Brews you can use

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I’ve been putting off the hobby stuff for way too long. Since my last update, I’ve brewed once (November 27, nearly three weeks ago) and have neither HTMLized the notes nor racked the beer. All I’ve done since pitching the yeast has been to move the bucket to the basement, where it’s currently sitting on top of another bucket saying “rack me!” everytime I walk by. I’ve meant to do it every day for the last week, but just can’t tear myself away from the computer, TV, kids, and Jess (not necessarily in that order) to get it done. I suppose this is what I get from a sealed primary fermenter. When I do open fermentation, I have an incentive to rack before the bugs get to the beer first…

Also, since last update, I’ve written off one of the batches of preservative-contaminated cider (there’s something growing in it, not yeast — I’m still debating whether it warrants a picture before I dump it). So, I’m batting about .500 on ciders this year. I still look for preservative-free cider everytime I go through a grocery store, just in case I get as lucky as with my first cider 2 years ago.

And, of course, I’ve been really busy procrastinating. Since last time, I’ve not:

• Bottled my maple wine,
• Bottled raspberry melomel (I even sprang for the fancy floor corker so I could package these in style, but haven’t gotten around to buying or gathering bottles and corks.)
• Racked/fined Orange blossom mead
• Racked my latest brew (a moderately-strong Scottish ale) to keg
• Bottled anything for the Upper Mississippi Mash-out. I’ve previously dug out whatever I had sitting in bottles, but now all of my bottled beer is the scarce, precious, well-aged stuff, or young stuff I eventually want to be precious and well-aged but not scarce

And, of course, the TOBREW list:

• Rehash some of that “old and precious” stuff, especially the barleywine and Imperial stout
• Oh, and more of the Rochefort 8 clone couldn’t hurt, either
• Attempt cloning Leinenkugel’s Apple Spice beer. (Jess loves the stuff, and I’m pretty fond of it too — very cider-like)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2005 at 1:39 am and is filed under Brewing, Wine/Mead/Cider.