Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

One for all you DIY alcoholics out there.

http://food-hacks.wonderhowto.com/how-t ... e-0148602/

Coming up on apple harvest, and yeast is present in the air: http://www.eckraus.com/wine-making-applejack

I used to have a decent sourdough starter from airborne yeast.

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Buy yourself a 7-gallon fermenter from some homebrew supply store for $30 or so. Get some apple cider or no-preservative juice (about 5 gallons; you need some space in the fermenter for bubble-over) , add 2-3 cans of no-preservative frozen apple juice concentrate to it to get more sugar and apple flavor, use the champagne yeast. When it finishes, siphon it off into 1-gallon plastic water jugs, leaving each jug about half full. Put the jugs in your freezer, and freeze them hard. Then take the top off each jug and invert it neck down over a mason jar. The alcohol and other good stuff will tend to melt before the water. When the jug contains mostly just clear ice, discard it. What's left will be what the oldtimers called "applejack". Alcohol concentrated without distilling the apple essences out.

I like this thread.

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Tried brewing cyser once. I'm gonna stick to meadmaking. Honey, water, yeast and time is all you need.

...also, that Pasteur Champagne yeast will leave you with a pretty dry product. It can get up to 20% or so alcohol by volume before alcohol toxicity kills the yeast off. If you want something less than bone dry, try Lalvin's D-47 yeast, or a Nottingham ale yeast.

Mmmmm, Applejack... I remember that stuff from awhiles back...

Good times! mountain girls, apple jack, and a cold spring feed creek.

SpanishInquisition wrote:Tried brewing cyser once. I'm gonna stick to meadmaking. Honey, water, yeast and time is all you need.

...also, that Pasteur Champagne yeast will leave you with a pretty dry product. It can get up to 20% or so alcohol by volume before alcohol toxicity kills the yeast off. If you want something less than bone dry, try Lalvin's D-47 yeast, or a Nottingham ale yeast.

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Yeah, or you can let it go bone dry then sweeten it with more apple juice concentrate. Seen that done with honey, too (Cyser). If you want to use honey, you probably should invest in some yeast nutrient to keep the yeast working for a little longer. Buddy of mine used honey and spiced apple butter, adding honey a little at a time. Got it up to 24% alcohol. It was a little sweet for my taste, but it was certainly authoritative.

dorminWS wrote:Yeah, or you can let it go bone dry then sweeten it with more apple juice concentrate. Seen that done with honey, too (Cyser). If you want to use honey, you probably should invest in some yeast nutrient to keep the yeast working for a little longer.

Oh yeast works plenty long in mead! (just not very active!)
I usually go a year between pitching yeast and bottling.

Depending on my mindset at the time, I will occasionally add a small amount of something acidic to help the yeastybeasties along, or other times I'll just start with triple packs of yeast to get a good colony running at the get-go. Depends on the honey, the yeast, and if I'm trying to be a purist at the time.

My one shot at Cyser scared me off it, probably for life. I've tasted my and other's brewing gone wrong many times, but not as badly as this one.

SpanishInquisition wrote: [ I usually go a year between pitching yeast and bottling.

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I should get into mead. That would make my tendency to start a ferment and then forget about the cotton-picking thing for a few months less of a problem.

This is much more fun! Fresh fruit, sugar and yeast.

Yeah, I've done a little wine here and there. Sometimes with fresh fruit, but it is less work to buy the juice or buy juice puree or concentrate. I've done strawberry, peach, pear, plum, cherry, dandelion, grape, watermelon and rhubarb wine. Takes the same stuff to ferment wine as for beer, and that's what I do most of. Takes some extra stuff to brew the beer and get to the point of fermenting, though. Got into that sorta whole-hog a few years back. Went with an electric system with all-grain capability because I'm old and lazy. And then I discovered conical fermenters. Best thing since sliced bread. No siphoning. I’ve been laying off to make some honest-to-gosh ginger ale that would be real alcoholic ale flavored with ginger, lemon and lime; probably with no little or no hops. That and some beer using corn as the grain. Lots of fun. I give most of the beer and wine I make away. I usually don't bottle it; I just keg it into the 5-gallon "corny" kegs and force carbonate it instead of charging it with sugar and carbonating by secondary fermentation. I've got a rig to bottle what little of it I need in a bottle under pressure after it's carbonated. Means you get homebrew with no sediment in the bottom. Haven’t pizened anybody yet. Not even any serious cases of diarrhea.

Now I just mess around with brewing in fits and starts. I should have been at it already for a few weeks; I've let tailgating season sneak up on me.

These days, bootlegging beer is cheaper than buying bullets by a damnsight.

Jeezus! I just have a pot and my wort chiller is my kitchen sink!

I do have some corny keg stuff that I use for small meads and occasional beer batches, and some party pigs for half batches (BTW, they are also perfect for those Mr Beer fermenters I started with!)

Here's a really tasty small mead. Be careful about bottling this one, it can be active a long time, as some of my friends discovered the hard way!
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/drinks.html
It's the first recipe there. Work this one right and you can even serve it up as non-alchoholic (under .5% by volume in VA)... provided you don't let it keep fermenting!

SpanishInquisition wrote:Jeezus! I just have a pot and my wort chiller is my kitchen sink!

I do have some corny keg stuff that I use for small meads and occasional beer batches, and some party pigs for half batches (BTW, they are also perfect for those Mr Beer fermenters I started with!)

Here's a really tasty small mead. Be careful about bottling this one, it can be active a long time, as some of my friends discovered the hard way!
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/drinks.html
It's the first recipe there. Work this one right and you can even serve it up as non-alchoholic (under .5% by volume in VA)... provided you don't let it keep fermenting!

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Thanks. I'll try that. Looks like it makes about a gallon and a half, right? You think it would work if it were tripled?

I've just begun researching homebrewed beer; a timely thread.

The applejack sounds like a good easy project too.

Kreutz wrote:I've just begun researching homebrewed beer; a timely thread.

The applejack sounds like a good easy project too.

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By the way, when you freeze the cider in the jugs, lay them down on their sides. That way the ice block is less likely to slide down and stop up the neck of the jug so the good stuff can't get out.

dorminWS wrote:
Thanks. I'll try that. Looks like it makes about a gallon and a half, right? You think it would work if it were tripled?

Scales up fine. I've done corny keg sized batches with it. Just popped a little CO2 in it to seal, and vented it off a bit over the course of the week before serving. It's a great recipe for a quick mead for parties, feasts, etc.

SpanishInquisition wrote:

dorminWS wrote:
Thanks. I'll try that. Looks like it makes about a gallon and a half, right? You think it would work if it were tripled?

Scales up fine. I've done corny keg sized batches with it. Just popped a little CO2 in it to seal, and vented it off a bit over the course of the week before serving. It's a great recipe for a quick mead for parties, feasts, etc.

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I just bought me an 8-gallon brewpot with an induction hotplate for 5-gallon batches and dry extract recipes where the heating element in the 15-gallon pot is a PITA. I'll use this for a first brew in that and scale this thang up to 3 times and lay in a batch PDQ. I've used the corny kegs as fermenters before - after you seal it with pressure, hook a fitting to the "IN" (gas) side with a hose down into a jug of water; or if you have a gas-to-liquid jumper hose, run it to another keg and half-fill it with water. Nasty to clean up a keg used as a fermenter, though.

Note: The small mead recipe is OK as a still product, really nice as a sparking drink. I won my first brewing competition with it, and I was just looking for feedback from brewers!

I gotta try that meade one time soon. I made some pear wine a few years ago. Fermented once, strained it, added a little more sugar and fermented again. Raised the ABV a little higher and didn't take as much for me to get happy!

This...is...the...most...awesome...thread...ever....

Just sayin'.