Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Mister Beer Bottle Brew

So I finally opened the Mister Beer Bottle Brew Brown Ale that I mentioned starting a couple of posts ago on Christmas eve, to share with my brother and brother-in-law. For a cheap ($5 for 2L) DIY beer it was really good. I can't imagine not using this method to produce cheap, but good, beer instead of buying big brewery beers. The fellow at Vintner's Cellar will be pleased to hear that. :)

I may one day go into beer brewing on a large scale like I am with the mead, and get into it more in terms of picking out individual ingredients, but because I'm not a big beer drinker and my wife doesn't drink beer at all, it would take a while for me to go through 5 gallons of it.

In the meanwhile, I think I may have to drop by the store and pick up a case, or whatever he has left after the holidays, and try out a few of their flavours.


Saturday, December 8, 2012

Beginning of Dec Check-in

Well, the Cranberry Mead is filtering.

That filter I bought, while slow, is awesome. using an AF2 filter I have taken some still very cloudy mead and turned it into something that looks like the red wine you might buy  that is designed to be consumed relatively young. Clear, and clean looking.

It is going to need to age, so it will be nice for next Christmas season, but it is not really very tasty right now. The metabisulphite and sorbate added to it to stop the fermentation has given it an unpleasant taste. This taste should dissipate during the aging process.

The Cranberry mead was tasting very nice before stabilizing. I expect it will taste wonderful again after aging. This batch is 13.13% Alcohol By Vol.

The bad news (aside from having to wait for the Cranberry mead, which is not too surprising.) is that I had to dump my maple batch. It was not fermenting, and it smelled off. Apparently something else got into that batch that did not belong. It is sad that I lost about $90 worth of ingredients and a chunk of my time, but I was not about to try to "fix" it somehow. My health and that of my family and friends comes first.