Recent content by ashyg

In the US it's fermented malt beverage, in Europe it's a bottled mixed drink with vodka. I think it might be illegal to sell prepared, bottled mixed drinks in the US(or something like that is the reason for the difference).

Just pull the gas release on the keg when it's hooked up to my CO2 tank?

Well, I campden'd it on Wednesday and kegged it today. I took a pull to see how it tasted and it's not good :( Some reason the cider picked up a really awful aftertaste that wasn't there the last time I sampled it. It's kind of a mix of sulfury and medicinal. Could it be the K-Metabisulfite...

My cider that I started fermenting in November was coming along so nicely... yesterday it had a brilliantly clear color and I sampled it and it tasted awesome. Apparently I wasn't clean enough with my sampling procedure and my batch got infected. Today there were a couple small pellicles...

I have some cider that I started fermenting in November that I'm about to get around to bottling(long conditioning, can't hurt, right? :)) and I want to backsweeten and pasteurize... One thing I'm confused about: won't the CO2 not be dissolved in the cider immediately, meaning that I might get...

I assume bottle carb for a few days, then bottle pasteurize? How do you know when it's properly carb'd? Won't the CO2 not be dissolved in the cider immediately, meaning you'll get gushers in the first few days?

Do I have to worry about sanitation or can I just put the packet in a ziploc in the fridge?

I know I'm bringing this back from the dead but I wanted to do this math for my own purposes anyhow... Say your boil is done and you're way under target. You have 4.5 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.040 and your target was 1.050. Vw = 4.5 Gw = 1.040 Gt = 1.050 You want 5.5 gallons...

Turkey fryer and a coat :)

Thanks, I moved them up to my 70 degree upstairs, we'll see what that does. I tilted one of the bottles and it does have some sediment at the bottom, not sure if it's just dead yeast falling out of solution or if the yeast is actually getting active.

Maybe the priming sugar didn't get mixed and I got a bottle with a heavy concentration of it. I just racked from the primary into my bottling bucket on top of a simple syrup solution made from 4.5 oz of dextrose and like 2 cups of water; didn't stir or anything but I figured it'd be mixed by the...

Nope, tasted fine before I added the priming sugar otherwise I wouldn't have bothered :) I'll bring the bottles out of the cellar and upstairs to where it's about 70 degrees, hopefully they wake up.

Yeah, I had an Irish Red in primary for 1.5 years and finally bottled it a little over two weeks ago. It's been sitting in my basement at 60 Fahrenheit. I cooled a bottle on Friday and cracked it open... no fizz, nothing. No carbonation whatsoever. Tasted it and BLECH. It was sweet as hell...

I dunno, mine had an OG of 1.057(only raw UV pasteurized fresh pressed apple cider) and just fermented dry at 0.997 and I'm going to sweeten it up next weekend once I have a chance to get out to the cider mill again. Around 1.004 it tasted perfect -- great mix of dry/sweet, just like JK's...

JK's Scrumpy -- no additions to the cider. It's pretty cloudy and sweet. Either ferment it until the gravity is around 1.004(taste for sweetness) and then carb & pasteurize, or ferment it all the way out(should end around .996ish) and then add fresh cider to sweeten, carb, and pasteurize.