Homebrew Update!

Sorry I didn't get around to posting the moderately hilarious events surrounding the first batch of mead (who KNEW specific gravity would read differently at different temperatures... oops - its been several years since Chemistry 101). Right now its awaiting its first racking (which may occur tonight or tommorrow afternoon).

In the mean time, I racked (meaning siphoned out of the fermination vessel) my wine that I started about a month and a half ago. Its now starting the 2nd part of clarifying - it looks (and tastes) really good! I'm kinda surprised because well... the original recipe was for 1 gallon of wine, and since I had only a 5 gallon setup, I multiplied the recipe by five - this apparently added WAAAY more sugar than intended, but since yeast feed on sugar to create alcohol, this isn't necessarily a bad thing - its just that my wine will be WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE strong. BTW if you're wondering, its a "country wine" meaning that it isn't made from grapes, but rather fruit and the like. The wine is a ginger/banana/Reisling concentrate concoction. The original recipe was for a dry ginger wine, but it'll be more of a medium sweet strong as hell ginger wine when its done.

Well, I figured, since I have all the equipment out and sanitized, why not start the 5 gallon batch of beer my boyfriend and I got the ingredients for last weekend? He was happily repairing/modding X-boxes (don't ask... he likes soldering things to their boards better than actually playing any games on them), so I took the opportunity to try my hand at beer. So far beer making seems to be a little simpler (at least it CAN be, you can make it as complicated as you want) than wine or mead. Basically I start with this can of malt extract, boil some water, and add the two - then add sugar. I chose to add a mixture of sugar and honey. We had about 2.5 lbs of local wildflower honey left over from the mead so I used it. The can of malt extract that I used was a Nut Brown Ale variety from the UK (Munton's). So we're choosing to call the beer a Honey Nut Brown Ale - I hope it turns out as good as it sounds. Actually, I'm pretty excited about it - if its tasty I'll be really proud to present my parents with a 6 pack of it with crazy little labels. They do enjoy a tasty beer on occasion.

Oh oh! He just finished with 2 x-boxes and is getting curious... lucky for him I went ahead and cleaned and sanitized all the homebrew stuff necessary for him to rack off his mead tonight, or tommorrow - whenever!