I didn't taste this one as I have a good idea what it tastes like already. This will be bottled soon also and possibly 1 bottle will be hidden away for 17 years as a birthday present for my daughters 18th!

Wine and Mead Bottled

I have been busy over the last few days bottling and racking some of my home brew. The brews I have done in the last few days have been ones where I was unable to get a initial gravity reading so I won't know how strong they are but that's half the fun.

To start with I bottled my dandelion wine (original post can be found here) as this was a smaller batch and one of the older ones. I have had a sneaky taste of it and so far it tastes quite nice, actually a lot nicer than I was expecting although this could be the flavour of the red grape juice I used. Either way if the taste gets better from what it is at the moment then I'm on to a winner and will make a much larger batch next year. I got 3 full bottles and a part bottle, the part bottle is in the fridge ready to drink and the others I have stored in the loft to age; by ageing the wine I hope to further improve the flavour.

Dandelion wine in home made Demijohn, dilute pop bottle!

Bottles I've been collecting. Soaking to try to loosen the labels. The next step was to sterilize them.

The finished product bottled and now away in storage in my loft. 

The next thing I bottled was the remainder of the second batch of mead I made at the start of the year (again link for that post here). This was a really large batch and I already have 3 gallons of it stored in my earthenware demijohns (link to that post here; in that post it says I have 4 demijohns but actually I had 5) that my granddad gave me at the beginning of the year. That left me with 2 demijohns with the mead in; one of these I have left alone and the other I added more honey to a while ago although I can't find the post that says how much honey was added, oh well! I got 6 bottles from each demijohn and have stored them along with the dandelion wine. I had a small taste of the mead as it was being bottled and it has got some taste, more than it has in previous tests, it may turn out nice after all when it's aged a while.

Bottled up and ready for storage.

The sweetened mead ready for storage.

Once I'd bottled all the mead I had a few empty demijohns so while I had the equipment out I also racked one batch of raspberry wine. This batch has been going since July so is also nearly ready to bottle up but I now have a shortage of wine bottles so will be asking my dad to start saving them again for me. The raspberry wine had developed a thin layer of sediment on the bottom, which is to be expected as this was the second time I racked it, the first time it had a very thick layer of sediment. Next time there will, hopefully, be little to no sediment for when I bottle it.

And finally with the remaining demijohns I had I've made 2 further batches of J.A.O. mead as this is my favorite and easiest to do. I followed the method on this page but as with the last batch of this I made I have upped the amount of honey to 1.8kg so now have 3 demijohns full of this at various stages of development! I hope the extra honey doesn't spoil it but I doubt it will, they are all smelling rather nice and the oldest of the 3 is clearing nicely.

Solidified honey.

Not even 1kg yet. 

1.8kg dissolving in boiled water that has been left to cool for about 30 minutes

This much honey takes a long time to dissolve even with vigorous stirring

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