30 August 2008

Congratulations to Ernesto and Pam!!!

A great couple, and great friends.



Inspired by a BYO magazine recipe for a Mountain Dew Beer, I made this for their wedding. Ernesto is a Mountain Dew drinker, you see.

I was honored to not only brew, but to make ribs and also officiate the ceremony.



3 gallons Mountain Dew poured into fermenter

boiled:

2.5 gallons water

4lbs. Munton's light DME

1/2 oz. Cascade 45 min.

1/2 oz. Cascade 10 min.

pitched:

Safale 05





It was a love/hate reception. About a third of those who tried it hated it immediately and the other two-thirds said it was really interesting and then proceeded to empty the keg.
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Mead Day 2008

2 August 2008

H.A.M.S. club held our part of National Mead Day at Rasher Tierney's.

The other mead guys, John and Jim, tend to be more traditional than I: they usually heat or even boil their must. They were heading up our Mead Day, so that's what we did.


I did not intentionally overexpose the photos, but it does kind of give the feeling of HOTNESS. It was a very blistery day. I really like mead, it's my favorite, so I'm going to suggest we do two club Mead Days: one on the standard 1st Saturday of August and another in February. We can do a no-heat mead indoors in August and a heat or boil mead outdoors in February. Florida brewing is necessarily different from most of the rest of the country due to our climate.


John brought this commercial bottle of "Orange Blossom Honey Wine". It was pretty well colorless and tasted like a simple syrup. He and Jim and I all brought some of our own and they were better by far!
The owner of Rasher Tierney's is a really good guy. He accomodates our somewhat rowdy group really well.

Misty and John passed out samples of our meads. They were well recieved and allowed us to evangelize about this, the greatest and most ancient of adult beverages.
Here's a blueberry melomel (melomel means a honey-wine with fruit added) I was working on just before mead day. It was not quite ready for mead day, but I cold-crashed the yeast out of a bottle's worth and then topped up with citrus wine. I'm happy to say that just about everyone liked it:

26 August 2008

May or June 2001, in black and white

Shortly after Devin came home from the hospital:
Possibly the best photo I took with our "original" Canon Elph APS camera (even though my focus is off a touch).
Very handy little camera, but it was quickly overtaken by digital technology.
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16 August 2008

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05 August 2008

Twins (unindentical)

Though you can't tell in the picture, these wines were nicely cleared up. They are the 2nd annual citrus wines put together in January. The one on the left was aged on orange blossoms from my pruning at the spring equinox. The floral aroma is overpowering even though, as you see, there isn't really that much in the way of flowers in the jug- maybe an inch in the bottom of the gallon. I have since bottled some for later and split the remainder into four containers: two left as they are here, and two of each of the same with oven-kilned orange wood in them.

As I said, the floral aroma was very strong so I am considering blending what I bottled of that one into an orange blossom mead when it's ready to bottle, just for a little extra varietal character.

As the orange wood was drying the smell was very sweet and almost honey-like. I can't wait to see what they age into.



Fermented and aged from New Year's Day to the Vernal Equinox; split between flower and no flower until the Summer Solstice; split between flower, no flower, flower with wood, and no flower with wood. To age until the Autumn Equinox and be bottled for tasting around the next new year.