brewing 2ne1

Cemecherry 2010

Just cracked open a bottle of my Cemecherry 2010. Wow! it tastes great. It has smoothed out and has a mellow kirsh after taste. It is no longer dry and is a more medium. 

It is my most successful brew so far. Very pleased. 

Once again I wish I made more bottles and did not give so many away at Christmas :)
Marcus 

Johnson’s Red

Matt Johnson has many grapes growing over his house and decided to put them to good use and asked me to make some red wine for him.

He picked one carrier bag full of black grapes about 2.6kg. They had been sitting around for a few days in his fridge so some of them had started to turn bad. I decided to wash them in a solution of water with one crushed campden tablet to kill off any bacteria.
 

Lolly then crushed the grapes within the fermentation bucket, which only made 1/3 gallon. So to try and bulk it up a bit I chopped 200g of black raisins and boiled them in water. Which topped it up to 1 gallon.

I then measured the Specific gravity and added about ¾ kg of sugar to make up the SG to 1.090

I added bog standard brewing yeast and popped it in a warm room for 3 days.  

Marcus 

Super Cider

2 November 2010 - I had two gallons of freshly pressed pure apple juice for making a batch of cider after an apple pressing evening with a friend. For the past few years, I help him process a huge crop of apples into juice with a great old fashioned grinder and press that he’s had for decades, and I take home a portion of the juice. This year I took home four gallons, and we drank two as fresh wonderful juice, and I fermented the other two. 

I read in an old brewing book about how some country folk made cider from pressed apple juice as normal, but added sugar or honey, whatever was available cheaply, to produce a stronger cider which might have been nearly wine. When they drank a few pints of this cider, they would understandably have difficulty walking. This is what I wanted to try this year. 

The starting gravity of the pure juice was 1.05, so I added 1 kg of sugar in a primary fermenting bucket to bring it up to 1.08 which would hopefully produce a med/dry apple wine with about 12 or 13% alcohol. I added pectolase, acid blend, tannin, bentonite, and winemaking yeast. It was racked to two glass demijohns after a couple weeks and allowed to sit. 

Update 20 Aug 2011- I finally decided to bottle this batch, which had no attention whatsoever during the past several months. It tastes fine, medium dry (not dry) with a pleasing golden colour. I bottled all of it in 2 L plastic soda bottles since I’m low on proper wine bottles. I have one chilled in the fridge, it’s nice served cold at dinner time.

Anyone up for a tasting?

Cheers, Jason

Raspberry Wine - 2010

July 2010 - I started a gallon of raspberry wine since we had a huge crop of berries in the garden. We save our surplus berries in the freezer and when a sufficient amount had been accumulated, I weighed 3 lbs of frozen raspberries into a large straining bag, tied it closed, and placed it in a large pot on the stove with half a gallon of water. The pot was heated until about 80 deg C to sterilise and the heat was turned off. The liquid was allowed to cool for a couple hours and was poured into a primary fermenting bucket. I put a small volume of cool tap water into the pot with the straining bag and mashed the berries to get as much juice/colour out as possible and poured the extract into the primary as well. I repeated this once more. This made just over a gallon of raspberry extract, to which I added sugar to SG 1.10. Then I added bentonite, pectolase, citric acid, and yeast. Fementation started quickly and after a week or two was racked to a glass demijohn with an airlock. 

Update August 2011 - I found this in the cupboard under the stairs, racked it and somehow it tasted fine (I was expecting the worst since it had been ignored for so long). So I bottled it, and drank the extra half bottle last night. It was very berryish, quite sweet, with a bright red colour. I’m pleased.

Cheers, Jason

Elderflower Champagne 2011

Decanted the Elderflower into 1 litre and 0.5litre bottles. I had to remove the elderflowers off of the top first.
I used a ladle and poured the liquid through a sieve and a sheet of kitchen towel to remove as much sediment as possible.
It is still a little cloudy but tastes fantastic!
Not too sweet, not too sharp, tastes like lime soda to start then finishes with elderflower. Very pleased.
However, I do not know how alcoholic it is. 
Marcus