Brewing Practicum 1
Brewing Practicum 1
4 lbs honey
1 packet K1V-1116 Champagne yeast
1 one gallon carboy
1 stopper with a hole drilled through the middle
1 air lock
Your choice of sanitizer
1 funnel
1 large pot or bucket for sanitizing solution
1 hydrometer and tube for reading
1 turkey baster
-fill the carboy with the sanitizer and set aside for at least the minimum amount of time required
-Fill the bucket with enough sanitizer solution to sanitize the rest of your equipment. This can include your rubber tube for racking purposes.
-once everything is sanitized and the carboy rinsed it’s time to start assembling your mead.
Start your yeast rehydrating according to the instructions on the package. This generally means putting a small amount of warm water into a soup bowl, or something similar and adding the yeast to it. Leave this alone for at least 15 minutes.
Pour the 4lbs of honey into the carboy using the funnel, at least that’s the easy way I found to do it. It takes a few minutes.
Fill to within 2 inches of the top of the carboy with water.
Add your yeast
Rinse your stopper and place it in the opening of the carboy.
Place your finger over the hole in the stopper and shake your carboy so that it gets good and stirred up. This will aerate your mead. And mix the honey in to it.
Take your hydrometer reading
-use the turkey baster to siphon off enough into the tube to take your reading with. And because you sanitized the tube, the hydrometer and the turkey baster, you can pour the must (not yet mead) back into the carboy.
-write down your reading with your recipe notes. You did take them right?
Place the airlock into the stopper after putting enough water in it. Usually there’s a line mark you can use as a guide.
Place it under the sink or similar and leave it alone for a few weeks.
Top off the water to one gallon once the foam dies down, if you get foam.
-This method is to start a show mead. This is the toughest type of mead to make and can take a lengthy time period to make, months and years. If you wish to ignore the show mead rules and just make a mead then you can add yeast nutrient and yeast energizer. The instructions are usually included with the package of each, but a rule of thumb would be about 1tsp per gallon. Maybe two. Approx. You could also add desired fruits and spices to this recipe according to taste. This has the advantage of being quicker. Usually.
Once the hydrometer reads 1000 or less then rack it into a sanitized carboy. If you wish to have a sweet or semi sweet mead then when it gets to the point you wish the fermenting to stop, you have two choices. Chemicals or cold crash it. I cold crash it mostly as many complain about the chemicals. To cold crash a one gallon, put it in the freezer for a couple days. Or if, like me, you have 2 feet of snow or more on y0ur deck half the year try to time it so you can stick in the snow bank out back for a week.
Once you have it stabilized and clear (it will clear on it’ s own over time) you can look at racking into a sanitized carboy and getting it bottled. Do I have to mention you should sanitize the bottles, corks and racking hose? Stick the bottles in the basement for a few weeks, months or years and beat the cellar rats off with a really big stick.
The only wine I have made, assuming you don’t see Mead as a wine, is a kit wine. It was a Strawberry wine. A kit means you are making wine from concentrate and that it will be a 5 gallon amount that you make. You boil a specified amount of sugar, usually around 3 or 4 cups, with a few cups of water. This is allowed to cool and then poured into your fermentation bucket. Add the concentrate to this, then cold/lukewarm water so that you have just under 5 gallons of must to ferment (gotta leave enough room for the foam afterall. You can top it off after the ferment finishes). Once the must has cooled to room temperature you can add the yeast that you set aside to rehydrate (you did do that right? No! Then go do it now. The must won’t run away while the little microscopic critters come back to life). Ok, now that your yeast is ready add it to the must and once more put a sterilized air lock in place and lock it up somewhere warm and dark to ferment.
Once the yeast stop vomiting up alcohol, this is where the hydrometer comes in again. Don’t forget to take a hydrometer reading when you mix everything together. Take a reading, after sterilizing everything, and when the reading is 1000 or less then you’re ready to rack it in to a, all together now, sterilized carboy. If you are adding further fruit flavouring via a fruit juice, then now is the time to figure out how to stabilize the wine. Again you can either sulphite it or cold crash it for a week or so. If you sulphite it then talk to the brewmaster at your local homebrew store on how to do it. It doesn’t take much sulphite powder to sterilize a 5 gallon batch. Once it is stabilized then rack it onto your fruit juice and leave it for a while. If the liquid does not come up to the 5 gallon mark, then this is a good time to add water until it does. Weeks, months, how long it sits is really up to you. You can either use a clearing method, gelatin is a fairly safe one allergy wise, or you can leave it to clear on its own. Once it is clear and racked off of the gunk (lees) sitting on the bottom of the carboy. You might have to rack it multiple times to get rid of the last of the lees. Clarifying agents can really help here. Once it is clear, you can bottle your precious. Hide it in the cellar and set traps for the two legged cellar rats. Fatal ones, since the really big stick didn’t work. Otherwise it will evaporate.
Once you get a gravity reading (you didn’t think we would be forgetting your hydrometer did you? Make sure you got a gravity reading when you started the fermentation) of about 1005 or less then you can rack it to a bottling bucket and bottle. You have two methods of priming it for bottling, unless you have money to throw away on a keg system. Either put a small amount of sugar, about 5 grams, in each bottle or add ¾ of a cup of sugar that has been added to about 2 cups of water and boiled for roughly 10 minutes and allowed to cool, to the bottling bucket before you rack the beer. Once more, sanitize everything, bucket and bottles and racking hose before you use it. When the bottling is finished and all are capped, set the bottles aside for 2 or 3 weeks to allow carbonation to happen and the beer to mellow a bit.
- Write a general method for brewing each of the following. (100 words minimum)
- Mead
4 lbs honey
1 packet K1V-1116 Champagne yeast
1 one gallon carboy
1 stopper with a hole drilled through the middle
1 air lock
Your choice of sanitizer
1 funnel
1 large pot or bucket for sanitizing solution
1 hydrometer and tube for reading
1 turkey baster
-fill the carboy with the sanitizer and set aside for at least the minimum amount of time required
-Fill the bucket with enough sanitizer solution to sanitize the rest of your equipment. This can include your rubber tube for racking purposes.
-once everything is sanitized and the carboy rinsed it’s time to start assembling your mead.
Start your yeast rehydrating according to the instructions on the package. This generally means putting a small amount of warm water into a soup bowl, or something similar and adding the yeast to it. Leave this alone for at least 15 minutes.
Pour the 4lbs of honey into the carboy using the funnel, at least that’s the easy way I found to do it. It takes a few minutes.
Fill to within 2 inches of the top of the carboy with water.
Add your yeast
Rinse your stopper and place it in the opening of the carboy.
Place your finger over the hole in the stopper and shake your carboy so that it gets good and stirred up. This will aerate your mead. And mix the honey in to it.
Take your hydrometer reading
-use the turkey baster to siphon off enough into the tube to take your reading with. And because you sanitized the tube, the hydrometer and the turkey baster, you can pour the must (not yet mead) back into the carboy.
-write down your reading with your recipe notes. You did take them right?
Place the airlock into the stopper after putting enough water in it. Usually there’s a line mark you can use as a guide.
Place it under the sink or similar and leave it alone for a few weeks.
Top off the water to one gallon once the foam dies down, if you get foam.
-This method is to start a show mead. This is the toughest type of mead to make and can take a lengthy time period to make, months and years. If you wish to ignore the show mead rules and just make a mead then you can add yeast nutrient and yeast energizer. The instructions are usually included with the package of each, but a rule of thumb would be about 1tsp per gallon. Maybe two. Approx. You could also add desired fruits and spices to this recipe according to taste. This has the advantage of being quicker. Usually.
Once the hydrometer reads 1000 or less then rack it into a sanitized carboy. If you wish to have a sweet or semi sweet mead then when it gets to the point you wish the fermenting to stop, you have two choices. Chemicals or cold crash it. I cold crash it mostly as many complain about the chemicals. To cold crash a one gallon, put it in the freezer for a couple days. Or if, like me, you have 2 feet of snow or more on y0ur deck half the year try to time it so you can stick in the snow bank out back for a week.
Once you have it stabilized and clear (it will clear on it’ s own over time) you can look at racking into a sanitized carboy and getting it bottled. Do I have to mention you should sanitize the bottles, corks and racking hose? Stick the bottles in the basement for a few weeks, months or years and beat the cellar rats off with a really big stick.
- Wine
The only wine I have made, assuming you don’t see Mead as a wine, is a kit wine. It was a Strawberry wine. A kit means you are making wine from concentrate and that it will be a 5 gallon amount that you make. You boil a specified amount of sugar, usually around 3 or 4 cups, with a few cups of water. This is allowed to cool and then poured into your fermentation bucket. Add the concentrate to this, then cold/lukewarm water so that you have just under 5 gallons of must to ferment (gotta leave enough room for the foam afterall. You can top it off after the ferment finishes). Once the must has cooled to room temperature you can add the yeast that you set aside to rehydrate (you did do that right? No! Then go do it now. The must won’t run away while the little microscopic critters come back to life). Ok, now that your yeast is ready add it to the must and once more put a sterilized air lock in place and lock it up somewhere warm and dark to ferment.
Once the yeast stop vomiting up alcohol, this is where the hydrometer comes in again. Don’t forget to take a hydrometer reading when you mix everything together. Take a reading, after sterilizing everything, and when the reading is 1000 or less then you’re ready to rack it in to a, all together now, sterilized carboy. If you are adding further fruit flavouring via a fruit juice, then now is the time to figure out how to stabilize the wine. Again you can either sulphite it or cold crash it for a week or so. If you sulphite it then talk to the brewmaster at your local homebrew store on how to do it. It doesn’t take much sulphite powder to sterilize a 5 gallon batch. Once it is stabilized then rack it onto your fruit juice and leave it for a while. If the liquid does not come up to the 5 gallon mark, then this is a good time to add water until it does. Weeks, months, how long it sits is really up to you. You can either use a clearing method, gelatin is a fairly safe one allergy wise, or you can leave it to clear on its own. Once it is clear and racked off of the gunk (lees) sitting on the bottom of the carboy. You might have to rack it multiple times to get rid of the last of the lees. Clarifying agents can really help here. Once it is clear, you can bottle your precious. Hide it in the cellar and set traps for the two legged cellar rats. Fatal ones, since the really big stick didn’t work. Otherwise it will evaporate.
- Beer
Once you get a gravity reading (you didn’t think we would be forgetting your hydrometer did you? Make sure you got a gravity reading when you started the fermentation) of about 1005 or less then you can rack it to a bottling bucket and bottle. You have two methods of priming it for bottling, unless you have money to throw away on a keg system. Either put a small amount of sugar, about 5 grams, in each bottle or add ¾ of a cup of sugar that has been added to about 2 cups of water and boiled for roughly 10 minutes and allowed to cool, to the bottling bucket before you rack the beer. Once more, sanitize everything, bucket and bottles and racking hose before you use it. When the bottling is finished and all are capped, set the bottles aside for 2 or 3 weeks to allow carbonation to happen and the beer to mellow a bit.
- Tasting:
- Become familiar with the general terms used to describe wine, mead, and beer when tasted for competition purposes. Use those terms to describe any 5 of the following brews with a maximum of 3 beers (Commercial if possible). (50-300 words each, cite commercial examples if used)
- Light color beer (Under 20 SRM) (i.e. pale ale, pilsner, kolsch)
- Dark color beer (over 20 SRM) (i.e. bock, stout, browns)
- High hoped beer (over 50 IBU) (i.e. IPA, American Pale Ale, American Brown)
- High alcohol beer (over 7% ABV) (i.e. Barleywine, IPA, Old Ale, Dopplebock)
- grape wine(white or red)
- wine from fruits other than grape
- basic mead, varietal mead, braggot, metheglin, or melomel
- Become familiar with the general terms used to describe wine, mead, and beer when tasted for competition purposes. Use those terms to describe any 5 of the following brews with a maximum of 3 beers (Commercial if possible). (50-300 words each, cite commercial examples if used)
- Brew at least six brews including at minimum one beer and one mead or wine. Submit detailed recipes and your comments on the final product. If you have been brewing prior to starting the study program and did not keep notes, please list brews you have done and the best that you can remember about them. At minimum three of these brews must begin with prayers to one of the Kindreds. Write an essay describing your experiences. If you have previously brewed without beginning with prayers, discuss any differences you noted. If you are a beginning brewer, you may brew one more beverages without beginning with prayers to discuss any differences you note. (300-500 words)