Begin Brewing!

A friend is currently attempting to motorize my grain mill, which rules out brewing any beer this weekend.  I decided to do another mead instead, to keep in practice. Being a fan of Indian food, when I ran across a recipe for a Rooibos Chai Metheglin (metheglin is mead that includes spices) I decided it sounded like a good option.  While that recipe used plain Rooibos tea and spices, I'm going to use Rooibos tea bags which already contain a blend of Chai spices.  Will it make as good a mead?  We'll find out. Ingredients 2.5 pounds Clover Honey 3/4 teaspoon Yeast Nutrient 1/4 teaspoon Yeast Energizer 4 teabags of Rooibos Chai Tea 1 packet Montrachet Wine Yeast 1 gallon of water Brewing Place one gallon of water in a stock pot and bring to a boil.  Boil for 10 minutes to sterilize and remove chlorine. Steep the tea bags in the water while adding the honey, yeast nutrient, and yeast energizer.   Meanwhile, rehydrate the w...

Yesterday I toured local meadery Brothers Drak e and got to try several of their products. It got me to thinking about how I might try to put a spin on the drink. What I decided was to try mixing the idea of a Mead and a margarita into one beverage. I'd use orange blossom honey as the base, and combine it with dark agave nectar to get a tequila like flavor, adding lime juice to introduce tartness, and sweet orange peel to simulate triple sec.  The honey would provide additional orange notes and hopefully a base sweetness. Ingredients 1 pound Orange Blossom Honey 1 pound 3 ounces Dark Agave nectar 0.75 ounces sweet orange peel 1 ounce by weight lime juice 0.25 teaspoons yeast nutrient 1 packet champagne yeast Brewing Boil three quarts of water for ten minutes with the lime juice, yeast nutrient, and orange peel in it. Remove from heat and add the agave nectar and honey. Allow it to cool to around 80F and pitch the yeast into it. Fermenting I p...

The finished beer, after additional conditioning yeast was addded I've been a fan of Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron ale since the first time I had it. The strong brown ale, aged in huge Palo Santo wood tanks is a very rich, unique-tasting brew.  I recently encountered a potential clone recipe for it, along with a pound of the Palo Santo wood. The recipe was said to have taken second place at a national competition and some other medals. I ended up adjusting the recipe before brewing, for a couple of reasons.  First, I felt like it had too much wheat in it (4 pounds) and I might have had to add rice hulls to keep wort flowing through it.  I also couldn't get my hands on de-bittered black malt unless I mail-ordered it for around $13 a pound (including shipping). That seemed ridiculous, so I used Carafa III Special instead. Ingredients 11 pounds 2-row Brewer's Malt 1 pound, 4 ounces Cara-Pils/Dextrine Malt 1 pound 2-row Pale Ale Malt 1 pound Carame...