Allotment, Geocaching, Homebrew, Walks 'n Stuff

Well I love making home brew, but I despise sanitizing and then rinsing 40 bottles as it takes ages! So I found a no rinse solution Star San.
So you add 1.6 millilitres of Star San into 1 Litre of water with a low carbonate content. I will be using RO water from my new Reverse Osmosis Water maker in the future, but this time I used a 5 Litre bottle of Tesco’s Ashbeck Mountain Spring water.

Last week I started a batch of “Woodforde’s Norfolk Ales Real Ale Kit – Norfolk Wherry Best Bitter” Christmas present from my Mum, thanks Mum
It was now time to start the bottling process with the new toys – Star San, Bottle Rinser and Bottle Drainer
So I added 8mls of Star San to the 5L of water, put about 2L of it into the Bottle Rinser and away I went, squirting solution into the bottles and then stacking them onto the drainer. Took about 15 mins!!! Amazing as this would normally take a good 90 mins.
One thing with Star San is it foams up, but this isn’t harmful to me or the beer and once you put the beer into the bottle it forces the foam out.

So I now have 40 bottles of so far very nice tasting beer and it took about 40 mins to sanitize, fill, prime and cap them all. PERFECT!

Oh and you can reuse the Star San solution, so back into the 5L bottle it went, again PERFECT!

Started the Muntons Export Stout from their Connoisseurs Range. Was £11.99 and using 500g of demerara sugar, so total cost is about £13. I am making the 40 pint kit to 32 pints so it has a bit more body and strenth. Cost per pint will be about 40p.

OG = 1048, so therefore ABV should be close to 5.5%

20th May 2009 – Beer bottled into 37 bottles. FG = 1006 – ABV = 5.7% + 0.5% for primer

Final ABV = 6.2%

Muntons Export Stout

Started another 4.5L of Turbo Cider tonight.

See link for method – Turbo Cider Method

I still cannot find any cheap apple juice that isn’t “made from concentrate” so Tesco it was. 4.5L for £1.90 and about £1 for honey.

Using 100% honey this time as it is supposed to give it a fuller less thin taste to it.

so 4.5L apple juice, about 500g of pure runny honey and 1 6g packet of champange yeast.

The OG is 1.078 so looking for at least a 10% ABV brew.

20th May 2009 – Cider bottled FG = 996 so ABV = 11% + 0.5% for primer

Final ABV = 11.5%

Going to try a new batch of Coopers Dark Ale as it is fantastic, shame I killed the secondary fermentation once bottled last time, so it has next to no fizz.

Day 1
OG = 1.042
used Muntons Beer Kit Enhancer instead of sugar

Day 7

SG = 1.010 – hmm seems slow

Day 8

SG = 1.006 – bottling time

Day 10

FG = 1.006 – 37 bottles of beers

Muntons Beer Kit Enhancer

First move into home brew white wines is the Beaverdale Pinot Grigio – 6 bottles

Day 1
OG = 1.080

Day 9

SG = 0.992

Beaverdale Pinot Grigio

New batch of red wine started – California Connoisseur Shiraz – 6 bottles

Day 1
OG = 1.080

Day 9

SG = 0.992

Day 20

Bottled

California Connoisseur Shiraz

While browsing various home brew forums I stumbled across something called “Turbo Cider”. It is called Turbo Cider due to the speed and ease in which this Cider can be made. Named by the “inventor” Des Devlin (Deadlydess)

Turbo Cider Recipe:

4.5L of pure apple juice

1 6g packet of yeast – I used wine yeast

Sugar/Honey – optional

Method:

1. Sterilise Sanitize everything needed

2. Place 3L of apple juice into a demijohn

3. Place 1 packet of yeast into the demijohn

4. Give it a damn good shake

5. leave for about 36 hours to ferment. Add the other 1.5L of apple juice. If you add all the Apple Juice at once it does have a tendency to bubble up through the airlock, hence 3.5L 1st, then 1.5L later

6. leave to ferment (mine took a week, but can take  longer. Need to ensure the SG is constant for 3 days, or less than 1 bubble per min in the airlock) with rubber bung and air lock in the demijohn

7. Bottle – I will be using plastic PET bottles (if you like cider with a fizz then prime as usual, like I do.l)

I used Aldi  apple juice the SG was 1.046 (so that means the ABV 5.5% approx) but I wanted a slightly stronger Cider, so added about 80g of Sugar and a 2 or 3 teaspoons of honey.  The SG was then 1.055 (ABV 7.5%), but this should drop slightly after I add the final 1.5L of Apple Juice in a day or so. So should end up with Cider with ABV of 7%.

After doing this one I am going to try different yeasts and different juices. Also read people add other stuff to it, i.e. cinnamon sticks

Bottled the Samson’s Newkie Brown today. Took 7/8 days to be fermented and ready to bottle. 35 bottles wating to be drank.