Cap and Cork

It’s been a month of Sundays since my last post, and for that I am profoundly sorry.  I hate leaving you 3 folks in need of my rapier wit for far longer than anyone should have to wait.  In an effort to assuage your anguish, I wanted to get something out there for your eyes to feast on.  Here’s a quick recap on how things have been going brew wise:

All the wines that have been in secondaries, remain there.  I added 1/4 cup of honey to my chocolate mead, as well as 1/2 cup or so of icewine to top up with.  It has dropped some additional lees and I will rack it off of them within a couple weeks.  I also added 1/4 cup of sugar to my latest batch of welch’s wine.  It seems to “perform” better when sweetened IMHO.  No lees or refermentation as I added a pinch of campden and sorbate at the same time.  I will bottle this soon.

My jalapeno wine is clearing nicely on its own.  Another month or two and it should be crystal clear.  I did have a sip I must admit.  It’s hot, but very bearable.  Quite interesting.  Exactly what I had expected.  I am not sure if I will sweeten at all or not.  I also started a batch of jalapeno mead, which I do intend to sweeten with some honey later down the road.  It is just barely starting to clear, but remains very very young.

My braggot #2 is bottled finally!  Bottom line - braggot takes 3 weeks in a primary/secondary to be ready for bottling.  It’s that simple.  I bottled in the normal fashion and tasted one 2 weeks after bottling.  While it was only a 1/2 bottle (the leftover, mind you) it is clearly better than my first batch.  A correct amount of body with malty sweetness and definate honey notes.  I am still trying to decide if the hops are in the correct amount.  I may try a whole bottle tonight and decide where to go from here for batch #3.  All in all, a success so far.

A gentleman I work with was kind enough to pick me up a gallon of honey from a local guy so I’m good to go on the mead and braggot front for quite some time.  Only $25 and pure as the driven snow…  Can’t beat it!

I’ve tasted my crystal clear dandelion wine recently as well.  This deserves a whole post as it is clearly the finest homemade non-kit wine I have made.  It is a shame I only made a gallon, although picking those dandelions was not easy.  I am not sure I could have done another 2-4 gallons!

Coming up:  I acquired a whole brewers best beer kit so I need to clean all that and get it into the rotation!  Another primary means I need another large carboy!  I plan on making a Chardonnay for the wife here soon.  I just need to select a kit.  I still plan on making my icewine style kit, a tomato wine, a garlic wine for cooking and more braggot.  I should have a week off here soon where I plan on making SOMETHING almost every day!

Stay tuned.  The updates, even if small, will be coming along at a steady pace now.  Consider me recommitted.

I started both the braggot and the wine on the same evening, and you can read my previous post regarding the Jalapeno wine beginnings.  I just wanted to followup with some notes on both of these fermentations as they are so completely different, that, well…  It’s interesting.

The braggot recipe was created using BeerTools, which I find damn near invaluable.  I wanted about 6% ABV for a one gallon batch using honey and malt only.  I knew I was also looking for around 30 IBU’s from the hops.  Using their free calculator, I was able to tweak until I got what I wanted.  Let me say that my boil removed more water than I had thought, but after topping up, my SG was 1.06 and was exactly what I predicted it to be.  I waited until cool and pitched some Danstar Nottingham yeast.  As of last night, my gravity was just a hair under 1.02 so we were well on our way.  Like my normal beers, I decided to move the bragoot into a secondary and let it finish out under an airlock, which I predict should be about 1.01 or so.  Once I bottle, I will add some pics and the recipe to the recipe links page.  Be sure to check it out…

And then there’s the Jalapeno Wine.  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom…”  Wisdom indeed.  It seems my wine simply did not want to begin fermenting.  Looking back, I should have skipped the campden tablet as there was definately some preservative on the raisins.  I think was just enough to put up a wall.  I waited another day and pitched the remaining 1/2 packet of champagne yeast.  Lo and behold, 2 days later, you could see some bubbles and hear audible fermentation.  No cap or foam, but definately some bubbles.  I’m gonna let it ride and see what happens.  I should have more peppers to pick from my garden in about 2 weeks if I can’t salvage this batch.  Here’s raising a glass to hoping!