Homebrew Wednesday #8: Pineapple Wine

Back in October I was at work and one of my CT's was asking me about my brewing adventures. Of course I was more than happy to fill her in on the variety of wines and beers I had already brewed and wanted to brew in the future. She suggested pineapple.

I agreed.

I found the perfect juice at Jason's, an upscale supermarket in the basement of Chung You Department Store. It came in juice boxes of one liter each, just what I needed, so I grabbed four of 'em and high tailed it back to my place. The boxes reminded me of the BIOES juice that I'd used before and I guess I should have checked for fruit pulp/silt after my adventures with my mango wine. I would reccommend doing this if you are brewing with 100% juice as this could mean there is still some particulate matter in the container.

The recipe:

  • 4L Prince Pineapple Juice
  • 1 cup white table sugar
  • 1.5 sachet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
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Homebrew Wednesday #7: Mango Update!

Hey, chums. Remember my Mango Adventure? Since my primary vessel was so sludgy and pulpy and just plain strange looking, I thought it was time to rack the mango-mystery into a secondary vessel and try to get it away from such heavy amounts of particulate matter and try to make it at least look drinkable.

And the pulpy stuff was weird looking, did I mention that?

Anyway, I stripped off the ass-load of tape I put around the stopper to hold it in place and sanitized one of my lengths of tube to use as a siphon. It was weird pushing through that heavy layer of pulp, and the more liquid I siphoned out the smaller the space between the head-pulp and the bottom-of-the-jar pulp got. I racked off nearly three liters of wine and filled the secondary vessel, which is a slighter smaller bottle. I thought that was a pretty good amount considering how much liquid I almost certainly lost to the pulp-raft.

Haha, PULP RAFT!

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Homebrew Wednesday #3: Weisswine Batch 2

While enjoying my Coopers IPA I got the itch to brew something, again. I was already stocked up on beer so I thought I'd make some more Weisswine, and experiment a bit more this time.

Sue and I made a trip to Costco and I bought 14 liters of juice to ferment into alcohol-filled-tasty-goodness; 8 liters of Treetop apple juice and about 7 liters of Kirkland apple peach passionfruit. I grabbed the apple because I'd wanted to make something hard-apple since I saw a recipe for Apfelwein floating around on a few forums. Once I saw the APPF juice Sue said that it sounded tasty as well, so I bought both.

The recipe:

Hard Apple

  • 4 liters of Treetop apple juice
  • 2 cups white table sugar
  • 1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
  • 1/2 sachet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

APPF

  • 2.87 liters of apple peach passionfruit juice
  • 700 ml of Treetop apple juice
  • 1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
  • the other 1/2 of a sachet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

I went with different juices for these because the BIOES juice I used last time was ok, but not that great, and these are sold in bulk. I also wanted to make something that actually tasted good. I added a bunch of sugar to each one to up my ABV, but I varied the amount slightly to see how it affects the taste. More importantly, this time I had proper yeast! Bread yeast did the trick just fine last time but a lot of the off flavors and dryness were probably primarily due to that as well as the high fermentation temperature. Bread yeast is not made for making booze.

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Home Brew Wednesday #2: Inmate Wine

Happy home brew Wednesday. Let's get right into it, eh?

After I'd brewed two beers with my Coopers Kit, I felt hungry for some more brewing experiences, and did some homework. That, friends, is how I stumbled upon Inmate Brew.

Inmate Brew itself is notorious throughout countless correctional institutions across the United States, and abroad I'm sure. It is also called pruno, which is not what I made, as that is made with bread as a yeast substitute or relies on rotting fruit for fermentation. Yum. Obviously I have a touch more freedom with my materials as I'm not a convicted felon doing five-to-ten in Leavenworth.

At least, not yet.

Tehee!

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