Definitely not. I sliced 50 lemons up and fermented just those (everything included) with 12 pounds of sugar or so and the resulting wine was 9%. I didn’t even bother balancing the ph or anything either.
Nothing wrong with liking what you like! And the only distilled beverage my gf likes is gin, which I’m sure means at some point I’ll get a “hey honey you should try making gin” thrown my way lol
All the berries
Now that it’s no longer dreary winter I’m finally getting the motivation to do something that isn’t fly virtual aircraft every waking second of my day. I decided to make two wines, one that’s a mixed berry (blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, not sure what else it’s just the berry medley pack from aldi) and a strawberry banana. Sometimes no matter how good or experienced of a brewer you are you make dumb mistakes. Did I get annoyed when my strawberry banana starter foamed over and caused a small cleanup? Yes. Did I think to add a blowoff tube to the fermenter filled with it? No. Did I spend most of today mopping the ceiling? Yes. Originally I wanted to do a lemon brandy rather than strawberry banana, but lemons were stupidly expensive. The plan is for the mixed berry wine to be the girlfriend tax and the strawberry banana to be turned into a brandy for a camping trip I have going on next month.
Yeah that sounds about right lol. Any time I hear someone say “you can’t ferment x and have it be drinkable” I go out of my way to try and ferment it. I heard that about watermelon and the watermelon wine I made turned out great, and distilling it to moonshine made the best watermelon brandy I’ve ever had (every commercial one I tried has the artificial watermelon taste). I’ve also made milk wine. Maybe I am a mad scientist…
It would depend on how lazy I was. For the fruits I’d heat them to 158F (70C) for 15 minutes while stirring constantly. But I’ve also been completely lazy and dumped in the blueberries without treating them in any other way besides freezing them. Since it’s in secondary and I tend to make higher abv beers I’m sure even that was most likely over kill. And it depends, my favorite is my chocolate hot pepper imperial stout, but my black berry Belgian triple was also really good. I think the only one I wasn’t a fan of was the kiwi, but I think it’s because I added too little to my beer to impart a significant taste, or I didn’t do the right base beer (I think a sour kiwi beer would be good but I haven’t made fermented beer in a while)
Over all, I recommend just playing around! I’ve made some abominations of fermented beverages (whiskey made from only hot Cheetos) sometimes it’s just more fun to experiment and see what you get!
All the time! (Back when I was doing extract brews as well) typically I would use the lighter dry malt extracts when doing so. But at the end of the day using extracts only limits some of the different grain flavors you can get (and that’s if you don’t do a small muslin bag with grains for the first bit of heating the extract)
Things I’ve added that I can remember off the top of my head. In Secondary: vanilla beans, coffee beans, peaches, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, kiwi, ginger, cinnamon sticks. Making a tincture: Cacao Nibs, habanero peppers, Carolina reaper peppers, vanilla bean
For the expensive trial and error part, what id do when I wasn’t sure what fruits I’d want to use I’d brew 5 gallons of my base beer, and split it into 5 different fermenters and add whatever I was feeling into each then compare what I like most once it’s done in secondary.
Yup. I used Libra in college but getting the formatting right took longer than writing my papers. If I had to pay for a subscription to office I wouldn’t, and I don’t, I just prefARR’ my office apps.
I do sim racing and flight simming, while not VR exclusive games, once you try it in VR you can’t go back. Besides that, walkabout mini golf is probably one of my favorites, blade and sorcery, hotdogs horseshoes hand grenades (though, not much of a story to that one), vertigo 2, Boneworks, there’s plenty of great games for VR, and that’s ignoring some of the stuff like using it for workouts when it’s freezing outside and getting cardio in with beat saber
The team grew exponentially from the release of KCDI to KCDII, so I hope it’s not hopium that it will remain tried and true, actually making the games for gamers rather than profit.
Definitely is. I have a picture of me looking through the little wood character that’s in the background of the OP, from the museum in Dayton OH
I’ve got about 15 hours into it so far (played from when it released into the wee hours of the morning) and the only bugs I came across so far was I’ve seen one person gliding across the ground instead of walking. IMO, this game is an absolute banger and masterpiece. Definitely a breath of fresh air to have a game work out of the box on the first minute
As someone who does VR in flight sims on one of the least optimized games (DCS) I can see the allure. Aside from that one niche though, I can’t think of many uses for a 90 series card though
That would be interesting! Admittedly I’ve no idea where I’d find bulk amounts of it though lol
I expect it to turn out very lemony. We’ll see how it goes. Distilling essential oils is the same process but I’m a bit iffy since I had to boil the lemon must for a bit to get it to fit my fermenter. It’s definitely one I want to try my hand at again, after finding something stupid to ferment as a meme again
Also shit, just was about to go back to the old comment you made on one of my older posts to give you an update but realized you commented here. Orange wine turned out fantastic! I’ll report back in the next few days on distilling the lemon wine, that ones got a strong flavor of pith on the beck end. Backsweetening it helped but, oddly, the orange wine is the winner without any back sweetening. It tastes very different from any other wine I’ve made, including the watermelon, but it’s quite nice. hopefully my girlfriend doesn’t notice I’ve been “sampling” lots of glasses since I tried it for “taste tests” since I told her one of the citrus wines was just for her lol
That’s a gorgeous bike! Weekends going alright, would be a lot better without snow or cold weather though lol
They’re tasty. After screwing around with back sweetening the lemon wine it seems the girlfriend prefers the orange wine. So I’ll have some nice lemon brandy in the next few days for myself!
Bear Grylls has entered the chat
Good question! All I can say is same strain of yeast, the orange abv is almost double the lemon with one week less of fermentation. I did not add baking soda or try to balance the acidity to either. Yeast is a resilient organism it seems.
Yeah hard thing is finding ones in English. Thankfully as an EU citizen irelands on the table for both of us lol
I’d love to! Do you guys happen to have any good cancer sciences PhD/doctoral programs? I’ve talked about moving to Ireland if my girlfriend loses her PhD program and I lose my job due to the politics, hardest part would be getting all our stuff over seas, and our 4 legged furry friend over lol
Lemon wine and orange wine
Orange on the left, lemon on the right. Lemon looks darker since I did an oopsie with the water level and had to boil for a while. Orange wine is at an fg of 1.006 and tastes very sweet, don’t even have to back sweeten it. It tastes different but I like it! 18% abv. Lemon wine has a very bitter back end. I’ll be screwing around with back sweetening it to see how it is. The lemon wine ended at 1.032 or 10% abv. Girlfriend likes both so I’m not sure which I’ll be turning into brandy but either way, citrus test was a success!
Orange you glad to see me
Appreciate the mandolin recommendation. Made this go so much quicker and easier. This one is going to be made into orange brandy. In retrospect I should have saved some of the oranges to candy them and toss them into the end product but depending on how lazy I get the next few weeks, I might end up doing just that.
New year new brew
Someone said that orange doesn’t ferment well so naturally, I’m going full send. I bought a mandolin and chain mail glove as recommended by someone on a comment from the lemon wine post. That’ll be in tomorrow so today I’m making a yeast starter for the orange brandy.
Why the sour face?
Girlfriend wanted wine so I brought up a spare fermenter from my other house, giving lemon wine a shot. This will be my first proper wine (that I won’t be immediately turning into brandy) Glad to be back at it after the hectic holidays. I want to make an orange brandy next, but after slicing 50 lemons by hand (I don’t own a mandolin) I think I need a short break from slicing citrus.
About that time
Last fermenter is about to be empty. This one is my blue razz jolly rancher. Smells amazing. Tastes terrible (without back sweetening) Came out at 11.8% abv. Back sweetening with simple syrup down to 8.5% seems to be the winning combo, if I were drinking it as a wine: smells much stronger than it tastes of the delicious artificial blue razz flavor. Over all a fun YOLO project. Guess we’ll see how it tastes as a spirit in the next few hours + 24 hours for the angels to have their share. Now to determine what to make next… I’m thinking of trying pressure fermenting in the keg for my beer, a wine for my girlfriend, and the third fermenter for whatever meme spirit I feel like whipping up next, which I haven’t the slightest clue of what I’m in the mood for yet.
Blue razz rancher plus a sweet potato brew
I have definitely been posting in this community a lot over the last few weeks/days so apologies if it’s a bit much lol, things should slow down since I’m running out of jars and fermenters though. But here’s my fermenter with plenty of sugar, blue razz jolly ranchers, and lots of nutrient. Along side my meme I’m going to turn into moonshine I’ve also got a fall beer my girlfriend requested. I’ve made the pumpkin ale loads of times but this is the first time I’m doing it without pumpkin (the one I bought was rotting when I cut into it and I didn’t feel like going back out and buying another)
Raise the jolly rancher
I don’t quite know why I didn’t realize I’d have to individually unwrap these and it’d be a pain in the ass, but there’s no going back now. Blue razz jolly rancher distillate soon. I’ve also got my sweet potato beer fermenting (it’s supposed to be pumpkin and sweet potato but the pumpkin I bought was rotting on the inside, so I just rolled with what I have). I also ended up making 80 dog treats from some of the spent grains from the beer, if pupper is happy I’m happy. Over all I think I’m coming back from my one year brewing break with a vengeance.
4 horsemen of the apocalypse
From left to right. Blueberry brandy with home made blueberry syrup for color and flavor, 48% ABV. Blueberry brandy, no additives, 54% abv. Flamin hot Cheeto liquor with 15 dehydrated Carolina reapers added to it for a few hours (it’s so spicy it makes my stomach hurt) 48% abv. Cheeto liquor 48% abv. All my fermenters are empty now. Let’s see what else we can do. Think I’m gonna do a beer and another meme spirit, but sadly I can’t find bulk sour warheads in a single flavor online so I’ve gotta spin my wheel of random shit to brew
Cheeto liquor, so many regrets
This was by far the weirdest distillation I’ve done from a process perspective. I’m a fairly green distiller but usually I can tell when something is hearts or heads or tails but this? Strong Cheeto flavor the whole way through. I’ve never seen color come off a still but it came out with a yellow tint the entire time. Split it into two batches, one just straight on its own and one sitting on a handful of dehydrated Carolina reaper peppers and some other hot peppers. Clocking in at 48% abv. What’s it taste like you might wonder? Wash all the powder off of a Cheeto and suck on it for 5 minutes. After that take a shot of vodka. I think the flavor will be almost dead on to what this tastes like. Admittedly, I poured 750 mL down the drain, I can’t justify using another jar to store a meme. Over all, 10/10 would science again.
E-ink displays are neat
There was a video posted on this community from the brushow on YouTube, and while most of the things were cool, I found this to be brilliant. Seeing as one of my other hobbies includes 3d printing, I decided to give it a go. Not sure if it’s entirely homebrewing related but, once I get the single screw to mount it to my tap, I feel this will be an awesome addition whenever I stop making horrid creations and go back to doing beer
Sparkling flamin hot Cheeto drink
Well, can’t call it anything besides sparkling beverage since it wasn’t produced in the Cheataeu region of France but… it’s done fermenting. Came in at a whopping 12% ABV. For something that fermented completely dry it’s got an unbelievably sweet flavor to it. It has the tiniest hint of the hot Cheeto flavor without any of the spice. Maybe like if you licked your fingers 10 minutes after washing your hands post Cheeto binge. I’m assuming there’s some sort of artificial sweetener in the Cheetos that the yeast couldn’t quite chew up, it smells similar to the corn ale I made but taste wise is much different. Next step is to let the liquor fairies have their way with this the next moment they have some free time.
So…. What’s the worst idea you went through with?
From the picture, this tops my list, flaming hot Cheetos… after mentioning it yesterday, my enzyme came in later than expected but I decided to send it anyways. It’s so greasy it’s probably turned me off Cheetos forever. However, science must ensue. Here we have 15 pounds of flamin hot Cheetos mashed with enzymes for an hour and 8 pounds of sugar. Honestly, after tasting the mash, the heat doesn’t come through, and frankly it mainly tastes/smells like a corn mash. Personally I’ll be surprised if I can tell the difference between this and a white whiskey made from straight corn. So, what’s the dumbest thing you’ve done?
Blueberry wine
Decided to start a blueberry “wine” today. I only have wine in quotes as it’ll only go for a week or until it’s fully fermented before the liquor fairies have their way with it. About a year ago I made a comment here that I like doing and trying wild things. Well, prepare for an affront to whatever diety you may or may not believe in. Assuming my enzymes come in at a reasonable time, tomorrow’s post may very well be a flamin hot Cheeto fermentation. I apologize in advance to everyone here, and no, I don’t know what’s wrong with me but it sounds hilarious so I’m gonna send it.
Watermelon brandy
Everything I read on research into watermelon wine or brandy people mentioned to not bother and that it never turns out. Decided to buy and blend 6 watermelons and give it a shot anyways. I must say, my apple pie brandy was my go to crowd pleaser, but this? This easily overtook it! (Aside from the 3 hours of cutting watermelons, that was a pain)
Cheersing the community with my fruited wheat
After leaving Reddit one thing I was missing was the home brewing community, really glad to see there’s a thriving one here!
I tend to experiment and make off the walls type of beers, this one’s technically maybe a hefe? I added more grains to get it to be more of an imperial beer, clocking in at a whopping 9%. I then let it sit on 6 pounds (2.72kg) of blue berries and 4 pounds (1.81kg) of kiwi. It came out deceivingly light tasting for how strong it is, but it’s got a nice tart flavor on the back end from the berries and kiwi.