Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

Success- watermelon brandy, turned out amazing. Failure- in expecting my flamin hot Cheeto whiskey to turn out awful but maybe I’ll be surprised? Waiting- flamin hot Cheeto whiskey and blueberry brandy, I was expecting the fermentation to slow down by now but it’s going strong for the 4th day in a row. On deck- my girlfriend wants me to brew my fall pumpkin beer, so that’s planned for one of my two fermenters once my other two brews are done. Besides that, I’ve got a long list of weird stuff to try distilling, dunno yet, kinda feeling smarties or some other candy

Finished my 'try and see' cider batch. Three kinds of apples from the yard, juiced at the juicers, plus a homeopathic 22 g/L pale ale malt. Fermented to fully dry in 17 days at 14 C and 1,8 bar. After that a couple days at 2,5 C to clear it out. Plenty of forced carbonation. Came out a bit mild, like a dry white wine, but that made it easy to drink. Gave most of it away in 3 L bags, because I want to get the vessel empty and get a beer going.

Lesson learned: much more acidic apples next time, and the malt wort needs to be as concentrated as possible so it doesn't dilute the apple juice.

I started a Bochet Cyser this month; really looking forward to seeing how it tastes. Its my first bochet and first cyser, so really exploring new territory.

I've got my Tang ferment that I mentioned in my other post and some Fireweed wine, which is basically a sugar wine, but its bright fuchsia.

Currently mulling over ideas for what to do with all the blueberries I've harvested. I'll probably just be boring and make a wine but if anyone has any dumb ideas I'd love to try them.

I'm getting ready to bottle a 20l batch of Altbier, this afternoon.

I have finished the brewing stage of what will hopefully be my first gin and now need to gather up the mental fortitude to stare at a thermometer for several hours and potentially ruin all the prior work. I'm not very good at distillation yet.

Just brewed a carmel pumpkin stout. Fermentation is going well so far.

I've got a pineapple habanero cider in its last week before I bottle it right now.

Used apple juice as the base for primary, infused habanero into pineapple juice and added into secondary fermentation. It's pretty spicy, I'm going to back sweeten with pineapple concentrate I think and then pasteurize.

I made moscato wine from my grapes a couple of weeks ago and then a second wine that fermented on the skins that I pressed last weekend.

My apples have been harvested so I will probably grind and press those either this week sometime or next weekend to make hard cider.

I finally finished picking all the hops (Glacier and Mt Hood/Tettnang) off the bines that I harvested 3 weeks ago, I'm don't have any plans for any sort of fresh hop beer or anything but I would like to maybe brew something soon. I was thinking about a high (50+%) wheat saison while using chopped up wheat straw in the mash for a filter aid and fermenting with some of my wild yeast cultures.

Success - Blond smash. Once again proves that 5 weeks in the bottle is a magic number. 4 weeks? Eh. 5 weeks? AMAZING.

Failure - Watermelon wine. It's just sour. Not in a good way, at all. Tastes kinda like the rind, though there was no rind in it. Maybe backsweetening?

Waiting - choc hazelnut porter. choc comes thru, hazelnut not at all. Needs more aging time. I feel like darker beers need more time. It's almost 3 months, gonna test it.

Fermenting - ginger bugged root beer. Made root beer syrup to make root beer soda. Was ok, needs work. Remaining half into a 1 gal fermenter. It was due 2 weeks ago, but it's fine. It'll need back sweetening and bottle carb, but that'll be another drumroll 5 weeks.

On deck - It's time for a holiday beer. Something spiced. IDK what. It takes 2 months, so it'll be ready early December if I start now. Hmm...

I haven't brewed anything in a while. I was thinking of doing some kilju soon

Did a raw ale with heather tips foraged from the forest that turned out pretty good.

And now fermenting a raw pumpkin ale. Added around 3 kg pumpkin mash to the mash. A bit difficult to work with and had an OG of around 1.055, bit on the low end there. Fingers crossed it'll be drinkable. Assuming it's going to come in at session strength.

Brewed a Pale Ale with some leftover hops I had from last batch. Sadly I accidentally replaced (due to it being out of stock) ~60EBC crystal with a ~110 EBC crystal, so it's quite red. Then the BIAB bag broke during sparge, smashed down into my wort, splashing about 40% of it out onto the ground. And myself.
So we'll see.

Picture is my test cider with hops. My boss said that if I told him it is some kind of beer he would believe me. He really liked it.