Mar 23, 2021
It’s done! I can now relax. What a faff arse. I’ll get to drink it in a fortnight.
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It’s done! I can now relax. What a faff arse. I’ll get to drink it in a fortnight.
It’s like the middle of finals week, but on a whim I decided to get the bochet bottled. I’ve been trying for more of a “mise en place” approach to my homebrewing and it has really made my procedures a lot smoother.
S-04 took the mead to 10.5% ABV and I eventually decided that any benefit I’d get from adding another yeast strain to bump that up wouldn’t be worth the risk of messing up a drink that’s already quite tasty. It ended up as a semi-sweet mead with mild honey and caramel notes. I would like to try making another bochet and cook the honey much darker, but to do that, I’d either need to do a smaller batch or use a larger pot.
I got just over 17 bottles from this batch (~3.3 gallons from ~3.8 gallons of must) which I’m happy with. I did end up with a little bit of yeast in the bottles, but that’ll settle out on its own.
Finally, I decided to give it a descriptive name (Burnt Bee Juice) and add labels to 5 of the bottles for aging. How long I can hang onto them will probably depend on when I end up moving next, but I’d really like to hold onto one for at least 10 years. We’ll see.
Bonus: here's some bottle art
Don't ask about the name of the SMASH
My latest beer creation has turned out pretty good though- a California Common with Hallertauer Mittelfreuh. I blew past my expected SG by a lot, so I've decided it's a double Cal Com, hence the NCR double bear on the bottle.
Boozey, toasty, delicious, even in its flat state. Looking forward to it conditioning.
It's called Bewduiser because it's fake as shit.
So after all that graft to make a cherry cider, it didn't taste of cherries at all. So I killed back the yeast and dumped some Monin cherry syrup in, then bottled it. Only got five 500ml bottles thanks to all the cherry crap floating around. Food for thought.
Bottling day for my Saison. It's a bit thin but it'll probably be a very drinkable fizzy beverage.
Speaking of, I'm having a Duvel. I've got the IPA variant for later in the week too. Very nice. I'll need to make a clone.
My SMASH is finally in the bottle; carboy looks better drained, but I'm still only getting 3.4L from an expected 4.2L yield. Need to work on that one.
Clean up time! Don't fuck about and leave it for later. Everything in the bath for a nice scrub and rinse with the shower head.
Now, carboys are a fucker. You can't get in to clean them and I'm not going to buy one of those stupid carboy brushes.
Luckily, everywhere sells sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate these days- AKA Oxiclean in the US- so I bought a tub of (UNFRAGRENCED) stuff, sold as Astonish Oxy Active Plus Fabric Stain Remover Non-Bio. One tablespoon in 5L of water and in 20 minutes you go from this
To this
To this
Now I need a lie down and a beer.