Inexpensive Peach Vanilla Experiment Part 2 + Bottling Day

As some of you may recall I decided to do an experimental tossed together peach wine. TL:DR I made blended 3lbs of peaches with some sugar and tossed into a jug. Well after a while as wines do it started to clear. I added about a tablespoon of vanilla extract to it. It made the entire jug turn a darker color with a brown tint. As seen below. I almost went ahead and sorbated and sulfited it to kill off the yeast so I could backsweeten it later on.

 After I let it sit for another 2 weeks, I added enough sugar to it to sweeten it but not make it cloying sweet. No gravity readings as I still don't have a hydrometer due to an unfortunate tasting/measuring incident.

After The Wife and I moved to the new place and got settled in I figured I'd check on this and found it had cleared quite nicely. Faster than I expected honestly. I almost realized I have waaaaay too much head space and I risk oxidation if I tried to bulk age so I decided to bottle it.

See how clear she is?

 I could read the coffee pot numbers no problem. My phone would not focus on the numbers though. 

 Here is a sample in a glass

 I let The Wife's brother in law taste it and he said while it still had an alcohol bite to it, you could clearly taste the peach that was coming through. Sadly no vanilla though. I am hoping it comes out later as it ages. I will definitely make this one again, though next time it will be a proper mead with some good quality honey and secondary will have some vanilla sticks in it.

Those brown bottles are the wrap up to my quick cider. Honestly I don't know what to think of it. The taste has changed again though not for the better or worst, it just changed. The mouthfeel is still weird, like liquid glass. I decided to bottle it and forget about it for the next couple of years as I have heard that apple can take year to taste good. Hopefully so. If not, oh well its all in the game of brewing.

Comment, tell me what you think. Laters people!

Strawberry Mel Part Deaux!

As some of you may remember I made a strawberry melomel quite some time ago. Well after brewing for months it looked like this.

Not exactly appetizing right?

 Well I was reading some posts around the web when someone mentioned pectic enzyme. I already had some since  I had used it for other meads but not this one. Well I dumped some in and shook it around and in 48 hours I got this.

HUGE change.

 I let it sit for a few more days to make sure all the gunk fell to the bottom. Once the weekend hit I went ahead and bottled it. You can see it below. It is the one of the right. The one on the left is an upcoming post..:)

After tasting it I must say, I did a pretty good job with this one. The strawberry flavor is strong in this one. I am going to be excited to try this one in 6-12 months. I bet age will do it wonders. 

Cranberry Fruit Tea Mead

The other day I was in the mood for some tea. We had this lipton caramel black tea which sounds delicious on paper. However in real life it is quite terrible. In attempts to make it taste something drinkalbe (I do not waste money) I poured in a bit of cranberry juice and gave it a taste

I was immediately struck by a thought...........this would make a pretty good mead. A recipe was born

Recipe
3.5lbs clover honey
2 cups Lipton Vanilla Caramel Truffle Tea- 2 teabags per cup
1 fresh tea bag in brew
24OZ cranberries fresh then frozen
Berries in a bag in 2 gallon bucket.
3 Cups of Northland Cranberry Juice (no preservatives)

Lavlin KV-1116
Yeast Nutrient
Yeast Energizer
Pectic Enzyme

I mixed the honey and water together on the stove to heat it up. I made sure not to let it bowl. I then added the tea and cranberry juice to the bucket. I put the berries in the bag.

Now you may be wondering, why a bucket? As you may remember with my strawberry melomel fruit makes mead foam. This is made using wine yeast and not just regular bread yeast so I wanted to make sure foam was not an issue. A two gallon bucket allows me to brew it with fruit and plenty of space for it to foam up with no clogged airlock.

To aerate I stirred with a spoon, the poured water in to around 1 gallon. I dissolved nutrients and pectic enzyme in water and added to mixture. Stirred again. Rehydrated the yeast per the instructions on the pack. While that was going on I again stirred the must to added the yeast in and also took a gravity reading. It read 1.092.

The first, 2nd and third days I aerated it once in the morning and again in the afternoon with a vigorous stir.

I let it go about 5 days on the berries, then I pulled out the bag and beat it with a sanitized pan so the berries would break open. It was a lovely shade of pink. I let it go another 6 days on the now crushed berries then racked it onto some potassium sorbate to kill the yeast off for backsweetning. The gravity was at 1.001 aka dry as sh*t.

Here it is on the left. It is a lovely shade of red. The jug next to it is the excess I made. Apparently I made a bit too much. I did not want to waste it so into a jug it went. Once the yeast dies off I will back sweeten then let it age to clear then bottle it. Depending on how much lees' (dead yeast) it drops I may rack it once more.

Quick Cider

The other night while The Wife was out and about I was lazing around watching  youtube videos of brewing. I came across one in particular video where a guy fermented some apple juice to make a kind of hard cider.

I was instantly intrigued. I had The Wife bring home a bottle of apple juice, though because I wasn't clear enough she brought home a small bottle. I wanted enough for a gallon so I had to wait till the next day.

The following day I pick up a big bottle and a 2lb bag of brown sugar.


When I got home I got right to prepping. First rule of brewing, always sanitize everything. After I washed my items I let them sit in bleach water. A lot of brewers use starsan since it is no rinse, but I just used bleach. Bleach is considerably cheaper since a tablespoon per sink is all you need, plus rinsing is not that big of a deal.

I heated up the apple juice to an almost boil then dissolved most of the 2lb bag in, not sure how much. Like an idiot I didn't measure anything.

While that was simmering I rehydrated the yeast by warming up some water putting some sugar in then letting the yeast sit in it. After the sugar was all dissolved I dumped it into the carboy along with the yeast nutrient and tried to shake it, forgetting it JUST came off the stove. Notice how melted that ice is? That is after 2 mins. I put the carboy in an icebath for about 15 mins. I would alternate between the water and shaking it till I felt it was cool enough to pitch the yeast in.

After I got it shaken up nice and good I added the yeast in which by this point had formed a cloud looking shape in the dish. Means it was nice and healthy. I pitched it and put it into the carboy. Slapped the airlock on with a 80/20 vodka to water mix. It started bubbling very quickly.

As of this morning it was fermenting quite vigorously. It was burping about 1.5 bubbles per second. I plan to let it sit for a week, sample, see how it is.

Now keep in mind I know this is sloppily thrown together however that was the point. I just wanted to see how this turns out. Now if it comes out decent like this imagine how it will be if I put some thought into it by measuring, taking a gravity reading, using spices in it etc. I'll let yall know how it turns out.