14 months to freedom, or Apple Cider Revealed.

My first 5 gallon yeast experiment has come to fruition.
Recap:
- 5 gallons of Tipton grove natural juice (not from concentrate)
- Pitched yeast: Lalvin 71B - 1122 (x2) on 04/10/08
- Added yeast nutrient (2.5 tsp) on 04/12/08
- Racked the cider into secondary on 4/29/08 (~62F)
- Bottled 5/29/09 with one can AJ concentrate and one packet of Red Star Cote des Blancs
- Bottled Conditioned for about 3 weeks
- Taste: crisp and quite dry.

Images below, L to R, 4/15/2008, 6/26/2008, 5/29/2009

On Deck: Berliner Weisse and Wit - Beers of summer

Berliner Weisse:
The beer Napoleon called the champagne of the north. Wheat beer with a modest gravity and sour punch (thank to lactobacillus)

Wit:
One of my favorite beers - Hazy, Wheaty, Citrusy.

Lets see if I can actually get them done before summer is over.

Brew like a monk.

I read this book Brew Like a Monk. It is a good beer history type book and as such doesn't have complete recipes. May or may not be interesting to those who don't brew beer. I liked it. I have never drank a Trappist ale, but I bought one the other day and will have had one in the future.

Added the oak, hope it ain't broke

I went to go see how the pellicle was doing and found my stopper and airlock had popped out of the carboy (5/7/09). That was lame. I am not all that worried because this beer style needs some oxygen during the long secondary fermentation, but still it was lame. Since I had not added any oak, I decided this was the time to do so. I took 0.7 ounces of oak chips, boiled them in 3 changes of water to reduce there oakiness (i.e. tannins) and added them to the carboy and sealed it back up. Pretty sweet huh?

Marketshares of Beers in the USA

Bud Light 20.2
Budweiser 11.3
Miller Lite 8.4
Coors Light (Molson 8.3
Natural Light 4.3
Corona Extra 4.1
Busch Light 3.1
Busch 2.9
Heineken (Heineken 2.4
Miller High Life 2.3
Keystone Light 1.6
Miller Genuine Draft 1.5
Michelob Ultra 1.5
Natural Ice 1.3
Budweiser Select 0.9
Milwaukee's Best Light 0.9
Milwaukee's Best 0.8
Steel Reserve 0.8
Yuengling Lager 0.8
Modelo Especial 0.8

Others 21.9



2007 brand shares from Euromonitor market research

Pellicle or pelicle?

The pellicle has arrived. While not a mat yet, There are little gobs of white floating atop my Flanders Red. Oh, the excitement.

Here, for example, the pellicle is bad. Also here a pellicle would be bad.

But in my carboy it is oh so good.

From homebrewtalk:
"Pellicles are characteristics of Brettanomyces [a yeast whose flavor is described as horsey], which are considered oxidative yeast, which is why they are feared in brewing and winemaking. They use oxygen to grow and metabolize sugar and starch. Since no oxygen remains in the beer when they are ready for duty they have to come to the surface and look for air, forming a pellicle. The pellicle also, as you pointed out, protects the beer from any foreign bacteria like acetobacteria and mold. The brett uses the small amount of oxygen that is diffused into the wort via the dowel to reproduce and consume the remaining sugars."

Flanders Red: Secondary 3/9/9

The color was Flanders red-ish. That was good. Did I mention that I used about a 9 month old Wyeast Belgian Blend Propagator and that I got freaked out it wouldn't work and rather than waiting and using a hydrometer that I instead drove 20 miles one way to buy some White Labs Belgian Sour Mix which I pitched two days later? Well I did. Huge yeast cake. Great beer smell. FG 1.014 ~ 5.46 A.B.V. Now the wait begins.