Mead for the peasants!

So I've been toying around with making a mead for quite some time and a quick trip to the annual Maryland Renn Fair pushed me over the edge.  I was able to buy a basic mead (melomel really) kit from the local beekeepers for about 20 bucks.  The kit consisted of 2 lbs of wildflower honey, some basic dried cherry like ingredients, raisins, and some dried champagne yeast.

The kit was super super easy to put together - steeped cherry ingredients similar to tea, heated honey, combined into a 1 gallon carboy and topped with water and yeast.  I didn't initailly leave myself enough room once I added in the tea so I did have the pour a bit out :(

So far it is looking pretty good - I'm unsure of whether or not it will clear up:

Wild Hops

I was lucky enough to be jogging (ok walking) along the state park trail near my house when I noticed some wild hop vines growing out onto the trail.  Well, after close monitoring, in late September Becky and I went about harvesting some of these babies.  I realize that I have no idea if they will taste good, what their AA will be, or even if they are male or female.

Initial smell test: Citrus/Fruit

I took these home, dried them out a bit, and froze the whole pellets.  Then, I decided to make an impromptu IPA with a bunch of the random hops I'd been accumulating in the fridge before they all got too old.

I used 6 lbs of Pilsner DME and some steeping grains (can't recall which now).  I added 1/2 oz of the raw hops, 1 oz Cascade whole hops (8.9 AA), 1 oz Brewer's Gold (9.9 AA) and 1 oz Cascade pellet (6.4 AA) at 60 minutes.  I then added 1 oz Fuggles (4.2 AA) and the remaining 1/2 oz of the wild hops at 5 minutes.  This then caused this cluster:

Fail Sauce

Finally I've got it going away pretty solid now with white labs East Coast Pale Ale yeast:

I'll update once I get the first taste (before Christmas)

Fruit Additions

As my first brewing post I thought I'd discuss my recent adventure into fruit additions in secondary fermentation.  I'd recently picked up a few smaller carboys and wanted to try some basic fruit beers.

I started out by brewing an extract wheat kit from Brewer's Best (recipe).  This was super easy to brew because the kit was so basic.  I let it ferment in primary for about two weeks (longer than I'd wanted but no harm).  It was coming in at about 5% ABV when I took my hydrometer reading after primary.

I then picked up three pounds of fresh peaches (in season), one pound of frozen raspberries, and one pound of frozen dark cherries.  I cut, pureed, and heated the peaches to about 150 degrees for ten minutes to sanitize, then dropped in a three gallon carboy.  I took the raspberries and cherries and pureed them as well and dropped them into one gallon carboys, respectively.  I then racked the wheat beer on top, gave a small shake, and put my airlocks back on.

These sat for over a month with activity been seen for the first week or so.  You can easily see the great coloration I got in the above pictures.

I then bottled (quite a pain in the ass with all the sediment), using carbonation tabs, and let the brews sit for another two weeks.

This week I was able to finally taste test!

• Peach: I have the most of these and they surprisingly don't have much peach flavor.  You can get very light hints but it tastes very much of wheat.  If I do peach again I'd either add significantly more peaches or a peach extract to bump up the flavor
• Raspberry: Fantastic!  This beer has a tart raspberry taste and the color is fantastic!  I'll definitely make more (most likely a 5 gallon batch).  This is a great smooth drinker and I think most palates would enjoy
• Dark Cherry: Great cherry flavor as well, not as strong as the raspberry but much more than the peach.  I won't have any problem getting rid of these either

Cheers!

Well, as you can easily tell, I haven't been diligent in updated the blog.  The foremost reason is that I haven't been taking many pictures recently (which I am hoping to remedy in the near term).  Because I've been slacking on that front, I've decided to change the basic purpose of the blog to cover more of my varied adventures in 'aperture'.

I've been brewing my own beer now for over two years under the guise of "Aperture Ales".  I hope to use this blog as a place where I can post my thoughts/successes/failures/etc regarding brewing as well as photography.

Here is to the new chapter of the blog!

Dan