Recent content by Durandal

I personally prefer not to kill the yeast, so someone else's input might be needed if you insist on adding a chemical. I prefer to let it ferment fully, then add a non-fermentable sugar like lactose. There's also a recent topic where someone used stevia. It's always good to work with the KISS...

Sounds close. To hit 6% on the nose, you’ll need to measure OG and add sugar/water to compensate. I doubt we need more than a few days with the cinnamon. Treat it like a dry hop. I plan on going by taste. CAREFUL with the back sweetening. You need to kill the yeast (don’t unless you’re...

So for the process of not pasteurizing, how long are you taking to work through a batch? My normal routine is to brew enough batches to last the full year, plus some to keep over to have fun with aging. If that matches what you’re doing, do you notice that unkilled microbugs are slowly...

Good to hear. There’s a reason I wrote “boil”, rather than boil, if you get my meaning. We basically are using fresh apples, and I’d rather know what’s going on biology-wise rather than leave it to an open battle. So unless we hear more info here to amend, the proceedure will be: Ready the...

There seems to be very little good info on this out there, or my search-fu is failing me entirely. When brewing, say, a 5 gallon batch of cider, what is the minimum temperature/time I need to heat the cider to kil 99.9+% of microbes prior to pitching yeast? I want to brew a predictable cider...

I’ve been doing ciders for a couple years now, including a spiced cider similar to what you’re looking for. Here’s some tips to help avoid my mistakes! You should be able to get into the 5-6% range with just the apple cider. Sugar additions will increase the ABV. Measure your OG and do the math...

Looks real nice, thanks for posting that! I'm going to have to interpret how much elderberry we had/have since I'm a couple steps in and off the recipe.

Hi All, I just finished juicing the elderberry we harvested this year, and ended up with two quarts. Maybe my search-fu is failing hard, but strangely, I'm having trouble finding a decent recipe. Can someone give me some tips on how to use the two quarts of elderberry to make a decent...

I'm really not sure why these hops are looking like this. Most of them are Cascade, but the healthy looking two lines on the right are a local family variety that's much hardier. They're all producing, but they look like pretty sad. Any thoughts?

Coming back to update this! This batch is FANTASTIC! Definitely brewing this one again. Yes, it carbed up and dried out over time. A month ago I was getting a very nice round champagne flavor. Now it's almost taking on an orange lollipop flavor, but way more subtle and complex.

Bonus! Mimosa is a nitrogen fixer, if memory serves. It should also let a decent amount of light through it's canopy. You could have a very happy plant guild there.

It'll have to be darn fast growing to keep up with a bine. What is it? Honey Locust?

I'd say I would not be too worried about that. :)

Four 2yo Cascades on a wood core birm. If you can see the little one on the end, that's a transplant as of this year from the farm that's been in the family for five or six generations. I'm really looking forward to tasting the hops my Great Great Grandfather would have brewed with! Anyway...

I hate to be that guy, but in this case you really need to call a good plumber and say " Make it happen".