Begin Brewing!

For some time now, I've read about Joe's Ancient Orange Mead, but I've never taken the time to actually create a batch of it.  This year, I had the time and the ingredients on hand. Ingredients 3.5 pounds of honey (mostly orange blossom, some clover) 1 large orange 1 cinnamon stick 1 clove A small pinch of freshly grated nutmeg 25 raisins Enough water to make 1 gallon 1 package of Fleischmann's bread yeast Making the must: Wash the orange and remove the zest.  Peel the orange, throw away the pith, then thinly slice the orange across the segments, Collect one gallon of reverse osmosis water Add the honey and about half of the water to a sanitized fermenter Shake to aerate the must and mix in the honey Add the orange, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and raisins Add water to the one gallon mark Shake the fermenter again to mix in the yeast and aerate further Add an airlock and allow it to ferment until the liquid is clear Strain out the solid ingredients and bottle Post-Brew Note

Adventures in Homebrewing had 96-ounce cans of Blackberry Wine base on sale for $10, because they were past the sell-by date.  I decided to chance it and buy two of the cans to turn into blackberry wine.  When opened, the cans smelled perfectly fine, so I think the wine is going to turn out well.  We'll see. Ingredients (per 5-gallon batch) 1 can of Vintner's Harvest Blackberry Wine Base 8 pounds of cane sugar 3 tsp. Citric Acid 4 tsp. Yeast Nutrient (DAP + Fermaid O) 2.5 tsp. Pectic Enzyme 1/2 tsp. Wine Tannin 1 packet CR51 Vintner's Harvest wine yeast Enough RO water to reach 5 gallons in the fermenter Original Gravity: 1.086 SG for one batch, 1.077 SG for the other Final Gravity:   0.988 SG estimated Batch Size:   5 gallons per batch ABV:   13.5% estimated Fermenters Used:   Two 7.5 gallon SS Brewtech Brewmaster Buckets Preparing the must was pretty straightforward.  I heated three gallons of the RO water to about 120F and began dissolving the sugar in it.  When the sug

 A few months back, I saw one of David Heath's YouTube videos where he brewed a "Fast Christmas Beer" using a couple of methods to reduce brewing and fermentation time.  The recipe sounded interesting, so I decided to brew it for Christmas 2020.  Thanks to COVID-19, I won't have many opportunities to share it with others, but my wife and I will get to check it out. I deviated from the recipe in the video in that I elected to go for a 60-minute boil rather than boil the hops, orange peel, and cinnamon separately on the kitchen stove.  I also deviated slightly in using a mix of base malts that I needed to use up, rather than the straight up pale malt he used.  Otherwise, this is basically David Heath's recipe. I also decided to use Lutra Kveik yeast for half the wort and SafAle S-04 for the other half, just to see how the beer would differ with a different yeast.  Heath recommended Tormodgarden Kveik yeast, but also noted S-04 and US-05 as options if you didn't