Tag: home brewing

Bottom’s Up!

Well, the brewing saga of my beer and hard cider have come to a completion, as the finished products are the fridge.  I have tasted them both, too. (Read up previous entries here and here.) Here’s what I think.

Hard Cider

It’s dry.  Really dry.  I like it!  It has a good cider taste and isn’t sweet.  The cider has a good fizz and pop to it when you take off the cap.  Yum!

Chestnut Brown Ale

This turned out really well, too, for a first try!  It’s a tad watered down, and I think I over-carbonated it, which means I should have let it sit a little longer or reduced the sugar content at bottling.  Now I know for next time.

Conclusion

I made alcoholic beverages!  I enjoyed them both!  I learned a lot!  And it was delicious!

 

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Bottling Brew-Haha

It came time on Saturday to bottle the hard cider, and Sunday was the bottling day for the beer.  Here’s how it went.  If you want to read up on brewing adventure, start here.

IMG_3459

 

Hard Cider

It was  was tough siphoning the cider into the pot for carbonation, and then into the bottles.  I was not prepared, and lost a bottle of my product on the floor due to the fact I couldn’t stop the flow of cider.  At least it was only one bottle.  Not bad for a first attempt.  I had a mess to clean up, but at least I knew what I was going to do for Sunday’s beer bottling fun, and I had a plan.

 

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Beer

Bottling the beer was much easier, since I decided to have a better and cleaner setup, and enlisted my husband as an extra set of hands to help.  Boom!  Carbonation and siphoning went much better this time, and I got almost all the beer into the bottles. and very little made it onto the floor.  Easy cleanup.  Yay!  The beers went back into the closet to carbonate for two more weeks.

So, my advice when it comes to siphoning your brews?  Have a plan, practice, and get some help.  It will go much better.