Captain Video's Mountain Retreat

... a guy that makes Spam Musubi, right?

My first Spam Musubi since visiting Sharky in Hawaii :)  Om nom nom....

Finally gettin'round'ta bottling up our (hard) cider!

First step: Blend!  In the background of the photo above, the gallon bottle on the left is fermented-out, bone-dry, apple wine from the apples in our yard - picked, pressed, and fermented in the fall of 2008 (seriously, we picked all the slugs out, I promise!).  On the right is a jug of regular (sweet) cider.  The apple-wine has absolutely no sugar left in it -- not super pleasant on it's own, but it's warm, clean, and has a nice aroma.

So  GF and I mixed up different blends, seeing what tastes good (3 parts hard to 1 part sweet is what we've picked -- I'd estimate that as coming in at about 7.5% ABV at that rate -- just a guess), and bottling up a sample to see if it gets overcarbonated or explodes during bottle conditioning.  If it does, I'll kill off the viable yeast in the hard cider, blend, and then bottle with a primer instead.

First impressions:  Surprisingly good.  The blend we picked has a nice sharpness to it.  I'm totally not minding drinking this sans carbonation.  At this point the retro-taste is where you get the most apple flavor, drawing air through it brings out the alcohol, and the tartness lingers in the aftertaste.  This will be nice if  it carbonates well -- even if it dries out a bit more in the bottle.

Also brewing up an ESB (English style English Special Bitter, not Northwestern style Redhook ESB).  The garage smells awesome :)



I kegged up an previous batch of the same earlier -- which means I got the first taste that's indicative of where this will end up.  I love the hopping on this, and it's hitting the mark with the Maris Otter rather than American 2-row (those are types of barley, for my non-brewer friends).

The novelty of this batch?  I had to leave for an appointment mid-day today, so I had to interrupt the brew.  I sparged the wort to the brew kettle, pasteurized it, and then turned off the heat and left it covered for a few hours.  This created some early sedimentation of some kind in the brew kettle -- I had large flakey things floating around all through the boil -- the beer looked clearer than normal too, so we'll see what happens.  The one I kegged today was pretty cloudy (I don't mind cloudy beers - Manny's, Mac & Jacks, etc.), but it's the same formula, so we'll see if there's any difference.

mmmmm..... beer.

PS -- BREWER QUESTION:  I can sparge quickly without getting stuck, the beer is good, and the numbers are saying my efficiency is in the 75% range (simple infusion mash) -- I could slow the sparge down to be more 'in-spec' with the recipes out there, but do I need to? And if I don't, what am I potentially messing up chemically?  feel free to answer here or catch me on twitter @cptvideo -- thanks