The Rogue Mead

Bottled the Mead last night...well actually it was the wee hours of this morning...and it is just wonderful. The oranges, raisins, and spices make it a sweet, delicious, warming nectar. It sort of tasted like Christmas, and it made me want to make LOTS more and let it age until the winter months. The recipe was so easy since it was made with all household ingredients, I don't see any reason not to make a bunch more to be drunk when the weather gets colder. The recipe I made had a very mulled-wine-like character to it, and I see that as something that would be very pleasant in winter. I also want to try making some raspberry mead, as that would probably be amazingly delicious as well. So glad that I have a couple of one-gallon carboys and a great recipe for household ingredient-made Rogue Mead!

Nectar of the gods!

Baking bottles, graduation tankards, etc.

Just a few updates...

First of all, I would like to dedicate this entry to my classmates at Vanderbilt who graduated this past Friday. My readers will be glad to know that my friends and I celebrated with some homebrew, Sunny's Ginger Wit to be exact. Who could ask for a better graduation present, right? Delicious.

Tonight, I am baking bottles for sterilization as well as soaking a few in ammonia solution to remove the labels. By the end of this week, I will have bottled my Bo-Thai Ale, Youzaho Light Lager, and Rogue Mead. Two weeks from now, we will be quaffing tankards of ale and mead, just like medieval times! Delicious!!

Mead updates...

Yesterday I decided to check the mead and see how it was doing, and I noticed that it was crystal clear and that 6 out of 8 orange slices had sunk to the bottom of the jug, so I decided to give it a taste again. Man is this stuff wonderful. I have created some serious nectar here. The guy who invented the recipe/methods said that he had never waited long enough to see the oranges sink to the bottom, but he quoted the time frame of fermentation/clearing at about 2 months...hmmm. Maybe I just have a superhero awesome mead? I would think that I had stuck fermentation, but the stuff tastes great and the oranges thing is a dead giveaway that the thing has been sitting for sufficiently long. I doubt that some bottle conditioning would hurt it, anyway. I am going to carbonate half of it and see what we like better, carbonated or still, chilled or room temp! Exciting stuff, seeing as we have no standards for mead here :)

Cheers,

The Buzzing Meadmaker

Weekend update:

Today, I did some sampling of my stuff. I tasted the witbier, which is now ready to bottle. Wow was it good. The stuff is really balanced, spicy clovey ginger coriander goodness combined with a bright yet mellow citrusy flavor. I have a feeling this stuff is going to be gone fast. What awesomeness for my first original recipe!

I also went out on a limb and tasted the mead today. It has been almost crystal clear for about a week and a half, so I decided to just check it out. It is showing some ridiculous promise. The flavor is wonderful. It is a sweet mead, but I think some more of the residual sugar will mellow out in the next month to give it lots of great balance. I have a feeling I will be making more.

Recap: the mead and the witbier are both delicious and beautiful, and I will be bottling the wit either tonight or tomorrow depending on how effectively I can get off my ass and do it. They will compliment this lovely summery weather perfectly, though :). Sunny's Ginger Wit will probably reappear sometime this summer.

Best,
Sunny the Brewgod

An exciting time for the brewery

It truly is. Right now, I have a rogue mead that is halfway (one month) to completion, a lager that is in secondary cold conditioning (lagering), and my first original recipe, a Belgian witbier, in primary right now. Man does it feel good! There's so much to look at and so much progress to see! There's also loads of excitement as I think about a time when I will be able to taste all of them. There are a few bottles of ESB left, but the supply is dwindling slowly. It's just about time for a changing of the guards. Happy spring everyone! It's going to be great.

Well I'll be a sonofagun!

For those of you who don't currently reside in the greater Boston area, the weather outside turned from about 65° yesterday to about 35° with a minute amount of snow today. Crazy, right? Guess whose garage is still the same temperature. That's right. The lager's airlock is bubbling at intervals of more than a minute now, which means that primary fermentation is either done or close to done. I'm excited because this means I'll be able to rack it into secondary and brew my first original recipe, Sunny's Ginger Wit, by this weekend. I cannot wait. Comments on specific gravity to come.

In other news, my mead is looking strangely clear after less than a month of fermentation. I will probably leave it for another month, but I have high hopes for the stuff.

Various updates

Hello readers! I've got some wonderfully happy updates on the following:

Mead: Wow, I caught a whiff of it the other day, and man does it seem like it will be wonderful nectar! The mead has still been bubbling away, barely slowing down since it started. It is also showing some signs of clear progress, namely some sediment in the bottom and some darkening of the color at the top. It has officially been fermenting away for two weeks, and I'm so excited to taste it in another month and a half. Hopefully it will be an instant classic, just like the NESB (New England Special Bitter, what what!). More updates to come.

Youzaho Light Lager: I'm starting to take some pride in this, especially because it's a lager and I'm trying to take some care with it so that it ferments properly. Turns out that my garage is a perfect place for lager primary fermentation, with the temperature remaining in the 50-60 range that is perfect for the Saflager S23 yeast. If this comes out well, I will definitely be trying some more lagers. It looks really nice, and is already past high Kraeusen. The best news about it is that there was a ladybug on the carboy this afternoon when I checked on it! Good luck? Yes. Luck of the Irish? Completely possible.

NESB: Man does this taste and look good. Come by for a bottle sometime! This recipe is going into the archives as a wonderful standby. Such a great first brew.

Equipment: I got a wine thief at the homebrew store last week. Makes my life so much easier! Now, taking specific gravities is as easy and dipping a thing into another thing. Yeah that's right, I went there. I also walked away with two spanking new airlocks so that I can use all of my carboys at once! Furthermore, this isn't exactly rocket science, but I am currently storing the remaining 3/4 of Hallertauer hops in a labeled mason jar, and I plan to do this any other time I need less than a full ounce of hops in a recipe. Such a great method for storage! Freshness in the fridge!


Happy St. Patrick's Day!

-Jeff

Rogue Mead?

Hey everyone! Today I became quite sure that I have caught the brew-bug. Upon the receipt of two one-gallon carboys (actually double-size growlers) in the mail, I started to get really excited about experimentation possibilities. Now, I have been rather interested in making mead, but I didn't want to take the huge risk of brewing a big batch of it and having it be terrible. I noticed, though, that on gotmead.com there was a recipe for a one-gallon mead that basically defies all traditional brewing practices and is made with all household ingredients with pretty much no pasteurization. And BREAD YEAST, not ale, lager or champagne yeast. Sure enough, I had all the necessary ingredients in the house already! Hopefully, in about two months I will have a delicious, spiced orange mead made with a crazy, super easy procedure :). If it's good, I'll probably make it again, but I'll also try my hand in some "real" mead. Come find me to try this stuff in early May, hopefully with some great, more refined stuff come July.
















Raise your vessels like in ancient times!

-Your Brewbug-infected Brewmaster