First all grain brew

Well I took a dive head first into the deep end and I am not sure the pool had water...

I thought to myself - how hard could it be to brew beer from the base ingredients? So I found a recipe on aussiehomebrewer.com.au and decided what the hell!


 Recipe Source

	5.7 kg	BB Galaxy Pale Malt
	0.45 kg	Weyermann Munich I
	0.3 kg	Cane Sugar
	0.15 kg	Weyermann Caraamber
	0.1 kg	Weyermann Melanoidin
	38 g	Styrian Goldings (Pellets, 5.5 AA%, 60 mins)
	20 g	Saaz (Czech) (Pellets, 3.5 AA%, 15 mins)
	2000 ml	Wyeast Labs 1762 - Belgian Abbey II

So I went down to my local brew shop with this list and found everything even if I did have to sub out the recommended yeast with a dry yeast

With my ingredients acquired I rushed home to start in on true brewing.

Arriving at home I found the kitchen lacking certain things that I must have! The major one being a large pot!

So the next weekend Kasey and I headed to the army surplus store and found what was labeled to be a 20L pot! Score.

So grabbing this bad boy I rushed home ready to start in on my brewing excellence.

Once arriving at home with my pot I found that I was missing another major component. A false bottom is used in breweries for removing the grains from the liquid (which will be called WORT from now on) and as since my new shinny 20L pot didn't have a false bottom I went back to the net to solve my problem. The answer came in the form of a Brew Bag. A brew bag is a very fine mesh of material that you can brew in and then squeeze the wort from afterwards! So the following weekend we rushed to the linen store and got a large quality of this material. Kasey then started the long and arduous task of making a bag and incorporating a draw string. A week later and we are rocking!... Wait... ahh CRAP!

So the pot is 20L. My recipe is for making 20L. Sounds fine right? WRONG. I have about 10L of GRAIN, what the hell.... Thats 30L of stuff for my "20L" pot.

After a few messing around I found my "20L" pot was only 15L! Damn those surplus no measuring dirt grubbing .. grrr

Okay so I am all kinds of low class (see fridge) and there must be a "poor mans" way of doing this... So I split up the brewing :) 15L x 2. So I did half the grain in the pot. Problem is it takes 2 hours to brew the grains! That means I was sitting there for 4 hours watching this mess seep :)

Once it was done I transfered the bag to the garage to hang for an hour and I went to squeeze the shit out of it every 10 minutes

Once I had all that sorted out I transfered the 19L of wort to the 15L pot and another 5L pot. These then boiled with the hops for 90 minutes. It was suppose to be a light colored beer... Why is it dark? Ahhh shitty. Dark?! What the hell... Ohh.. I had the temperature too high when cooking the grains :P Guess it is a dark beer now.  :D

So this boiled and boiled and then I transfered all this into the fermenter... 14L.. WHAT?! AHH Crap! Evaporation.

And with the steam went the last of my resolve. My hope of exclaiming to the world that the new best Craft Beer artisan as entered into the arena and that success was just around the corner for this fine brew... Ahh screw it :P I boiled another 5L of water and tipped it into the fermenter. So while I was ripping up my business cards for Chris' Craft Beer I went to check the fermenter.

Wow... That fermenter is REALLY hot.... So hot that...

Oh no! Its way to hot to put yeast in! So I put it in the washing tub and filled it will cold water. An hour later? Still freak'n hot! So we went out to dinner. 2 and half hours later? Waaaa! Still freaken hot.. So while canceling my bid to buy that small brewery on the outskirts of town I sat and waited and waited.

So I stayed up and finally it go down to yeast bearable temperatures. I added the yeast and put the bad boy into the fridge!

Only time will tell if I made poison or beautiful dark beer. 

First Mead

Well I decided to pull the mead out and have a look / taste as I racked off to another demi-john.

WOW! What a taste! Its a bit young from what I have been reading but it was nice, sweet, fragrant and nicely alcoholic.

It could be aged for another 3-12 months and I will likely do that but in bottle form.

You can see at the bottom all the sediment which is the yeast, dead yeast and other partials.

This is the bit we don't want to take with us when we transfer (rack off) to the next demi-john.

With a helpful hand from Kasey we were successful!

We took a glass from the bottom so it would contain some of the yeast and other things we don't want to transfer and tried it. Wow! Great stuff. Like I said before sweet, fragrant and smooth. Had a hint of our honey and some of the smell as well.

Mango Wine

Unfortunately no photos for this post. I am a total slacker. I'll take some photos of mangos and edit them in later ;-)

Recipe (All items are organic or filtrated water - QUALITY makes all the difference) :

10 Large Mangos
5 Limes
1 Earl Grey tea bag
2 Liters of Water
300ml of Honey (Yellow box)
Wine Yeast
Wine Nutrient

Juice the mangos and limes, add the water and the honey. Heat to 70C for a few minutes. Add the tea bag and let it seep for a few more minutes. Remove tea bag, and poor into demi-john. Cool the demi-john to blood temp. Add the yeast and the wine nutrient you have been growing in a standard coffee cup to the demi-john. Add the air lock.

I brew FOAM!

Google doesn't allow direct linking of videos and youtube can eat my ass so check out this LINK to a video.

From Brewing

Blood Plum Wine Experiment

I decided awhile ago to try another fruit wine after the Cheery and Lychee wine. I tried a very small portion of fruit to see just what kind of goodness I was dealing with.

This wine, Blood Plum, looked very red and very blood like when this whole thing started. Over time the blood plum (with honey) took on a new color and character.
After a few weeks I ended up with this. A pink colored liquid and a lot of crap on the bottom the demijohn which I am guess contains yeast cells, sediment, and dead yeast cells.YUM! :D

From here I siphoned off a bottle of wine which is currently in the refrigerator you see in the background. I did the same thing with the cheery and lychee wine when I thought it a complete failure only to try it weeks later and see it turned out not half bad!

So this photo here is the 2nd rack off which in the first I tried my damnedest to kill off all the yeast cells and let it settle for another week and half.

So while YES I should be racking off this wine to age properly over a few months, I don't feel this was the best size to test on. The surface area to liquid ratio is huge - so my area for failure is large. Might as well just drink the damn stuff :)
So I got a bottle. Yes that is where my story was going, and I dubiously pored out a glass of the stuff towards the bottom.
 I also had a small bit saved from the first racking off.

So to recap my thrilling tale. I now have 1 glass of wine from the end of the fermentation and before the racking off (transferring to another vessel and leaving behind sediment and yeast)  I also had 1 glass of newly aquired wine and 1 bottle of the stuff I put in the fridge.

The tasting beings!

Wow - Even though it is not clear and its a bit thick its nice! It smells good and tastes like a wine but with a nice sourness and plummy flavor at the end! HUZZUH!

But how did it compare to the glass I saved before the racking off? The wine before the racking off was very bitter and harsh. It had about the same constancy but it was words apart!

Stay tuned for the tasting of the plum wine from the bottle in a few weeks time

First mead wine

Well I thought since I am sharing everything else I will put the recipe I used for my two first explorations into Mead.

Please keep in mind that this is my FIRST attempt, these recipes might make floor polish! Only time, temperature and fermentation will tell.

Basic Mead - 5 Liter demijohn

•  1.75 kg of Honey (Yellow Box)
• 1/2 Lime Juice
  
• 1/2 Lemon Juice
• 1/2 teaspoon Wine Yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon Yeast nutrient
• 1 Jar enough to fill about 1-2 cups of water
• Thermostat
  

I do mine a bit backwards to most recipes. We will see the results in a few weeks when I do the first rack off (rack off is to transfer the mead from the top which should have less yeast and sediment to another demijohn).

SO first things first! Filter water enough to fill the demijohn (How-To) that will take about 8-10 hours. In the mean time, get the yeast dancing and reproducing! I use an old salsa jar since these are historically the meeting ground for young yeasts, fill it with filtered water which allows the yeasts to find each other attractive, add the yeast nutrient, a classic yeast aphrodisiac,  and the yeast to the party jar, give it a stir and pop the top on. Leave it somewhere warm for the 8-10 hours, they like it hot baby!, and come back now and then to open the jar, give it a shake - being in a salsa jar they like a bit of the shake. This will get your yeast invigorated and growing!

8-10 hours have passed, your TOTALLY PSYCHED DOOD, what next? Well I took a pot added some of the filtered water from the demijohn and added the 1.75kg of honey. I bought the whole sticky mess to 60C (62C in the picture, close enough :P ) and kept it there for 22 minutes (See this web site for good information, do not boil, you will loose a lot of what the Honey can bring - Mead made complicated)

While I waited for the 22 minutes I added the citrus which made all the white gunk on the top of the honey/water collect. Very convenient for me since I need to remove this white stuff.

After it has set at 60C for 22minutes I careful transferred the whole sweet mess into the demijohn. Oddly enough the pot wasn't very sticky at all to clean up.

From there the demijohn went into the sink with water and a few ice packs to bring the temperature to blood temperature. Once we were there its time for the business end of things. Pour the yeast into the demijohn and fit a rubber top and airlock. I set it on the counter for a hour or two and watched the little air bubble in the airlock which is a sure sign we have action... I waited... and waited... and waited.. THEN a single bubble! Not quite the action I was expecting.... So I lodged it away for the night in the brew fridge and checked it next day where I was surprised to see signs of VIGOROUS  fermentation! Bubbles aplenty :D

Stay tuned for the results.....

Blood Plum Wine is about to be finished off. Excitement is in the air.

More water filtering

Well today I had a need to filter water directly into a vessel. So I pitched the ladder and setup a bit of tubing down.

It is now filtering water nicely into the jug below. :D

To make this bucket filter see this post