Lockdown booze recipes

BigAl-sa

BigAl-sa

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Toxxyc said:
I wouldn't really worry about the bloating, TBH. There's not much that can go wrong with LME except pick up extract twang over time. I wouldn't brew it if I could exchange it.
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The sad thing is it's going to be impossible to exchange with lockdown. I will definitely make a point to note this on my website and send them a link.
 
LinuxMintUser

LinuxMintUser

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Toxxyc said:
Recipes
We all obviously know pineapple beer, but maybe y'all want something nicer. Like a fruity white wine, perhaps? Did you know that "fruity white wine" almost perfectly describes "mead"? I have a simple recipe: Honey, water, yeast, yeast nutrient. Now, we can't get yeast nutrient, so you're going to make your own... And herewith my recipe:

Tools and ingredients:
Sanitizer, like Miltons (baby bottle cleaner)
15l container
Big-ass spoon
Clean, drinkable water. Tap water works, but RO water works better (cleaner flavour)
1 x 10g packet of regular bread yeast
1 x packet of brewers yeast (never used this, but it should work). Can buy this at most supermarkets, corner cafes, etc. etc. and it's still sold during lockdown. Talking about those blue packets of Anchor Brewing Yeast
2.5kg of honey of your choice. I always recommend the most raw honey you can find, and don't fall for cheap chinese crap, because the flavour will prevail. A good bucket or two of local honey is perfect
Cooler box and a few ice packs if you live in a hot area, or it's still really hot in your area

Method:
0. Sanitize everything that will touch the mead. This includes the bucket and spoon.
1. Stick your honey in a waterbath with warm to hot water. Idea is to let it soften in the container so it mixes easier. Leave while you do Step 2.
2. Take the bread yeast and dissolve it in about 100ml of boiling water in a microwaveable container you can seal with a lid. Stick it in the microwave and nuke it until the solution is boiling, and leave it in there to cool down a bit. The idea is to make a yeast solution, and to KILL the yeast DED. This is going to be your yeast nutrient. If you can get your hands on Fermaid O - great for you, use that. If you don't know what it is, use the bread yeast solution.
3. While it's cooling down, pour your honey into the 15l container.
4. Add clean, cold water until you reach the 10l mark in the container. Mix it frigging, frigging well. ALL the honey should be dissolved in the water with NO residuals left below.
5. If you can, measure the temperature. It should be pretty close to 20°C.
6. Pour in about 1/3rd of your yeast slurry you made in Step 2. Seal the rest of it and stick it in the fridge.
7. Mix again, and sprinkle your packet of brewers yeast on top.
8. Store the container in a cool place, as close to 20°C as possible. It's turning cool in SA right now, so a cupboard or a pantry isn't a bad idea. Make sure ants can't get to it (maybe spray some insecticide around the base of the container).

Don't seal the container, but you can drape a cloth over it to keep out bugs. If the container has a small opening (like a bottle), you can slip a balloon or a rubber glove over the opening and pierce the balloon/glove with a needle. It'll allow the CO2 to escape and not allow anything back in. If you can't keep it at the 20°C range, stick the container in a cooler box and add an ice pack two to three times a day to keep the temperature down.

Within a day, fermentation should begin. After 24 hours, pour in another 1/3rd of that Step 2 solution, and after another 24 hours, pour in the last 1/3rd of that Step 2 solution. Let it sit for a week to 10 days. The fermentation should "die down" a bit by Day 7/8, and you'll notice how the foam layer on top will eventually disappear and "fall down" into the mead.

Taste the mead. It should taste very dry, slightly sour and it will possibly remind you of a Brut champagne. Pour the mead into another clean container and try to get as much of the CO2 out of the solution as you can. The idea is to get it "flat". Since you don't have chemicals to stabilize, you're going to store the mead this way, and sweeten it in the glass. Keep it clean and sealed, and try to avoid getting oxygen into the mead. Oxygen at this stage will create vinegar. You don't want expensive vinegar. Remember to sanitize everything that touches the mead at this point as well.

Serving - it won't be clear, and will be quite murky. Should be a light golden colour. To drink, I would recommend you chill to wine temperature, and stir a teaspoon of honey into a glass of poured mead. The added sweetness will break the dryness. Add more or less honey depending on how you like your wine - dry, or semi-sweet, or very sweet. A fruit juice concentrate also works (specially something with apple/cranberry) and creates a wonderful drink. The juice concentrate will eliminate a lot of the off flavours and give you a very "wine spritzer" type drink. I've done this before - and it's great! If you plan on using the juice concentrate, to save money, you can even remove 1kg of the honey and replace it with about 800g of regular table sugar. The lack of mouthfeel and body will be made up by the fruit juice and you'll get a very similar experience but for a few bucks less.

The above method should give you a mead of around 10% ABV, and yield about 9 litres of it (about 12 bottles). You can scale the recipe up or down as you please.

As a final note: I haven't made the above. I use a similar recipe and method for making a DAMN good mead at home already (including subbing some honey for regular sugar), so I just changed this up to perhaps work with household ingredients. Try it, let me know how it goes!
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Great! Will give it a try.
 
BigAl-sa

BigAl-sa

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Toxxyc said:
I wouldn't really worry about the bloating, TBH. There's not much that can go wrong with LME except pick up extract twang over time. I wouldn't brew it if I could exchange it.
Click to expand...
What is even more sad, I don't have enough grain for a BIAB brew, so I may just use my own advice of smelling and tasting the malt in the can.
 
friedpiggy

friedpiggy

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Snyper564 said:
phone and return thats horrible def wont order from them im waiting for brew craft to open only lvl 3 tho they not messing with lvl 4
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I spoke to Ryan from Brew Craft this morning. They are doing online orders only but stocks are limited. Managed to get my order in with them and now just waiting on eft to clear and then couriers.

Just wish I had a source of bottles in Durban. Allegedly Console and Nampack are not allowed to sell beer/spirit bottles until level 3.
 
S

Steamy Tom

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Synaesthesia said:
You can buy champagne yeast which I hear is preferable to bread yeast, for brewing alcohol.
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at like R60 a packet sure, i will stick to the R5 stuff for the time being, i am still on my first 20g pack of brewers yeast and i have made 5x4L batches.
 
bwana

bwana

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Steamy Tom said:
at like R60 a packet sure, i will stick to the R5 stuff for the time being, i am still on my first 20g pack of brewers yeast and i have made 5x4L batches.
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I wish I could find some brewers yeast here in PE.
 
bwana

bwana

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Kvass is on. The video said 4-5 days iirc but I’m not Russian it…

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