What's Brewing?

[Hawg]

Great thread here.

[ness]

We racked the wine off the sediment into a clean carboy on Wednesday and let it settle for a couple days before bottling.

The not-so-fun and time consuming part of all this is the cleaning. I bought a couple gadgets to make bottle cleaning a little easier: a rinsing contraption that shoots sanitizing solution into the bottle, and a bottle tower that helps with draining the solution out. 

After the bottles were washed and sanitized, we set about to bottle. Kathy has been involved all along the way, and her mom is here for the holidays so she helped out with the bottling too. 

 

We ended up with 29+ bottles of wine. We tasted the + after we were done. Of course it’s a little raw, but it has excellent potential.

I’m gonna wait three months before cracking open the first. Hopefully it will be ready to gift next Christmas. 

[ness]

And…

Look what the postman brought!

Thanks @BilletHead and Pat!

[BilletHead]

Fair trade for fruit cake 🤣

[fshndoug]

anyone thought about just buying a bidet, that kinda gets the underside of things

[Hawg]

On 12/31/2022 at 9:26 AM, ness said:

We racked the wine off the sediment into a clean carboy on Wednesday and let it settle for a couple days before bottling.

The not-so-fun and time consuming part of all this is the cleaning. I bought a couple gadgets to make bottle cleaning a little easier: a rinsing contraption that shoots sanitizing solution into the bottle, and a bottle tower that helps with draining the solution out. 

After the bottles were washed and sanitized, we set about to bottle. Kathy has been involved all along the way, and her mom is here for the holidays so she helped out with the bottling too. 

 

We ended up with 29+ bottles of wine. We tasted the + after we were done. Of course it’s a little raw, but it has excellent potential.

I’m gonna wait three months before cracking open the first. Hopefully it will be ready to gift next Christmas. 

Would it be easier to autoclave(pressure cook) the bottles?

[ness]

1 hour ago, Hawg said:

Would it be easier to autoclave(pressure cook) the bottles?

I don’t think so. I don’t have the equipment and don’t think I’d want to deal with hot bottles anyway. I used Star San to sanitize. It’s widely used in dairy operations, breweries and wineries. Pretty easy to do. 

I’ve run bottles through the dishwasher without soap before. 

[ness]

On 1/27/2018 at 11:21 PM, ness said:

Alright, 18 liters bottled. Will improve with age...

 

I’ll put a couple in the fridge and the rest in the ‘cellar’.

I went to bottle my latest batch of cider yesterday and found one last bottle of this that started in 2017. I didn't know it was down there. I wasn't really sure what to expect because of its fairly low alcohol content (~6%) and light body. But, it is very good! Nice and crisp.

[ness]

Opened up @BilletHead’s meads tonight, after giving it a few months to age. It’s very good! Very certainly made from honey as it really comes through. Fairly sweet but very nice. Thanks!

 

 

[BilletHead]

15 hours ago, ness said:

Opened up @BilletHead’s meads tonight, after giving it a few months to age. It’s very good! Very certainly made from honey as it really comes through. Fairly sweet but very nice. Thanks!

 

 

You are so welcome my good man.