Recent content by flyfishnevada

Easiest way is to sweeten in the glass. I make a simple syrup with honey. One part honey, one part water, bring to boil, let cool, put in a squeeze bottle. Pour your cider, sweeten to taste. Not bad.

Never thought about using juice to sweeten in the glass. Instead of making batches of half cider and half some other juice, I can just add different juices to straight cider in the glass. Genius! I've been using simple syrup that I make. But I find sweetening in the glass is far easier and...

I'd move on. All that moving around is just more chances to introduce bacteria. Yeast won't kill you and if the cider is cloudy, it's cloudy. How did you bottle? Did you use a racking cane or a bucket? You'll always get a bit of yeast in your bottles unless you run some sort of filter but...

I've got something like that fermenting right now. It's not 100% blackberry. It was a mix with the typical juices like pear and grape. I never saw it ferment strongly but there was evidence of krausen in the bucket and it smells of alcohol. I think it might have gone crazy that first night...

Lid might be leaking but the other batch is the exact some type of bucket and I've used them before without enough leakage to keep the air lock from bubbling. I might check it to see if it's not locked on or if the gasket is missing. I might add some more yeast and put it in a warmer spot...

I put up two batches of cider last weekend. One was simply unfiltered apple juice and Notty yeast. The other was half clear apple juice and half blackberry juice with Notty...all national brands bought at the grocery store, none of it had preservatives. The unfiltered juice fermented well...

Yeah, looks like you've made beer :D BTW, I just buy those 2.5 gallon containers of filtered water from the grocery store, you know, the ones with the built in spigot. I'm on a well and I don't trust the water not to have a few bugs in it. Drinkable but maybe not the kind of stuff you want to...

I don't think that's a problem. Some beers and some yeast are more active than others. I doubt you have air getting into your fermenter. The bubbles mean the yeast are producing gas and that is escaping the airlock (and any other possible openings, say if you're using a bucket instead of a...

There's no bigger leeches than a young Marine and his friends that are in college. Thank God they don't come around often of I'd be brewing daily :D

I'm just throwing this out there. I've got two 1 gallon batches going right now. One cider and one beer. The cider is very easy. A couple of bottles of apple juice and Notty yeast. Done. The beer? What a PITA. I did all grain. Took 4 hours or more to mash, sparge, boil, cool, clean up...

I waited three weeks on my first batch. I'd pick up the case the bottles were in and gently rock it back and forth to keep the yeast awake...or at least that's what I imagined. I sampled at two weeks and had decent carb. Never developed much of a head. Tasted markedly better after three...

Remember, the boil off rate remains the same. If you lose one gallon per hour in that pot when boiling 5 gallons, for instance, you'll lose one gallons per hour when boiling 2.5 gallons in the same pot. It's not a percentage, it's a gallon/hour rate. Adjust accordingly.

When I loaded my first batch of 48 bottles into my beer fridge, I thought it would be there forever. Then my oldest son came home on leave for the Holidays and his buddies from high school that go to the local university joined him. I down to a twelve pack or so. I think I'm going to have to...

Brew day today. As stated above, I think the amounts of water listed in the recipe are light. I mashed with the recommended 2 quarts. Grain soaked up most of that. I sparged with the recommended 4 qts and wound up with just over a gallon of sort. I heated up another 2 qts of water quickly...

I had been holding on to two cases of bottles for years (I tried to get into brewing a while back but never actually did it). They were in the original boxes with the cardboard dividers and everything. When I bottled, I put each one in a plastic tub with a lid that I had. I figured the tub...