The Home Brewing Thread

[Arkangel]

This will be a thread to discuss the hobby of home brewing; making your own booze at home (beers, wines, meads, etc). feel free to discuss recipes, ideas, experiences, and many more things related to the hobby.

I myself currently have two 1-gallon batches going:

Blueberry Wine
Blackberry Honey Mead

On my "To brew" list are:

Bochet (blackened honey mead)
Dandelion Wine
Cherry Wine
Raspberry Mead

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

I don't drink due to medical reasons, but I saw a video on mead making recently and found it interesting:

 

[Arkangel]

Yeah. It's from that website stormthecastle.com. Funnily enough, It was THE website that inspired me to start home brewing. I found it while doing some research after I saw a friend make their own mead.

So, earlier today I put together a batch of dandelion wine from dandelions around the property.

Basically, you pick them, give them a good rinse to remove any stray bugs and dirt, and then you steep them in water like tea and then strain the water into the fermentor. It smelled A LOT like chamomile tea. For my recipe, I added 2 3/4 lbs of white sugar to provide for the alcohol and sweetness. I then added the zest of two tangerines and the juice of 5 of them to add more body and citrus nodes to it. Finally I added acid blend, the nutrients, and yeast to the mix; Red Star Dry Champagne Yeast. Now, I just let it sit and do it's thing.

 

[Duke Nukem]

I brew beer. I have a Mr. Beer kit and it is sufficient for my needs. I don't have a lot of room, or a basement, so I don't really have much I can do there.

 

[Coldgrip]

I'm not brewing anything at this moment, but normally I just take the fruit, mush it up a bit, add some filtered water to it and let it sit in a carboy atop the fridge. The last batch me and a friend brewed up mostly consisted of cheries with a half a ziplock bag of black berries. Afterwards, we concentrated it.

 

[Arkangel]

I'm not brewing anything at this moment, but normally I just take the fruit, mush it up a bit, add some filtered water to it and let it sit in a carboy atop the fridge. The last batch me and a friend brewed up mostly consisted of cheries with a half a ziplock bag of black berries. Afterwards, we concentrated it.

Sounds pretty crude. I want to do something with cherries, but they're not in season yet.

 

[Coldgrip]

Yeah, we know what we're making is about on par with rotgut, but fruit is cheap and it'll get us (well me mostly cause I'm the one who drinks most of it) buzzed.

I'm personally waiting for the grapes to be in season.

 

[GV 002]

The mister makes cider every other year, usually depends on the apple yield. There's this one big fuckoff apple tree in his dad's garden that's left over from the land being a massive orchard, so we're never short of apples to do things to. They also happen to be bramleys, so if the season isn't a good one, or if we have a surplus, they're still good for pressing and cooking - which usually results in a tidal wave of apple pie/crumble/cobbler/sauce/tart etc for a few weeks which certainly keeps me busy!

Recently the mister's also teamed up his best friend, who has a fair amount of previous brewing experience, and started making beer - last thing they made was some ruby ale, which was pretty decent. We also tend to find a ton of wild sloes when hiking during the right season, so the occasional bigarse bottle of sloe gin has it's place in the house too! Pretty sure we're thinking of doing some dark mead for the next booze adventure, as well as setting up a rumpot for the winter.

 

[Arkangel]

My blueberry wine is almost finished(maybe another week or so); it's almost fully clear and it smells fantastic. I just bought some bottles, corks, and shrink-caps at the local store today. I'm thankful for having a homebrew store in town; online shipping for a case of glass bottles would have been like 10 extra dollars I didn't need to spend.

 

[Arkangel]

So, I finally bottled my blueberry wine. I got 4 and a half bottles out of it (waste not want not). I am impressed with how it came out. It's very drinkable now; very tart with a good mouthfeel and a light body of blueberries. Hopefully a few months of aging will mellow out the tartness a little bit.

Now that I have an open glass jug, I'm thinking of what I want to try next. I'm thinking either mangoes or cherries.

It's amazing what you can make with frozen fruit and table sugar.

 

[Lathe]

This thread has been dead for years but I think people would benefit from making their own wine, beer, or spirits. I am fairly active so if someone wants advice, feel free to ask.

A sample of my work, lemon mead:

 

[FatDragonDaddy]

This thread has been dead for years but I think people would benefit from making their own wine, beer, or spirits. I am fairly active so if someone wants advice, feel free to ask.

A sample of my work, lemon mead:View attachment 2750244

Looks yummy!

I was going through my old emails, and found my recipe for Loki.

If you didn't know, Loki is a homemade brew popular on the Renaissance Faire circuit. I used to brew huge batches of this stuff, and give it out as gifts.

I believe I used 2 cups of vanilla extract verses the almond, since almond is so overpowering.

Something I would do was buy bags of Jolly Ranchers hard candies. I would drop several pieces of candy in different bottles--one cherry, one green apple, etc.--to add another flavor than just straight vanilla.

You can use any hard candy so long as there's no dairy base. Otherwise, it'll curdle.

I tried looking up different versions of Loki to see if it's been improved on, but couldn't find much.

Sharing here in case anyone would like to give it a go.

Loki, aka traditional Rennie drink:


One gallon of Water
One 4lb bag of Sugar
One cup of Vanilla Extract
One cup of Almond Extract
1,500 ml (two fifths) of Everclear

1. Mix Water and Sugar together in a large pot over a medium heat.
Ensure that all the Sugar melts.
2. Allow to cool completely.
3. Add the Extracts and Everclear.
4. Bottle and store for at least a month, three or more preferably.

This will produce about two gallons of Loki, so be prepared with enough containers.

 

[Tim Curry]

Any good recommendations for buying Bulk Wheat Malt? Looking into some home brewing and distillation.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Well my cider mash looks and smells amazing after a month. Now I just gotta figure out how to press it and get the juice into a bottle.

Got about half a gallon worth. It needs to finish off in the fridge for another week. I definitely managed to get some sort of yeast culture going so I threw the some of the leftover mash into a 2 gallon jug of Motts to see what happens. Gonna save the rest. If it's a decent culture I can reuse it. Or else try again from scratch.

 

[Lathe]

Well my cider mash looks and smells amazing after a month. Now I just gotta figure out how to press it and get the juice into a bottle. View attachment 3853047

Got about half a gallon worth. It needs to finish off in the fridge for another week. I definitely managed to get some sort of yeast culture going so I threw the some of the leftover mash into a 2 gallon jug of Motts to see what happens. Gonna save the rest. If it's a decent culture I can reuse it. Or else try again from scratch.

Good work. Saving yeast cultures through fermentation can be a fun experience. If you are looking for clarifying, use calcium bentonite. It leaves behind calcium but it’s a better option for people who might have shellfish allergy for chitosan clarifiers.

 

[ffo kcuF]

I’ve always wanted to make and try some mead. I‘m not a fan of wine though, so how similar to wine is mead?. I exclusively drink whisky, maybe a little rum sometimes and would like to try something different.

I’ve also heard that mead from the store isn’t real mead so that’s why I haven’t bought it to try, or is that just bs.

I‘ve never made booze before btw.

 

[mindlessobserver]

I’ve always wanted to make and try some mead. I‘m not a fan of wine though, so how similar to wine is mead?. I exclusively drink whisky, maybe a little rum sometimes and would like to try something different.

I’ve also heard that mead from the store isn’t real mead so that’s why I haven’t bought it to try, or is that just bs.

I‘ve never made booze before btw.

Mead is just like a very very sweet white wine.

 

[ffo kcuF]

Mead is just like a very very sweet white wine.

I might give it a go then, I like the idea of giving it your own flavours when home brewed

 

[mindlessobserver]

I'm actually getting really excited to see just what sort of yeast won the battle in my apple mash because the Motts juice has taken on an impressive color and smell and some really serious carbonation. It's not ready just yet, but should be by Thanksgiving when I decant it. Gonna taste test the Virgin press tomorrow.

 

[SpiceyHuman]

I had no idea there was a home brew thread.

I'm planing on making a spiced apple cider with just a bit of fresh pear juice for some sweetness. I'll stop by the farmers market sometime before the end of this week to see if they have unpasteurized fresh pressed applejuice, or some good looking apples and ill make the make myself.

In the meantime, this is the last batch that I made. It was a very light batch, only 7% alcohol but very tasty.