Sit back, relax, and have a homebrew

Admittedly, I gave up on homebrewing when I moved to Wisconsin. Coals to Newcastle.

 

I got into homebrewing in 1986 at age 18.

Dove in head first into all grain and kegging and was brewing 10 - 15 gallons per month.

Had to give it up in 2007 when I moved into a micro size apartment with no stove and no room for brewing equipment.

But now I have a different arrangement and am getting back into it but doing only about one 5 gallon batch a month.

I only do ales (no lagers) and mostly porters or stouts. Usually, I alternate between a simple recipe with around 5% ABV, and a complex beer that's higher in alcohol.

This is my favorite recipe:

RASPBERRY IMPERIAL STOUT

12 lbs Maris Otter malted barley
3.3 lbs Muntons dark malt extract syrup
2 lbs crystal malt
¾ lb roasted barley
⅓ lb chocolate malt
⅓ lb black malt
3 lbs red raspberries
4 oz. East Kent Goldings hops bittering
1 oz Cascade hops flavor
Wyeast London Ale liquid yeast

Mash at 152F
Boil 90 mins
Cascade hops last 12 minutes
Add frozen raspberries in a brew bag while wort is still hot

This beer needs to age at least 6 months.


I'm a victim of the popularity of this beer with my friends. I usually get to drink only about 2 gallons out of every 5.

 

My grandparents have been growing some wine grapes in their garden. Couldn't tell you what variety, but they're white. They ended up giving me some. So I took those and mixed them with some wild grapes I picked off of some vines just north of where I live. Now I've got a half gallon of this stuff with some champagne yeast bubbling away.

As far as identifying plants goes, I had a few summer jobs working on vineyards, tending to plants, so when I see the plants I'm absolutely certain that they're grapes. These ones were pretty good, I think, as well. My grandparents white grapes were fairly tart and not too big. These red ones were smaller, and still tart but definitely sweeter. Very deep in colour, as well.

technical stuff, I know. We've been doing this stuff since before agriculture, so I kinda like to get creative with it and see what happens sometimes.

 

I love seeing people get creative like this.


I used to enjoy making wine while refusing to follow the "rules" of winemaking.

I grew my own Concorde grapes, steeped them at 170F to "pasteurize" them before pitching the yeast, and never used any additives like sugar adjuncts, sanitizers, finings, acid, yeast nutrients, etc.. I also used 20oz swing top beer bottles and left the yeast in because I like yeast in my beer and wine.

 

Gotta do something with 'em!

That said, with stuff like this it tends to sit around long enough, IME, that the yeast falls out of suspension and you can just pour out a crystal clear wine anyways.

I dunno, I just saw a bunch of them and thought, "I know what those are, let's try this out." The mixture was so dark, and I had two 40 oz bottles but enough grapes to fill one, so I got a half pound of honey, watered that down enough to fill the second and mixed it with the grape juice, hopefully it doesn't water down the stuff too badly, but it's still really dark.