Brewing more officially

I have owned the supplies to test my brews for a long time but have never really cared to find out what the percent alcohol my brews is. Well after having a few bottles explode I'm doing things a little more official this time. So for the record they batch has a starting possible alcohol level of 9% I will see where it is at in a week and report back!

Tomato processing is not my friend!

 So I have been wanting to try my hand at making some tomato products and after researching and planning decided to give it a try. I had some cards stack against me in the fact that I didn't have all the ingratiates I needed and was getting some conflicting information about canning the final products.

I was able to finish 7 jars of pizza sauce and 5 jars of salsa. Not sure how they really taste yet because they are still finishing the canning process and I'm going to let them sit for a week or so to age. I don't have high hopes for this batch though. One of the biggest reasons is the tomatoes I used weren't the best quality. But I was tired of just planning so I settled on what I could get at the prices I was willing to spend.

Another strike against processing my own tomatoes is the after effect of all the acid and spices. The salsa I made is a spicy salsa and my eyes and sinus are burning this morning and my wife informs me that some of my children seem to be having trouble as well. Plus my final mess didn't exactly get cleaned up before it was time for bed... no good will come from that!

Like many times when I have tried something new I have learned a great deal and if I try this again I will be altering what I do next time. I will keep you updated if all the trouble is worth the final product.

It finally happened!!

Well after years (almost 10) of brewing I had a blow up while carbonating. Not 100% sure yet but I think it was the bottle to blame and not over carbonation. I have had a few of the tops of my older and salvaged bottle break off. I tried on of the other bottles from this batch and it didn't errupt when I opened it so I think I'm safe. BUT just in case ALL the bottles will be spending the night outside to stop the fermentation process and than they will be moved into the basement where clean up will be a lot easier.

On a funny note we were in the middle of family game night when it exploded and to quot Savannah "THAT WAS AWESOME!!!!!" It was a funny!

Hard Apple Cider Jelly!!!!

So I finally got around to making a 5 gallon batch of hard apples cider. This has been a project I have been putting and putting off for ever since I got the Large carboy. Well everything went great with the brewing, fermenting, and bottling until I realized that a math error left me with about a litter and a half of left over cider with no good way to bottle it. I really didn't want to dump it out because it was a lot of work and would be a HUGE waste. I couldn't drink because I was on antibiotics. So I needed to find something to do with. 

One option was to just leave it open to the air and let it turn to vinegar. It was a cool idea but my family wasn't impressed with the idea of the smell. So I left the liquid in one of the plastic fermenting buckets while I thought about what I could do. In the mean time my kids wanted to try and make gummy bears candy from scratch. We looked up a bunch of recipes (tried a few... they tasted great but gummies... no by the traditional definition) and one of them called for pectin. That's when it hit me! MAKE THE CIDER INTO JELLY!!! 

I figured that even if it failed epically at least I didn't just waste it and throw it out. Well the jelly turned out AWESOME!!!! This may become a tradition every time I make Large (and possibly) small batches of cider. It turned out that good!!

What do we want? Chicken Sh!t.... WHY?

It turns out for raspberries! So it has been a busy summer and as predicted once the sun melted the snow I stopped posting. Well I got 6 chickens this spring (more to come on them). Well I have my compost bid set up yet so I have been throwing all the chicken poop in the raspberry bushes. For the last few years they haven't been producing so I figured they needed to be replaced with some new plants and have a total start over. WELL I figured the chicken poop would burn out the bushes and other plants making it easier to pull them up this fall and by the time next spring comes the ground will be GREAT for planting new bushes.

It turns out that high levels of chicken poop DOESN'T kill these bushes! Instead there are so many raspberries that it looks like the bushes are on fire! So I guess the bushes will stay for another season at least. Good news for me. I have enough work I need to get done this summer.

FULL ON FEBRUARY BLUES!!!

As predicted February Blues is hitting hard this year. I was out blowing my driveway (which I love to do) and I took a hard look at my overfill area (the area I keep clear for blowing snow, piling snow and to allow of some extra winter parking). I cleared it but this might be the last time before my "give a damn gets broken!" I have already abandoned the mailman's path (the shortcut I was keeping open for the mailman to be nice and save him some walking). This blues is SO BAD that we are due for "Warm" (33-35 degree days) next week and I'm dreading it more than looking forward to it. Because I know all this is going to accomplish is push the frost-line deeper and ice up the road because the road commission is already out for lunch on trying to keep the roads up this winter. My goal for next week is to find something to get me out of this February induced SLUMP.

Evil Brew is now Bottled!

After one last test with the hydrometer confirmed that just about all the sugar was converted to alcohol I set about bottling the brew. I should hit my goal of 15% alcohol with this batch. I did sample some of it while bottling and it is sweet and a bit cloudy but I'm hoping that after some conditioning in the bottles that will decrease. I'm a little nervous that this batch may become over carbinated and I may even be risking some exploding bottles. Only time will tell! But to be on the safe side I'm going to start up a regular batch of cider this weekend.