WGE

I bottled my Woodfordes Great Eastern Ale last night. A process which I thought wasn't going to take me too long, but in fact still took a good 2 and a half hours!

I started by rinsing, sterilising and rinsing my bottles. They were a selection of plastic 1 and 2 litres bottles, and glass half litre/pint bottles. I decided to fill half the bottles with the sterilising solution, and transfer to the remaing bottles in time. This worked well, but obviously slowed my down a bit.

I think the time increase is fine, as previously I had put all the bottles in a big bucket and covered with a sterilsing solution. This was really water wasteful, so I have been thinking how to cut this down. I think this really worked well, and my rinsing was also less wasteful using one batch of clean (at the start) water for 3-4 bottles.

I couldn't move my FV from it's resting place in the utility room, but that wasn’t' too bad, as the little bottler attachment meant I would be holdign bottles at around shoulder height. Not grat, but still workable. Having the worktop is a great benefit as I just lined my bottles, sugar, caps and capper up and could knock the actual bottling off really quickly,

The FG came out at 1012, meaning my brew is 4% in strength. A bit below the advertised 4.5% but good enough! This will be conditinoing at room temperature for a week or so, then I'll get it into the shed to cold condition. I need to re arrange the shed a bit, to make good use of the space we've got in there. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to get all my beer crates in there when full, which is the optimum I'm aiming for (though I suppose one should be being drunk and one empty ready for bottling at all times…).

The beer crates I've inherited will be useful for storing the beer, though they're pretty grubby at the moment. It's going to be tricky to clean them as they've accumulated a lot of grime and dirt from being outside for so long. I also need to work out what kinds of bottles fit in there, so I can focus on getting hold of some of them.

I also need to name the brew I've just bottled, I've labelled them 'W.G.E' so I think it's going to have to be those intiials! The bre witself is looking quite cloudy, but I think a good period in the cool sheds will help them drop bright. Only time will tell!

Other than that, I'm waiting for the orange wine to clear (I'll probably use a clearing aid for this) then we can bottle and drink!

Next on my list is a beer to brew to take away with my family in November. It's kinda for my dad's birthday so I'm going to personalise it for him! I'll also try to knock up a cider to take away too, for my mum to drink.

Homebrewing really does involve a major amount of forward planning, because I'll still need to crank out a brew for Christmas soon as well! It's only my first year, so I'm learning all the time!

HB HB HB

Blackberry Wine:

We sampled the Blackberry wine last Friday, it was ok. It was a bit astringent, but definitely tasted like wine! I'll let this mature for a while longer before trying some more. Hopefully it will improve, as I feel I've puta lot of effort into this.

Sloe Gin

This is moving along nicely, the berries are steeping their lovely pink-ish hue into the liquid. It still smells very harsh at the moment, but then it's only a matter of days into the project, not months as the recommended maturation period is.

Orange Wine,

On Monday I took a hydrometer reading on this, to see how it was going. The airlock had really slowed down, and there was quite a bit of sediment att he botton of the demijohn. It had dropped to .994, meaning we've got a wine of around 13% strength! So I've racked to a clean demijohn, added a crushed campden tablet and put it back under airlock. I understand I'll need to leave this for another couple of weeks, rack again, add finings to clear the liquid, then bottle a couple of days later.

We tried the wine, it is definitely a wine, but at the moment still has quite an orange-y aftertaste. I like it!

Woodfordes Great Eastern Ale.

I bought this kit over 2 months ago, excited about it as my first 2 can kit. Due to the house move, breaking a FV, buying a new FV and doing various other brews/DIY I hadn't got around to popping this in a tub until Monday. I cranked it out, warmed up the cans in hot water, and poured them into the FV with some hot water. At this point I should have stirred and dissolved the goo into the 3 litres of hot water, while the FV wasn't full. I didn't and topped up straight away with cold water. This meant that I had a full FV, with goo still at the bottom. It's hard to stir 23 litres of liquid with a thin plastic spoon, trying to mix the goo at the bottom, so next time, don't forget!

Anyway, 24 hours later the fermentation was well under way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this one turns out, as it's my first ale, otherwise I've done 4-5 lager kits. I understand this is not the normal way round - normally it's the ale drinkers who get into homebrewing. This seems like it could be a potential error, as most people claim their first kit, usually a bitter kit, is disastrous, as they buy the cheapest, nastiest bitter kit they see (not on purpose, just that's what they go for) and then they end up with 40 pints of nasty bitter to put away.

I'm kinda glad that I got a lager it, as it showed me that this was not as tricky as the forums say it is. This makes me feel like I'll be a more well rounded kit brewer as I'm happy to flit between lager and ale. It also gives me more scope I think as I decide what to try next, though I think I could rack up quite a few things to try!

Next on the list is a cider & lager kit to brew up to take away with my family on our week long trip to Centre Parcs. Though 80 pints might be pushing it a bit, I'll have a think about what to do.

I could take some of the Great Eastern Ale, knock up a cider which my mum, SWMBO, me, sisters and boyfriends will all drink, and knock up a premium (ish) lager for me, my dad and one of sisters boyfriends. I think that may cover all bases, and I will rpobably end up with a decent stash at the end of it.

It's all about forward planning as I can see now I'll have to crank another one out for Christmas fairly soon, if it's to condition away ready for the end of December!

Ooh 'eck!

Update

So, I've got a couple of things to update on, my wwurzels orange wine and sloe gin:

- Wurzel's orange wine: This was taken from a thread on the homebrew forum, which stole the recipe from a winemaking forum, but is basically the turbo cider of wine making. It's essentially a litre of pure OJ, a litre of pressed white grape juice, a few other nutrients, some sugar, water and yeast. It goes like the clappers to start with, and mine is now blooping away nicely 48 hours plus into the fermentation. I'll top up shortly with cooled boiled wtaer, once the first mad ferment is over.

I did make two errors when making this though. I wanted to make 2 demi johns worth, but knew I'd need to do them on separate days. I got the sugar mixed with the boiling water and was ready to go. I was too ready. I eagerly mixed the warm liquid with the cool juice and cold water and added to the DJ. After adding all my nutrients I found the temp to be over 30 degrees C still, far too high to add yeast, or take a respectable OG reading.

I left for a good couple of hours before adding yeast, and it's now going along nicely.

I thought to myself ' I won't make that mistake again' and 24 hours later boiled up another batch of sugar syrup ready to cool and add to DJ #2. I was in a mad rush that evening (as I have been all week). I've been cranking through the little DIY/house cleaning tasks, as I think we're getting a bit down that we've not got a lovely clean house. Anyway, between tasks I decided to get this second DJ going. I added my juices, some cold water, my nutrients, took a sampel to check gravity and watched my hydrometer sink lower and lower into the trial jar. I then thought 'surely something's wrong I've got all that sugar solutino in there'. I turned to behind the demijohn. The pan with the sugar syup was still full. I'd got excited and filled entirely with juice and plain old water.

I didn't have the capacity to work out whether splitting between 2 DJ's would work, and besides, that would have involved a journey to the supermarket, which was a little pointless, so I've ditched that, consoling my self that one DJ is enough to start with, and can easily get another going ASAP.

- Sloe Gin : We had gathered the sloes from near Pete and Suse's new house on the morning of Russ' wedding. I'd stuck them in the freezer ready for when I could get some gin. I've now got some gin. So the berries were defrosted, and last night I washed and pricked each sloe (not individually!). I added 900 grammes of sloes to a DJ, nearly 300 grammes sugar and 2 70cl bottles of gin. It's now intermingling and fusing away next to the orange wine.

I look forward to this, as it's something I've been meaning to try for a a few years, but a) had no access to sloes, b) never knew what a sloe looked like and c) had no idea it was so easy!

In a similar way, I'm keen to find out what the raspberry gin's like, now it's been steeping for a good couple of months. I tihnk it may be time to sample, and possibly remove from the fruit. I'll take a look soon...