Mead!

I attended a mead class last week. Looked pretty interesting. There are a lot of different styles of mead. I put together a video of one of the simplest ones. Click on the video below:

Easy to make. Takes a while to ferment. And even longer to age.... Tastes great though!

What is going on in the brewhouse?

Ok, so I have a couple beers fermenting. The Saison is still chugging along. I am going to shut it down and rack to secondary tomorrow. It is moving very slowly now and should finish fine in secondary.

The Goat scrotum Ale is pretty much finished fermenting. I will leave it another week before bottling. Looks great.

Next up? Mead!

Fermentation Update - Can you say blow off tube?

The fermenation really took off. PACMAN yeast rocks!


It started with a nice half inch of krausen....then pooof. The "crust" slid and the grand canyon took over!

I hooked up a blow off tube in case it got really rowdy.

It did!

It just kept goin!

The airlock got a bit chunky!

It slowed down a bit and I put the regular airlock back on today....still really chugging away!

Dark and Nasty! OR Bold and Beautiful....???

With all the stuff that went into this beer, not sure what to call it!

Brown sugar, molasses, corn sugar, and a ton of malt!

I used my homegrow hops in this one.

Used the mashtun again this time...with the ball valve in place this time.

The Tun!

Spent grain, eh!

Boilin'

Theres the homegrown hops in the boil

The chiller in action.

siphon into the carboy

1.072! Ready for fermentation!!!!!

What yeast did I use? PACMAN. Can't make that up!!!!

Looks great.

Monday night brewing!

Tonight we brew a classic recipe from Charlie Papazian's book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. The recipe? Goat Scrotum Ale. Tons of fermentables. Molasses, brown sugar, lots of malt, simple sugars and we get to play pick a "bonus" ingredient. We are giving the mashtun another go...

I put together a yeast starter yesterday and will have it ready for tonights brew.

Saison update. It is still fermenting. I took a gravity reading and we are at about 1.018. Probably another 10 days to go before it is down below 1.010. (tasted good when i sampled it)

I'll post some brew photos tomorrow.....

Saison Update

Soooo. The saison is still going. I boosted the gravity yesterday and the yeast kicked in again. It is still a bit high, but working its way towards the final gravity. I think it may be another week before I send it to secondary. That's the way the yeast is.....

Monday is brew night....either a double IPA or Imperial IPA....gotta put together the recipe.....

Next Tuesday is the Mead Class. Hope to try some good samples.....

More later....