# So what are you brewing?



## Vance G

I just started a Bochet last night with low temp melter honey.
I have two different tart cherry melomels aging. One started out as a cyser but the apples are gone!
I think I will bottle a peach melomel today
I have a wildplum melomel aging
I have a rocket fuel traditional I call resident evil, that should be great in a couple three more years.
I want to do a lemon ginger ale soon for the summer.
I am going to buy maple syrup for an acerglynn here on the for sale forum soon. Doesn't that sound good?


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## Bob J

Vance G said:


> I just started a Bochet last night with low temp melter honey.
> I have two different tart cherry melomels aging. One started out as a cyser but the apples are gone!
> I think I will bottle a peach melomel today
> I have a wildplum melomel aging
> I have a rocket fuel traditional I call resident evil, that should be great in a couple three more years.
> I want to do a lemon ginger ale soon for the summer.
> I am going to buy maple syrup for an acerglynn here on the for sale forum soon. Doesn't that sound good?


Resident Evil! LOL! 

Those all sound awesome! :applause:


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## Barry

Nothing right now, but the spring/summer brew is just around the corner.
On the list:
Kiwi Wit
Pale Ale (one that gets me as close as possible to New Glarus Moon Man)
Blood Orange Hefeweizen


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## sbuczkowski

cider (3x 5 gallons of different apples juice blends and may get broken down into smaller batches with fruit and/or honey additions)
cranberry mead that will get its last infusion of frozen berries next weekend.
mead that was supposed to get a dose of prickly pear syrup but I keep not ordering it. Might just leave it straight at this point.

recently bottled another straight mead, honey/agave blend mead and a multi-berry melomel. 

Right now, I'm trying to decide what to get started this year.


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## danno

Scottish Strong in the secondary This will be batched with a bunch of brewing friends and aged in a bourbon barrel for 6 months
Dark english mild about ready to rack into secondary
Milk Stout made yesterday


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## Bob J

Barry said:


> Nothing right now, but the spring/summer brew is just around the corner.
> On the list:
> Kiwi Wit
> Pale Ale (one that gets me as close as possible to New Glarus Moon Man)
> Blood Orange Hefeweizen


Where did you get your blood orange? For my mead I had to order juice from Sicily since I couldn't find it locally.... Had to use Cara Cara for the pulp and zest....


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## danno

Do any of you beer brews use beersmith? I have had it for a couple of years now. They have a free trial download. Plus its cheap to just purchass. The only thing it doesn't do is actually boil the wort for you


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## Barry

Bob J said:


> Where did you get your blood orange?


We have Caputo's around here and I've heard they stock blood orange.

http://caputomarkets.com/

I haven't made this one before so I still have to see how hard it will be to get them.


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## Barry

I downloaded BeerAlchemy over a year ago. Played around with it a bit, but never really spent the time to set it up and refer back to it. I still just keep handwritten notes on my recipes.


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## Bob J

Barry said:


> We have Caputo's around here and I've heard they stock blood orange.
> 
> http://caputomarkets.com/
> 
> I haven't made this one before so I still have to see how hard it will be to get them.


Thanks! Will have to see if I can find a Caputo Market near Quincy..... This is what I ended up using:

Italian-Volcano-Blood-Orange-Bottles

Good stuff but shipping was a killer!


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## danno

Barry said:


> I downloaded BeerAlchemy over a year ago. Played around with it a bit, but never really spent the time to set it up and refer back to it. I still just keep handwritten notes on my recipes.


with beer smith you can do so many things. 
When I add a recipe heres some things it tells you
1 it tells you the projected color 
2 it tells you the bitterness 
3 it tells you the starting and finished gravity
4 it can even tell you how many calories are in a 12oz glass
5 you can take a a allgrain recipe and with the click of your mouse change it to a extract recipe
and the list goes on and on and the really cool part of the program is you can adjust any of these to fit your taste or the beer style.
It hold your inventory records and when you pick a recipe it tells you if you have a ingredient in stock or if not it adds it to a shopping list. after brewing it can remove the ingredients from your inventory
you can down load recipes from there web site
on brew day you can open a sheet with timers that tells you step by step start to finish
all and more for under 25.00 and you can install in 2 computors


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## HoneyMaple

I've been using beersmith for about a year now. I would have to say it is probably been the best money that I have spent on brewing that I don't end up putting in the bottle. While I don't use even a portion of what it is capable of, Still worth every penny. It really allows you to tweak your recipe with predictable results.

As far as what Is brewing ...

In secondary:
Orange Melomel
Cranberry Melomel

just bottled:
American Honey Wheat
Honey Amber

Really need to brew a couple more batches of the American Honey Wheat. Man is that good.



Will bottle this weekend:
Apple Melomel


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## CHD

Just started brewing this year. My first batch was an Oktoberfest kit, the boys and I drank it all up. I bottled a brown ale and should be ready for tasting this weekend. This hobby is a lot of fun. Making plans for a batch of Mead.


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## thenance007

I made a Semi-sweet Mead last fall after a mead maker spoke at our beekeeping meeting--people really liked it. Tried to turn 1 gallon into peach melomel by adding peaches after primary. Didn't taste too good so I added a can of peach puree after fermentation. It has a bit of a sour taste and no sweetness or peachiness, and the bottom half of the jug appears to be the puree. It's still sitting there and I don't know what to do with it. Peach vinegar, anyone?

To avoid wasting the equipment, I then brewed a Rye Pale Ale - came out much better than Terrapin! Now I've just lagered a Vienna Lager with Mexican overtones--much more a crap shoot, so we'll just have to see how it turns out. . .


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## Bob J

thenance007 said:


> I made a Semi-sweet Mead last fall after a mead maker spoke at our beekeeping meeting--people really liked it. Tried to turn 1 gallon into peach melomel by adding peaches after primary. Didn't taste too good so I added a can of peach puree after fermentation. It has a bit of a sour taste and no sweetness or peachiness, and the bottom half of the jug appears to be the puree. It's still sitting there and I don't know what to do with it. Peach vinegar, anyone?
> 
> To avoid wasting the equipment, I then brewed a Rye Pale Ale - came out much better than Terrapin! Now I've just lagered a Vienna Lager with Mexican overtones--much more a crap shoot, so we'll just have to see how it turns out. . .


I do a lot of Melomels (though not a peach yet) and many do not show decent aroma or taste until 6+ months (often a year) have passed.... At this point I would consider racking and stabilizing and then letting it age.... You might be surprised....


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## danno

thenance007 said:


> I made a Semi-sweet Mead last fall after a mead maker spoke at our beekeeping meeting--people really liked it. Tried to turn 1 gallon into peach melomel by adding peaches after primary. Didn't taste too good so I added a can of peach puree after fermentation. It has a bit of a sour taste and no sweetness or peachiness, and the bottom half of the jug appears to be the puree. It's still sitting there and I don't know what to do with it. Peach vinegar, anyone?
> 
> .


did you do anything to sanitize the fruit when you added it. Th sourness sound like a bacteria infection. I do agree with Bob J. Rack it, give it a shot of sorbate, bottle it and forget it. Try it in 6 months or a year. If its still bad make vinegar out of it. Peach vinaigrette dressing sounds good


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## thenance007

Danno, I think I dipped the fruit in sanitizer solution but I'm sure that would be sufficient. It actually still tasted ok after the fruit fermented, just not at all peachy or sweet, which is why I added the can of puree. I did not sanitize that, just poured it in; after that it did not ferment any further. I think I added sorbate at that point to keep the peach flavor intact. Some more honey might help at this point--it is just a little bit sour, not bad, but the rest of the batch came out so yummy, I expected this to be good. I'll just leave it sitting in the cupboard for a while longer. . .


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## danno

The potasssium sorbate stops the yeast from multipling so fermentation cant continue. It doesn't preserve favor. If you do decide to add more honey the way to do it is mix it with water hot enough to desolve the honey. Then pasteurize it by heating this to about 175 and hold it there for about 1 hour. This can then be added to your mead. Add some, mix and taste until its where you want it


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## thenance007

Thanks, danno! I didn't mean preserve flavor as in preservative, I meant I wanted to stop fermentation so the sugar in the peach puree wouldn't turn to alcohol. Didn't work, though. Thanks for the instructions on adding honey--wouldn't have thought to pasteurize it. Figured that 14% alcohol would probably kill any baddies.


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## danno

I learned the hardway about sorbate. It was back in about 1990 and my first batch of mead. I bottled about 25 bottles and stored them away in the basement rack. about 6 months later I came home to the smell of alcohol in the house. about 10 of these had blown there corks and emptied on the floor. I took one up to the kitchen gently tried to open it with a cork screw. Well about 1/2 way out it blew the cork and a stream of mead hit the ceiling.


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## Bob J

danno said:


> I learned the hardway about sorbate. It was back in about 1990 and my first batch of mead. I bottled about 25 bottles and stored them away in the basement rack. about 6 months later I came home to the smell of alcohol in the house. about 10 of these had blown there corks and emptied on the floor. I took one up to the kitchen gently tried to open it with a cork screw. Well about 1/2 way out it blew the cork and a stream of mead hit the ceiling.


I think a lot of us have been there..... I made wine and beer before I started making mead and never had a problem..... My first batch of mead had a very similar result even after I thought I had stabilized it..... First time I really realized how mead ferments differently....


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## Fowkes

I've currently got some cranberry melomel, raspberry melomel, orange and cinnamon melomel, nutmeg metheglin, and plain old mead. All in their second fermentation phase ready to be racked.

A couple weeks ago I bottled up a batch of Braggot, which has turned out quite nice.


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## Bob J

Tapped some of the Apple Pie Cyser to take to the Mothers Day celebration at my In Laws...... Everyone agreed that it was really, really good.....;- )


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