I loved the last thread so much, I figured it was time for a new one.
Let’s have all the updates on what is in your carbouy!
We just popped the cap on our Scotch Ale, and it is magnificent. Still a little young, so I can’ t imagine how good it will be in a month or so.
Plans in the works for a wheat ale to be enjoyed in the summer heat.
Beer anyone?
Not beer, but mead. I bottled a batch of lightly oaked cherry mead about a month ago; I reserved a dreg bottle for testing, and even it is already tasting pretty good. I’ve got another batch of plain sweet mead that I racked into the secondary to settle last weekend. It should be ready to bottle in a couple of weeks.
I’ve never done mead (don’t know if I want to really), but would like to know your normal length of fermentation.
I mostly use the Antipodal Mead recipe from The Complete Joy of Home Brewing as my baseline, and it typically takes about 4 to 6 weeks to ferment to completion. Variations in the honey and the yeast can change that, however–I had one batch that fermented steadily for 3 months.
My Honey Wheat is nearly there. We bottled last Saturday. Preliminary samples were pretty tasty and I’m real optimistic about how it’ll taste with carbonation and finishing. I plan on sampling the first bottle some time the week of the 18th, hoping that it will be good enough to share at a barbecue on the 22nd.
Haven’t decided what the next batch is going to be - I offered Mrs. Vet the opportunity to brew the next one and she seems kind of noncommittal. If she doesn’t decide soon I think I’m just going to order ingredients for a nice dry stout. I’ll post updates when that happens.
If I can get my hands on some yeast (preferrably the White Labs Dry English Ale yeast…IMHO, better than the de facto standard Chico yeast) then I’ll probably try to make a batch of my borderline imperial porter, which in honor of April 8th being the first day that beer was legalized after Prohibition, I’ll call Prohibition Sucks Porter 
I made a pretty basic APA about 3 weeks ago, and this weekend I am brewing my annual barleywine, Old Zombiehead.
Tonight I’m going to rack 12 gallons of straight mead I made a few months ago into a few different fermenters. 4 gallons onto 6lbs of mulberries, 4 gallons onto about 7 lbs of red and black currants, 2 gallons into 2 gallons of a kit Chardonnay that I thought finished too sweet, and the last 2 gallons I will probably just leave as straight mead.
GWVet, glad to see you are sticking with it!
Glad to see this thread! Hope I dont kill it like I did the other one… heh.
I’m already trying to learn all I can about All Grain brewing… i’m becoming addicted.
Last saturday I bottled my Pale Ale, even flat and warm it tasted good.
I’ve got the JPA IPA kit from HBA in the primary on the 11th day… still bubbling once about every 40 seconds… thinking of moving it to secondary soon.
bought 2 5 gallon cornie kegs too… for future kegging 
anybody have a CO2 tank they want to get rid of?
I too have been bitten by the mead bug lately.
Currently I have aging in carboys:
Five gallons of the hefty braggot I described in this fabulously succesful thread.
Five gallons of cyser made with locally pressed cider and
2.5 gallons of medium show mead.
The braggot is coming along nicely and I no longer have any reservations about how it will finish. The strong flavor of the buckwheat honey has diminished quite a bit and the hops bitterness has asserted itself more (a good thing, in my mind).
August West do you mind telling me where you get your fruit from (especially the currants)? Are the mulberries grown local to you?
Well, Mrs. Vet is going to do an “Old American Ale” in a kit from Williams - described as a pre-Prohibition style Ale. Should be light and mildly hoppy - probably a good choice for her taste.
I just moved my bottles from the garage to the cellar since it’s been kind of a cold week. I’m thinking that carbonation will be too low if I leave it in the garage, so I moved it back to the 65 degree basement. Of course, I couldn’t resist the temptation and I cracked one for a taste. Carbonation is definitely lower than it should be and it is very cloudy…but frikkin DELICIOUS! I must say that it doesn’t look very appetizing though - it has the color and cloudiness of store-bought non-alcoholic apple cider.
How do you experienced brewers get your beer clearer? Irish moss? Gelatin? Any tips?
I’ve used Irish moss in the past with good results, and of course gelatin has a long history of use as a beer clearing agent.
If your beer has only been in the bottle since Saturday that’s what, 5 days? That really isn’t that long, it will almost certainly get clearer over the next week or so.
Patience. Most of the cloudy beers I’ve encountered have been made by impatient homebrewers. Gravity is your friend. Just give it time and drink the other stuff until it clears. In 30 years of brewing I have never once used a clarifying agent.
Yes, mate - you created a monster. 
That’s what I was hoping the answer was going to be 
your carbonation should also increase. if it’s colder storage it just takes longer.
if it’s truely flat after a couple of weeks then u can
open the bottle, pour in a measure of bottling sugar and re-cap real fast before it foams. wait two weeks or
mix flat beer with carbonated beer in the glass and drink it down.
No problem LL. I have several red currant bushes on my property and black currants grow wild on the edges of the field. They are being choked out by gooseberries but hopefully I helped them out by thinning out the gooseberry plants this winter. Just hope I remembered my markings correctly and didn’t chop down the wrong plants!
The mulberries are also from our land, we have three enormous mulberry trees, I think I harvested about 25lbs of them last year and could have done more but for laziness.
I’ve got an extra strong IPA going (about 1.085 SG) It’s about ready to rack into the second carboy. I don’t really follow recipes anymore, just kinda throw things together and hope it comes out okay. I like surprises.
This time, I couldn’t be bothered to do an all-grain, so I used 4 lbs Alexander’s, 3.3 lbs John Bull Light, 3 lbs Light (or was it Extra-Light?) dry malt extract for my wort. Oh, and an infusion of 1lb of crystal malt before the boil. 2 oz Centennial for bittering. 1 oz Wilamette for flavoring. An additional 2 oz of Cascade for dry-hopping to come. White Labs London Ale yeast. I poured a sip for myself off the side of my bucket yesterday, and it tastes great. Can’t wait. I still have about 4 weeks to go. (2 weeks in the secondary, 2 weeks in bottle).
I did the same thing last with the Pale Ale I bottled last saturday… I just had to check on it. I was glad to see that there were some bubbles so its starting to carb but its still pretty flat. Tasted ok though.
However… as far as taste goes… WOW… that JPA made me take notice. Last night I took a gravity reading… its at 1.015 and started at 1.066, gonna secondary it tonight to clear. I tasted the sample and OMG that is good beer, I could have drank a whole bottle warm and flat… lol. For the crazy amount of hops and the hoping scedule during boil I thought it would be pretty bitter but its not, its full of different almost fruity flavors. Im excited about this one!
For anyone interested, I’ve started a recipe thread over here.
You lucky dog.
I would love to use more fruit in my mead-making efforts but I only have a quarter acre lot so growing quantities like that on my own is difficult. Paying retail is out of the question, so my best bet is pick-your-own, which actually works out pretty well for things like raspberries but I would like to have more options.