05.24.11 Home Brewed Ginger Beer Take 3

Ok, so this is the 3rd attempt at the ginger beer, see the first and second attempts for more information. I've learned something new with this batch, and that is write down the directions and don't try to follow the ones in your head. Since this was the 3rd time I tried to have a go at it just using my memories...  Which caused me to forget the correct number of teaspoons needed to feed it each day, I used 4 instead of the 6 the recipe calls for. It ended up not being too big of a deal, I had pre-measured everything out and was just spooning the ginger/sugar mix into the plant. As it was I just poured in what was left and waited another day before bottling.

This time I had made sure to strain the plant properly and even left some of the liquid behind in order to avoid getting any yeast into the bottles. I noticed as I was mixing the liquid into the water and sugar I that some yeast still made it through past the cheese cloth... It didn't seem to cause any problems with the carbing and they are now sitting in the fridge after two weeks. Next time I'm thinking that I'll try to double filter to try and limit the amount of yeast at the bottom of the bottles.

The batch tastes much the same as the first one, fairly sweet with a nice ginger taste without any sort of bite like commercial ginger beer has. Which if that is what you are going for it's nice and refreshing, I on the other hand would like for it to have just a little bit of a bite. I've read that some people have added habenero or bird's eye peppers to try and accomplish this. Next time I'm either going to try adding a pepper or maybe use real ginger instead of the powder (or just more powder >.>).

06.13.11 Cider tasting

I brought the remaining cider I had to a friend's place for a party at the beginning of the month and got a some feedback on them.

Concentrate Cider

Out of the two ciders there was less of this cider left at the end of the night. I'm not sure if it was just because people were turned off by a dry cider or because they wanted to try something different. (It has been explained to me that most commercial ciders in the area are pretty dry.)

It was described as having more taste then the Turbinado cider, which would make sense considering the can of concentrate that was used to back sweeten and carb it. When I had some it still seemed to be a little bit sour to me. And I believe that if I could reduce the sourness a little it would make for a more refreshing drink and something you could have more then one or two of at a time.

Turbinado Cider

This one had a muted apple taste to is and since it was lacking the concentrate turned out to be smoother. Although the dryness gave it an edge of its own. And from what I remember it seemed to be a little more winey then the other, I've heard that this has something to do with boosting the ABV with the turbinado sugar.

That's all I can remember about this one, not many people tried it so I wasn't able to get many opinions other then it was better then the concentrate cider. I'm thinking that it might be worth trying to either back sweeten it a lot with turbinado sugar or try priming with a little bit of concentrate.

Over all I think that both of these need more work. I want to either let them sit longer before bottling, or try a different yeast strain. From what I understand people have had some good results using ale yeasts. If I can find an easy source of them in town I'll give them a go next time instead of the wine yeast.

04.02.2011 Turbinado Cider

When I made the second attempt at the Concentrate cider I also tried making a dryer apfelwien like cider. The recipe was the same as the apfelwien, only instead of racking it and letting it age I gave it three weeks and then primed and bottled it. I tried to guesstimate the right about of sugar to prime it with from looking at beer recipes and came up with 35g. Looking at the finished results it carbed up nicely in about three weeks and maybe could have used just a little bit more. The carb was fine, but when compared to the Concentrate cider it seemed a little lackluster, though the concentrate cider was probably over carbed. When I make this again I'm thinking that I might try it with 40-45g of sugar to see if I can't find the upper limit.

Recipe:

4 cans Allen's apple juice

200g turbinado sugar

Lalvin 71b yeast

(On a side note, it might be worth while to dissolve the sugar in some warm water. Otherwise the foam from shaking takes too long to settle and causes problems when pitching the yeast. Though with saying that it is always possible to pitch the yeast on top of the foam and just shake it again to mix... )

Primary for 3 weeks and then prime with 35g turbinado sugar and bottle condition for 3 weeks.

SG: 1.056

FG: 1.000

ABV: 7.3%

When asking which one people preferred between the concentrate and the turbinado ciders it was always the concentrate one. They said that it had more apple taste where as the turbinado cider was a little bland. Which makes sense because of the concentrate that is used to prime the concentrate cider with. I'm not sure how I can increase the apple flavor of the turbinado cider. I have two idea right now; One is to back sweeten until it reaches the level of the concentrate cider, and the other is to try adding some spices to the primary (like cinnamon or cloves). Of course, I could just try both and see how they turn out.

04.02.2011 Concentrate Cider again

Back in April I started a second batch of the Concentrate Cider that I made in Feburary. This time I decided to not rush it and waited and additional week before bottling it. I figured that the extra week would allow more time for the yeast to fall out as well as clean up after itself. Once bottled I left them for 13 days (compared to 3 last time) before tossing them into the fridge. The caps had started to raise a little and looking back at the ginger beer it meant that they needed to go into the fridge right otherwise they could have become bottle bombs.

In addition to letting the cider sit in primary longer I also used a different yeast, Lalvin 71B. I had heard that it was good at malic fermentation and hoped that it would help with the sour taste that the last one had. It's still to early to tell as that I only had a little bit, I cracked a couple and shared them with some friends and they seemed to like it. It still seemed a little sour to me, but not as much as the first few from the last batch. With any luck when I crack the next one it will have mellowed out some more. Also it was mega carbed, the first sip that I had was all carb and bubbles. Which is a neat experience considering that cider doesn't really have any sort of head retention. I probably left them out too long to carb, but as long as they don't explode I don't mind. I'm holding onto them until the start of June when I'll be getting some friends to help me finish them.

Something that I found interesting was that even with the extra week the cider only fermented down to a FG of 1.000. I'm guessing that the concentrate is providing some sugars that are harder for the yeast to eat and end up being left behind. I also took a gravity reading of the cider after priming, it came out to be around 1.010. I believe that this is at the upper end of the dry range and would be considered a semi-sweet cider. Which, depending on what you like, could be better then the dryer commercial ciders.

04.02.2011 Anniversary Mead

When I was at a friend's wedding last summer I found out that the bride's parents had bee hives and were giving away small jars of honey to the guests. During the reception the day after I was able to mooch some of this honey off of the bride and had planned to make it into an anniversary mead once I felt that I had enough feedback and experience. I had tasted the JOAM and Jalapeno meads in January, and even though they were still pretty young I felt that they had progressed well enough that I would be able to start this without wasting the honey. The only issue was that I didn't have a source in town for the yeast I wanted to try (Lalvin 71B) nor the nutrients needed to help the ferment along (Fermaid K and Go-Ferm).

It took me until the end of March to find everything that I needed, I had no luck online and ended up sourcing some from a local wine u-brew shop. Here is the recipe used:

4.5L Glass jug
Tap water left out overnight for the chlorine to evaporate
1.647kg of honey (it had crystallized quite a bit so I warmed it up in the sink with hot water)
Lalvin 71B yeast
Go-Ferm in the yeast re-hydration water
1/8 teaspoon of Fermaid K after lag time and a day after lag time
1/16 teaspoon of DAP

SG: 1.078

I was hoping to get a higher SG, the recommendation that is given as a standard on the home brew talk forums is 3 to 3.5 lbs (1.36 to 1.58kg) of honey for each imperial gallon for a target SG of 1.090. At the time that I made this I thought that was for the US gallon and upscaled the recipe for that. Only, the honey ended up having more water in it and the SG wasn't nearly as high as I hoped. When I rack this in a few months I think that I'm going to try and add some more honey to it in order to raise the gravity and so that I don't have to top off with water.

My digital scale isn't accurate enough to measure out the grams necessary for the nutrients so I tried to guess how much would be correct. I didn't read this until after the fact, but the one book that I have with mead recipes in it lists 1 teaspoon as the amount a nutrient needed. I ended up adding some more after the first week to try and make up for the difference.

Right now it appears that it has started to clear, I would like to take a gravity reading. But I still need to find a good way of taking one from a jug that doesn't end up reducing the final amount so much. A gravity reading takes from 150ml to 200ml or so. And when you only have 4500ml of liquid readings and rackings can quickly diminish the amount of final product.

05.16.2011 Basic Mead Update

I had a lot of issues with this mead and I think that part of the problem was that I was still new had yet to learn that it's best to forget about it and come back in 6 months. It started out in a brown jug, which meant that I couldn't see what was going on inside. And when I noticed that some lees had formed and looked pretty thick I racked it out too soon being paranoid that it was going to cause off flavors. As it was there ended up being very little lees and it only looked to be a lot from the way that it stuck to the sides of the jug... I believe now that this early racking took away a lot of the healthy yeast and if not directly caused all the fermentation issues it certainly didn't help. I now know that it's best to wait until at least primary fermentation has been completed before racking to secondary. Another problem with this mead is that I don't think that I used enough nutrients and that I should have taken more care to allow the yeast to adjust to the half fermented must I was adding it to. But oh well, learning is what makes things exciting right?

Back in October of 2010 when I bottled the JOAM and Jalapeno meads this one was still cloudy and looked the same as it did when I first racked it into the clear jug. I can't remember if it was still fermenting or not, but I put it in the very back of the closet and pretty much forgot about it. I had thought about throwing it out at the time, but a lot of advice given on the home brew talk forums says to never toss something out unless it tastes really bad and that in a a lot of cases giving something time can help out with just about anything.

I pulled it out for a look sometime before April and was rather surprised to see that it had cleared! The next time that I was at a LHBS I got what I thought was a smaller jug to rack it into. I don't really like the idea of topping up with something other then what I'm making, which was the reason for the smaller jug. As it was the new jug was either the same size >.< or only slightly smaller and I ended up topping it off with some water anyway. In the end topping the mead up with water ended up being a good thing, I kept an eye on the airlock and about a week or so later noticed that it had started fermenting again. I'm thinking that introducing the water diluted it enough to un-stall the fermentation and kick the yeast into action again. And I'm also wondering if the closest may be too cool for the yeast and that adding room temperature water warmed it up to a more agreeable level. If I remember I will pick up some thermometer strips to stick to the side of the jug. Also given the gravity at the time of racking, 1.026, the yeast still had the potential to ferment out the rest of the sugars and end up below 1.000. I'm not sure how long it will go for, but I'm willing to forget about it until fermentation has been completed.

And for the gravities and the like.
OG: 1.118
FG: 1.026
ABV: 12.14%
Expected FG .998~
Expected ABV: 15.84%

At least in a prefect world, I topped it off with around 750ml of water. So everything has been diluted and the ABV will be somewhat less. But considering that it was already at 12% this is going to have some kick to it when it's fully done.

5/13/2011 Apfelwein Update

The Apfelwein that I made last August (Read it here) sat in the closet until February before I bottled it. I had noticed in October when I was bottling the JOAM and Jalapeno meads that there was a patches of film floating on the top of the Apfelwein. I figured that since I had racked it and left so much head space that it must have been contaminated or something and just left it to be tossed out at a later date. But in February when I was making the concentrate cider I decided to take a picture and ask about it on the brew forums.

People thought that it was just left over yeast or pectin that had risen to the top of the jug and that it should be OK. I gave it a taste and it tasted... strange. Not bad, but not really good either. It sorta tasted like apples, and the mouth feel almost as if it were waxy or something. It's hard to explain but that's the best that I've come up with. After I bottled it I left it in the fridge for a bit to see if that would help things. I tried it again and it didn't taste too bad and then I shared some with friends and they thought the same. But, that was it. The rest of the bottles were pretty terrible and I ended up tossing them out. I think that it had something to do with the order that I filled them in, the ones that took from closer to the top being the worse tasting ones.

I've made a batch of cider using the same type of sugar (turbinado) and it too had the film when I went to bottle it. I'm thinking now that it might have something to do with the sugar, maybe it doesn't ferment well or there's something else in it that's causing problems. The new batch is currently carbing, I primed it with the same sugar... >.>, and I guess that I'll see how it turns out. Worst case I've learned to never use turbinado again.