Brewing Notes, Edwort's Apfelwein, 16mar2010

Made first batch of apfelwein from Edwort's easy recipe on homebrewtalk forums. Only adjustment I made was to add an additional gallon of apple juice since my carboy is 6 gallons (as opposed to a 5 gallon used in the recipe) and I didn't want alot of headspace.

OG came out a little lower at 1.061 as I only had 2 lbs. of corn sugar/dextrose (the ratio in the recipe would have call for ~2.4 lbs), but I think it will still be plenty strong and hopefully I will like the taste of this stuff, since I will have almost 6 gallons. I couldn't resist making it cause the process was so easy, and it needs to age quite a long time, so why not.

The only other thing is that when I bottle, i'll have to use two bottling buckets since they are only 5 gallons and I will have almost 6 gallons of the wine. But that will work out fine as I can do about 5 gallons sparkling in one bucket (via priming sugar solution), and then have the last gallon still (i.e. no priming sugar in that bucket).

I used Mott's apple juice (no preservatives accept ascorbic acid). I also used montrachet wine yeast that was 2 months past expiration, but I figure it will still be fine as it is dry yeast and has been in the freezer for the most part.

Bottling Notes, Irish Red, 15mar2008

Bottled up the Irish red today approximately 3 weeks and 2 days after brewing. It definately was somewhat cleared at this point, and smelled great! I bottled with ~11 tbsp of corn sugar (~3.7 oz) shooting for around 2.3 volumes CO2. Got about 51 x 12 oz bottles worth.

Of note: I used autosiphon for the first time today, it was pretty easy to use and actually let me leave alot of yeast sediment in the primary, which will improve my bottled beer by note having an ass ton of yeast in the bottle.

Final Stats on the Irish Red:

OG: 1.050

FG: 1.016

% Attenuation: 67%

% alcohol: 4.4%

Calories/12 oz: ~165

I'm stoked about this beer, I feel like i upgraded my process with the better temp control of a carboy, the smoother racking with the autosiphon (and leaving alot of sediment behind). I'm hoping that after about 3 weeks in the bottle, it will taste fanstastic and be nice and clear.

Fermentation Notes, Porter, 02mar2010

So things are slowing down on the porter, its close to ambient temp now. It got up to around 73F for a little bit while in the heat of things, but thats fine. I'll let this beer condition for 3+ weeks in primary before I bottle it up.