Let's see your homebrewed booze
- Thread starter Radagast
- Start date
I used to brew a lot more than I do these days; cider, mead, beer and wine, in pretty much that order of frequency. Lately I've been itching to try something a bit different and here it is:
Wild grape mead.
I'm starting with 2 lbs of honey, about a pound of riverbank grapes from the nearby countryside, 1/2 tsp of yeast nutrient and roughly 1/5th packet of Lalvin D47. Started today. Hard to show you how gorgeous the colour is right now, I'll keep trying.
Wild grape mead.
I'm starting with 2 lbs of honey, about a pound of riverbank grapes from the nearby countryside, 1/2 tsp of yeast nutrient and roughly 1/5th packet of Lalvin D47. Started today. Hard to show you how gorgeous the colour is right now, I'll keep trying.
Old Gasman
Well-Known Member
You have grapes growing wild?
Yep
They're small, flavourful, tart and prolific when you find a patch the birds haven't got to. Most people around here use them to make delicious jam, sometimes juice. I think they will add enough flavour, tannin and colour to be nice in a grape mead (they call that a 'pyment') and I want to know if the tartness will settle down a bit in the fermentation, I think it will.
During the late 19th century, when a Phylloxera wine blight threatened to wipe out the entire French wine industry, all the French grape vines were saved by grafting them (one-by-one) onto the roots stocks of resistant, wild North American grapes.
As a child growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, I used to hike to a favorite spot in the woods, to pick wild, muscadine grapes. The skins were too thick to chew, but we would bite a hole in it, and squeeze the muscadine to pop the contents into our mouths.
Bob
As a child growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, I used to hike to a favorite spot in the woods, to pick wild, muscadine grapes. The skins were too thick to chew, but we would bite a hole in it, and squeeze the muscadine to pop the contents into our mouths.
Bob
Old Gasman
Well-Known Member
Well I never, you learn something new every day. We don't have wild grapes here but I have made lovely wine with Elderberries. Another favourite which we do find growing wild are Bullace, prefect for wine or jam.
GreenDragon
Well-Known Member
I've brewed beer off and on for 30 years now: Ales, Pilsners, Stouts, etc. I've even grown my own hops for a few years until the they all died during one brutal Texas summer. I've also tried my hand at apple brandy once - was pretty good!
Hoping to brew an oatmeal stout soon so it will be ready for winter. I'll post if I do.
Hoping to brew an oatmeal stout soon so it will be ready for winter. I'll post if I do.
BrotherJ
Well-Known Member
Sacrilege! The skins are great!
We were just dumb kids, guided by our inability to chew them. We spit out the seeds too.
Toasted oat mead with some charred oak sticks in there.
Mead sure is weird.
It can be as strong as wine or as weak as beer, carbonated, flat as a strap, flavoured with anything under the sun and as long as it's primary fermentable sugar is honey, it is still considered mead. I don't think any other booze can say the same.
This experiment I just started will end up being something like ~6% ABV and I'll make it fizzy.
Mead sure is weird.
It can be as strong as wine or as weak as beer, carbonated, flat as a strap, flavoured with anything under the sun and as long as it's primary fermentable sugar is honey, it is still considered mead. I don't think any other booze can say the same.
This experiment I just started will end up being something like ~6% ABV and I'll make it fizzy.
PressuredLeaf
Well-Known Member
Hey another hobby I love besides gardening!
I make cider (hard) every year from my small orchard of cider specific apples. If I’m low on fruit I usually buy some commercial apples to supplement my needs.
That’s some of last years cider fermenting away. I do wild ferments with no added yeast and minimal sulfite depending on the pH. The bottles stuff is a flat blend of 50% muscadet de dieppe and puget spice. The last picture is the pomace of red fleshed variety, unfortunately this didn’t carry into the cider.
I make cider (hard) every year from my small orchard of cider specific apples. If I’m low on fruit I usually buy some commercial apples to supplement my needs.
That’s some of last years cider fermenting away. I do wild ferments with no added yeast and minimal sulfite depending on the pH. The bottles stuff is a flat blend of 50% muscadet de dieppe and puget spice. The last picture is the pomace of red fleshed variety, unfortunately this didn’t carry into the cider.
I've had a lot of fun brewing cider, I usually just buy a gallon jug of pure juice from the supermarket and throw some yeast in it. Very easy and turns out delicious, but does depend on the kind of juice I can find. This fall I plan to treat myself to some orchard cider to ferment, it's by far the best.
How do you press your apples?
PressuredLeaf
Well-Known Member
That’s how I got into too! The cloudy store bought cider ferments into something waaay better than the stuff sold as “hard cider” around here (tastes more like apple juice mixed with vodka). I use a hydro press for juicing and a scratter for pulling the apples. I’ll try to find a picture of the press, it’s made by speidel and is the bees knees. Two years ago I pressed 600lbs of apple all by myself in about 7 hrs.
Sounds like joyful work
What are the cider specific apples you grow? And what is the actual difference between cider and juice?
PressuredLeaf
Well-Known Member
Its probably one of my favorite things to do!
I planted maybe 30 or 40 different varieties around 7 years ago (probably around 100 trees total) and have been selecting the ones that work well for me (disease, productivity, juice quality etc.), then top work the ones I don't like. I planted a mix of English, Normand, and American cider apples. So far I'm really liking muscadet de dieppe, Reine des pommes, Harisson, Kronebush, and wickson. There are some others that I really like (major for instance), but they have too many disease problems. I'm also raising some crosses I made over the last two years to grow them out, hopefully for a better adapted cider apple.
In the US, the nomenclature around cider and hard cider is very confusing. Here juice usually refers to the clear/filtered unfermented juice that you buy at the store. Cider typically refers to the cloudy unfermented juice you would get from a mill, and Hard cider refers to any apple based fermented product (additives and everything). I wish we would do what most of the world does: cider = fermented apple juice only, juice=juice. Oh well, maybe one day.
Here is the press I use, I think I have the 20l or 40l one:
Nice looking wine Wolffman! My parents grow some wine grapes as well, what varieties are you growing?
This is fantastic! Thanks for making this post. I have also been visiting Homebrew Talk forum because I would like to grow my own ingredients to make beer at home. Wanting to get 6 row barley, mt. hood hops, wheat or corn which ever is easiest, capture yeast and culture it, etc. Have never done it but want to and want to learn how.
I had to look up dewberries
Very interesting, I don't see those around here.
pottsS
Well-Known Member
Clearly out of my league! A few years ago my wife came home with a bunch of powdered drink mix that we would never use. Since I hate to waste tho I added a bunch of sugar I bought, some yeast and some water and turned it into five gallons of sickly sweet wine that we would never use. It had been sitting down in the basement (still clearing) until the flies and the wasps got really bad. I experimented with a few different fly traps and a few different baits until it occurred to me that I really have to guard my beer when I'm sitting out on the patio and I remembered the wine that they would probably even like better. Don't feel bad for all the dead flies and yellow jackets in these traps. They died happy.