GRAPE WINE, CIDER AND INSERT "STILL" PUN HERE

here are some i thought of:

1. "yo guy, still"
2. "in the still of the night"
3. "i hate myself"

well it took a few trips to several hardware stores, pissing off my girlfriend by using her j-cloths, some pizza and some rap music but we got it finished last friday.

here's a list of materials:

• 14L stainless steel stock pot
• stainless steel bowl with same diameter
• bronze floor flange with 3/4 inch attachment
• nuts and bolts
• rubber stoppers
• cobalt drill bits
• 1 length of 1/2 inch M-grade copper pipe
• 1 length 1/2 inch of soft copper pipe
• various copper joints
  
• torch
• lead free solder
• flux
• 3/4 inch - 1/2 inch adapter
• cooking thermometer
• stolen j-cloths

unfortunately i've been drinking all my booze so i don't have anything to distill, so that'll have to wait for about a month.



we didn't attach the lyne arm to the condenser because we were tired and it was time to start drinking, but that's about a 5 minute job. in a few weeks when i have something to distill, we'll give it a run.

there's a few changes i'd like to make, including replacing the bronze floor flange with a stainless steel one. all in all it was a successful effort and we learned some things. after this one is working properly, i'm going to start on a reflux column still, it seems a lot easier now that we've made this one.

on to the grape wine!


pictured above is a delicious 2009 concord blush. this has turned out great. you can't tell in the picture (the bottle is green), but this bitch clears after being in the fridge for only about 48 hours. i'm pleased. i've already drank 10 of the 20-odd liters i made. i'm definitely sticking with this recipe for future batches.


finally, my friend and i are making some cider:


the recipe is simple, just 16L of cider and some wine yeast. you can use bakers yeast if you want, too. one of the bottles is missing some cider because i made a starter. this should be ready in about a month. we're making it for a get-together we're having for everyone to bring their homebrew and see what's best. and also to get drunk.

HOBO WINE AND SOON...WHISKEY!

my grape wine is turning out fucking great. it's cloudy and still very much alive, but it's dry as hell and it's really boozy. i got pretty fuckin licked off it last night and i'm currently nursing a hangover that i'll be taking with me to work in a few hours. it's pictured here in the nice glass carboy a friend gave to me a while ago. it smells really sweet but like i said, it's nice and dry.

yes, our fridge has dinosaurs and hearts on it. eat a dick.

one thing i did with this batch, is about two weeks in, i boiled up some of the wine (about 1 cup) along with some yeast. i did this on a hunch after looking around for homemade yeast nutrient. when i added it (after letting it cool), the yeast went nuts and when i took the airlock off it sprayed black all over my face. while that sucked, the result was a pretty vigorous fermentation. yeast like to eat dead yeast.

so yeah, i'll let this bitch ferment until sunday the 15th, i'll rack it and then i'll bottle it. i might use some of the clarifier my friend gave me, as well. we'll see. maybe i'll split it up, half with clarifier and half without, to see the difference. my guess? ONE WILL BE CLEARER THAN THE OTHER. if anyone wants their fortunes told, just email me.

i've been doing a lot more reading on home brewing the last little while. i decided for now i'm going to stick with grape wine and sugar wine, going with consistent recipes and methods. i have some ideas for sugar wine recipes and home made yeast nutrient. i'll probably start a new batch on friday so i'll update on that this weekend.

uhm...aside from grape wine and sugar wine...i'm also working on another boozey project:

oooooh?? quest que cest le? I'M MAKING A FUCKIN STILL, BITCHES.

my friend and i will probably be finished making this on friday. it's a pretty basic pot still. for anyone interested in doing this, i highly recommend looking over homedistiller.org. there's a lot of great information there. pictured above is my secret booze closet. for some reason we have like 19 closets in this modestly-priced apartment, so my girlfriend gave my the top half of this one. it's pretty rad, i can put carboys in there and let them ferment and since i'm not looking at them i'm not tempted (as much) to drink and/or fuck around with them.

anyway the hobo grape wine is probably the best booze i've made so far.

BANANA WINE AND NEW GEAR

well...i drank most of my banana wine.

IT IS FUCKING HORRIBLE. if anyone actually reads this stupid blog, do NOT use the banana wine recipe i made up! it got me pretty drunk but it tasted like someone put banana peels and shitty vodka coolers in a blender.

another mistake i made was that i didn't let it age. apparently banana wine is a lot better after a few months, but i was broke and impatient and i wanted to get drunk.

in other news, i got some new gear. some i bought, some i pilfered.

• hydrometer ($8.00)
• racking cane ($6.00)
• airlocks (about $5.00 for 3)
• bungs (about $3 for 3)
• 4 16L food-grade buckets w/ lids
  

the buckets are great, i got them from work. the lids have holes that are the perfect size for airlocks (i was still using balloons when i took these pictures). the lids had some holes stabbed into them but i just patched them up with a glue gun. below is a picture of how shitty the banana wine looks:




look at that awful mess! normally i'd be loathe to give away the last of my booze, but i passed off the last bottle to a friend last night. he can fucking have it. i told him not to drink it for a few months, hopefully he'll just forget that he has it and never drink it.

GRAPE WINE AND BANANA WINE

i figured what the fuck, i'll make a regular grape wine this time. fairly simple recipe:

• 9 cans welch's frozen concentrated grape juice
• 2kg sugar
• 16g fleischmann's dry active bread yeast
• topped off with hot tap water
• shake, airlock, wait

welch's is good because it doesn't have any preservatives or anything, the only ingredients are grape juice and vitamin c. in the picture the carboy doesn't have all the juice in it yet (i added 4 more cans of juice after the initial 5 cans).



the banana wine is a bit more complicated and here is the recipe:

• 15L bottle of water
• 4.5 Lbs bananas
• 2kg sugar
• 16g fleischmann's dry active bread yeast

1. thoroughly wash bananas off with hot water
   
2. slice up all the bananas, leaving the skin on
3. simmer half the bananas in water for about 30 minutes
4. pour some of the water out of the 15L bottle to make room for everything else
5. add simmered and raw bananas to water
6. add sugar
7. add yeast
8. shake, airlock, stir daily for a week
   
9. after a week, strain off liquid into a new carboy
10. airlock, wait

it hasn't been a week yet, i started the batch on january 18th. uhm...the recipes i've seen tell you to simmer ALL the bananas, and to do it with sugar. i did it differently because i was curious to see the results. hopefully it'll clear to a nice piss-colour by the time it's done, like i've seen in pictures. that's all for now.

EVERYTHING UPDATES!!

okay it's been a while. the holidays were pretty boozy and i'm pretty lazy.

so the kilju. i started drinking it just before xmas and ran out just after the new year. for the most part, i just poured out a bottle when i wanted some. it was pretty fucking boozy, i'd say between 15%-20% alcohol, way more of a kick to it than wine.

it wasn't very tasty. less disgusting than i thought, but still not great. it went down pretty easy with diet ginger ale. i generally drink diet soda because i like the taste and because i have a girlfriend, but it also worked well because the kilju was WAY too fucking sweet. it probably could have fermented another month or so and still not have been very dry. other people said it was fine on its own, though.

it didn't clear very well, even after a few days in the fridge when i finally bottled the remainder.one of my friends ran a bottle i gave him through a brita a few times and said it cleared up quite a bit more after that.


mine was still full of live yeast, but the hangover wasn't all that bad. a couple people have told me that it was an odd drunk, like, a little more clear-headed than usual, which i would agree with. but maybe we're all full of shit.

anyway i started a new batch on january 18 and it has half sugar this time. i also got an airlock from a friend of mine. i didn't have any bungs that fit the water bottle, so my girlfriend used a gluegun to attach the airlock to the cap that came with the bottle, it's worked out pretty well. uhm...not perfectly though, but that's my fault. see, being the smart guy i am, i decided i'd sterilize the airlock in boiling water first. the heat was too much and he got a bit deformed. so while it's still airtight and letting out CO2, it's not bubbling in the normal way. I'M A CHAMP!

new kilju recipe:

• 15L bottle of water
• 2kg sugar
• 18g fleischmann's dry active bread yeast
• shake, put on your airlock and leave it for a couple months

so now, the blueberry wine. when i was bottling the last of my first batch of kilju, i decided to try the blueberry wine. it was fucking tasty, and very clear. so bottled some of it. initially i thought it was boozy, but after drinking lot of it i realized it was probably only 4%-5% booze. i should have let it sit longer, or maybe the fermentation was stuck...but, it was there so...the whole batch got drank.

okay! i also started a batch of banana wine and a batch of regular grape-based wine but i'll make a new post for those.