Posted on 11/23/2012 4:16:14 PM PST by Red_Devil 232
Good afternoon/evening FReepers. Yep, it is Beer Thirty Time Once Again!
Happiness is a bubbling airlock! And a Cold Brew
BEER
My Cranberry Mead I started a year ago this month
Good evening/afternoon brewers and winemakers. I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends. Wife and I popped the top on another swing top bottle of my Cranberry Mead to have with our Turkey dinner and all the fixings. It is really a very nice and tasty honey wine. This has surprised my wife; she could not believe I really made it and that it tastes good. She rarely drinks and does not enjoy my homemade beers or any beer for that matter.
I am hoping that the 5 gallons of my apple cider I started a week or two ago turns out to be as good and she can enjoy it also. I plan on letting it sit and age for about six months before bottling.
I hope all of you and your Brews and Wines are doing well. Stop by and share what you are brewing or let us know what your favorite brew, wine or spirit is.
Ping to the Homebrewers and wine makers list!
Ping to the Homebrewers and wine makers list!
Black Friday.
I'm reconfiguring for the winter months, and have nothing going right now.
/johnny
I had blackberry and pear cider for thanksgiving. It turned out pretty good. The batch last year was good at the beginning and then got a bit skunky after a few months.
Hope to begin bottling more wine in a week or so when we see if they start to clear out a bit better.
Yes it was very red when I started it and it mellowed out to a nice light rosé.
Can you describe the taste?
It dose not have a very distinct Cranberry taste but is nice, like a rosé or white wine.
Thanks!
Off topic but I had mentioned it earlier....like Spring
I grew 8 varieties of Hops this year for the first time and all did very well.
From what I understand after the first year, the plants do so much better with established roots etc...
I ordered Plants and not Rhizomes. Much much better.
Looking forward to next years crop.
Well, our family had the “day after Thanksgiving feast” at the farm today. With the drought, I can’t find Mustang grapes in our area. Both my BILs had their home brewed beers for us to drink.
My younger sister’s husband had a really smooth, slightly dark beer similar to Shiner Bock. I got a buzz after two, but knew it would be over three hours before I got on the road home. I’ll try to get his beer recipe and post it here.
If you were going to be an interstellar colonist, and you wanted to go into this business, how much equipment and what variety of supplies would you take with you?
I cracked the first bottle of my Sathana’s Ers, a Belgian-style ale, tonight. Intense cherry flavors, not from cherries themselves, but from a handful of cherry wood chips, soaked in bourbon. Excellent flavor and body, but I think it’s going to need a few more weeks in the bottle for more conditioning.
Your mead looks lovely! Do you have to prep the honey in any special way? I’ve thought about doing a mead, but have never gotten around to it.
OTOH, the advertising ditty "How's it served?/Good n' Cold" was probably to dampen what various and haphazard aromatics Thunderbird did have...
I bought 3 kinds of spiced wheat beers (My favorite type of beer)on Wednesday and proceeded to try all 3, one of them being a bomber. I then decided to try one of my triples and promptly began slurring and went to bed early.
Today I traded 12 of my home brews for 3 bottles of home made wine my Moms friend makes. Mom described them as $50 dollar a bottle quality so I look forward to trying them but feel as though I should save them for a special occasion.
My local home brew store is having a 15% off sale tomorrow so I'm going to brew up 10 gallons of spiced wheat. I've already given away and/or traded 30 bottles of my triple...so far.
No prep for me just heat the water so the honey will dissolve nicely. Add a yeast nutrient because the honey does not provide the basics for the yeast to multiply and do their job. Add a quality ale or wine yeast and wait. Honey wine!
I brewed my first batch almost three weeks ago.
I’ve got Caribou Slobber (Moose Drool knockoff), still bubbling after three weeks.
A friend brewed up a Brewer’s Best Scottish Ale. Hers is done fermenting, and is cold crashing for bottling on Sunday.
Another friend wanted in on the act, so we brewed up a high-gravity Maibock. I don’t have lagering capability, so we used an ale yeast instead.
I was speaking to someone who worked in the Food Science Dept of our town’s university. Since wine-making is now a big deal in OR they have a few faculty who are ‘experts’. One commented that the honey needs to be pasteurized to eliminate bacteria. I suppose that’s the professional outlook, but wondered how necessary. One of these days I’ll get around to trying a mead. In the meantime, we’ve still got pears & white grapes in the freezer waiting to start. I’ve been so depressed by the election results I haven’t felt much like doing anything. Except maybe crying into an earlier vintage... ;-)
I did not have raw honey so used pasteurized. I have a feeling it would not make much of a difference with honey. I used one pound (gallon) of honey to four gallons of spring water and a few pounds of fresh frozen Cranberries (crushed and blenderized).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.