Recent content by pdhirsch

Update: it's down to 1.018 now, from 1.025 19 days ago and 1.030 a week before that. OG 60 days ago was 1.122, so ABV is about 13.9% now. The airlock is still bubbling, but slowly. Ambient temperature has been steady 62 F. I haven't racked it or otherwise interfered, except to take weekly SG...

Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't brew 5 gallons using feral basement yeast, but as you say, you never know what you'll get when you put half a gallon of juice or cider out and just wait for something to fall into it. It's kind of dorky, but it makes me feel connected to our distant ancestors who...

So I started a 1.5 gallon batch of traditional mead about six weeks ago. OG was 1.122, which is higher than I intended. Yeast is K1V and I used SNA in the beginning. Ambient temperature in my basement brewery has ranged from 61 - 63 degrees. I started it in an open fermenter and I racked to a...

For the record, it never dropped below 1.000, so last weekend I racked it to a growler and I've started drinking it. It tastes OK -- like a thinnish hard cider -- decent and drinkable, but not great. Probably that's the best you can expect from a $1.98 jug of store-brand apple juice, wild yeast...

I've always used Carlson yeast nutrient and energizer in the past, but I'm trying Fermaid O instead of the Carlson nutrient in my current batch of mead. I bought a 12 gram packet of Fermaid O from Northern Brewer to try it out (a small sealed plastic envelope). My question is regarding the...

Nothing special about my basement as far as I know -- just a typical suburban unfinished basement. The furnace is down there, and the washer and dryer. There's a big workbench that I use for brewing, and an open area with a thick indoor / outdoor carpet that I use for stretching and other...

Just noticed this thread -- I know it's old but in case this is of interest to anyone... Once in a while, I like to ferment a batch of apple juice in my basement using whatever yeast drops out of the air. My usual process is to pour 1/2 gallon of grocery store apple juice into a big, clean...

Just finished a bottle of 6-year-old basic mead, and it was fantastic. This will be no surprise to the veterans here, but I wanted to post in order to maybe help encourage those who are newer... The recipe and procedure was simple: 3.75 pounds of grocery-store honey and 1.25 gallons of water...

Whole grain definitely keeps for a very long time at room temperature -- I have a few pounds of whole red wheat (kernels) that I've stored for over a year, not in an airtight container, and it's still fine. I don't doubt that it would be OK in a silo for a long time. But when the grain is...

Bakers will tell you to freeze whole wheat flour, else it can go rancid. See The best way to store whole grains for example. Those folks are flour experts, and they recommend an airtight container in the freezer. They say whole wheat flour will keep for up to six months in the freezer, compared...

I suppose it depends on the age and condition of the bottles. Besides the old Methuselah bottle, I have a case of Kohler Beer bottles, with their original labels still on, which I got about 10 years ago. I don't know exactly how old those bottles are, but the brewery closed in 1978. I use the...

Here they are... the one on the left is the one I've been using over and over again for decades. On the right is the (presumably older) smooth-wall bottle that would seem to require a cork. Both have visible bubbles in the glass. They're also definitely thicker than modern bottles. I weighed...

No, it has smooth, straight sides at the top -- no "rings" or anything that could hold a cage or a crown cap. It looks like the only possible way to seal it would be to drive a cork down into it.

Sometime in the 1980's, my brother (a scuba diver) found an old crown cap bottle from the Erie Brewing Company, on the bottom of Lake Erie's Presque Isle Bay. Asking around locally, he was told that the bottle probably dated back to the 1920's. At the time that wasn't so old, but now it may be...

I've never used raw fruit in my mead, but I make cyser with pasteurized (and preservative-free) apple cider, and I've never had a problem. I'm sure someone else in this forum has experience with fruit... but I agree with you, if I was planning to do that, I'd pasteurize it.