March 2017 – samfirke.com

There’s a closet in my basement that hovers near 50 degrees in the winter. So before spring arrives, I wanted to take advantage of my natural “temperature control” and brew a lager. I don’t brew many lagers, but the provocative Brulosophy experiments on lager yeast fermentation temperature gave me peace of mind that if a warm spell comes through and the room gets a little warmer, it’ll be fine.

This was a convenience recipe in other regards. I used dry yeast to avoid needing a massive starter and I used up half a bag of leftover pils malt. And I ran off 5 gallons of wort before adding flame-out hops, to ferment with an ale yeast and use to top up the 53 gallon barrel at my house that is mostly full of funky dark saison. It’s nice to get rid of the headspace in the barrel, and we wager no one will notice 10% of hoppy Belgian ale blended in.

This is one of my favorite parts of using a plate chiller: being able to split batches by running off and chilling part of the brew, then adding and boiling as needed for the remaining share.

Condensation: the price of drinking cold beer in the warm sun

I’ve made country wine with Concord grapes, and wine from a kit that cost $2/bottle but tasted like $8/bottle. But I’d rather drink beer than wine I can get for $8/bottle. So I thought I’d try a kit that costs $6/bottle and see if it makes wine I actually want to drink.

In late 2016 I purchased the Winexpert Eclipse Lodi Ranch 11 Cabernet Sauvignon kit. Not sure what year that makes the grapes. I’m not going to write much about ingredients or process since I followed the kit directions, unless otherwise noted.

2017-02-04: “Brewed” this with my 2 y/o son. Despite the helper, kept good sanitation. OG was around 1.093, though perhaps more sugars dissolved in from the grape skins.

Fermentation temperature bounced around from the minimum (72F) up to the mid-80s, as I crudely warmed it through a Michigan basement in winter.

I stirred the grape skin bag back down into the must, near-daily, for the first week.

2017-02-13 – 9 days: racked to a glass carboy. Gravity is about .992! Wine yeasts don’t play.