So turns out next upgrade for the bike is going to be some not road tires, whoda thunk riding on silt and mud with 80/20s was a terrible idea. All in all just some plastic pieces broke which I can model and 3d print to fix. At least now I can say I have adventured.

Doing a weekend of brewing. Started it off today making a bourbon mash. I got an ultrasonic cleaner a while back I’ve been itching to use. I’ve seen research papers showing some evidence of it speeding up the aging process and I’ve been dying to try it. Tomorrow I’m doing two experiments, brewing an imperial milk stout and doing a keg fermentation with a jumper to another keg to purge the o2 because I’m a cheap bastard. Never fermenter in a keg so I figure it’ll be a fun thing to try. Lastly, because the yeast was expensive I’m going to try to freeze back some yeast from the starter I overbuilt and use it in another brew down the line.

I feel like I haven’t posted here in a while… basically I decided to take a break from drinking and thus home brewing for a bit. I want to get back into meme spirits, and I also want to make a 0 oxygen beer from ferment to filter to serving, but for now I made a berry wine for the girlfriend from some Aldi frozen fruit. This has been sitting in the fermenter on the fruit for a good 3 months (started it just before my break from alcohol) and then I moved it into a keg, no cold crashing or anything. I then ran it through a 5 micron filter and then a 1 micron filter just to see how it went, I gotta say, it turned out great. I was expecting the filter to clog but it went through like a champ. I also then wanted to try pasteurizing it in the keg using my mash and boil to see if I get some delicious glue and rubber in my mashing vessel but I didn’t! I back sweetened the wine and haven’t had any re-fermentation happen after a few weeks, so project fuck around and find out was a success. I might end up retrying a milk wine again (last one had a few tiny cheese curds floating in it that turned off most people from it) and I definitely want to try making a spicy imperial stout, but for now, I’ve gotta buy wine bottles or give out samples of this wine until my keg is empty.

Now that it’s no longer dreary winter I’m finally getting the motivation to do something that isn’t fly virtual aircraft every waking second of my day. I decided to make two wines, one that’s a mixed berry (blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, not sure what else it’s just the berry medley pack from aldi) and a strawberry banana. Sometimes no matter how good or experienced of a brewer you are you make dumb mistakes. Did I get annoyed when my strawberry banana starter foamed over and caused a small cleanup? Yes. Did I think to add a blowoff tube to the fermenter filled with it? No. Did I spend most of today mopping the ceiling? Yes. Originally I wanted to do a lemon brandy rather than strawberry banana, but lemons were stupidly expensive. The plan is for the mixed berry wine to be the girlfriend tax and the strawberry banana to be turned into a brandy for a camping trip I have going on next month.

Orange on the left, lemon on the right. Lemon looks darker since I did an oopsie with the water level and had to boil for a while. Orange wine is at an fg of 1.006 and tastes very sweet, don’t even have to back sweeten it. It tastes different but I like it! 18% abv. Lemon wine has a very bitter back end. I’ll be screwing around with back sweetening it to see how it is. The lemon wine ended at 1.032 or 10% abv. Girlfriend likes both so I’m not sure which I’ll be turning into brandy but either way, citrus test was a success!

Appreciate the mandolin recommendation. Made this go so much quicker and easier. This one is going to be made into orange brandy. In retrospect I should have saved some of the oranges to candy them and toss them into the end product but depending on how lazy I get the next few weeks, I might end up doing just that.

Someone said that orange doesn’t ferment well so naturally, I’m going full send. I bought a mandolin and chain mail glove as recommended by someone on a comment from the lemon wine post. That’ll be in tomorrow so today I’m making a yeast starter for the orange brandy.

Girlfriend wanted wine so I brought up a spare fermenter from my other house, giving lemon wine a shot. This will be my first proper wine (that I won’t be immediately turning into brandy) Glad to be back at it after the hectic holidays. I want to make an orange brandy next, but after slicing 50 lemons by hand (I don’t own a mandolin) I think I need a short break from slicing citrus.

Last fermenter is about to be empty. This one is my blue razz jolly rancher. Smells amazing. Tastes terrible (without back sweetening) Came out at 11.8% abv. Back sweetening with simple syrup down to 8.5% seems to be the winning combo, if I were drinking it as a wine: smells much stronger than it tastes of the delicious artificial blue razz flavor. Over all a fun YOLO project. Guess we’ll see how it tastes as a spirit in the next few hours + 24 hours for the angels to have their share. Now to determine what to make next… I’m thinking of trying pressure fermenting in the keg for my beer, a wine for my girlfriend, and the third fermenter for whatever meme spirit I feel like whipping up next, which I haven’t the slightest clue of what I’m in the mood for yet.

I have definitely been posting in this community a lot over the last few weeks/days so apologies if it’s a bit much lol, things should slow down since I’m running out of jars and fermenters though. But here’s my fermenter with plenty of sugar, blue razz jolly ranchers, and lots of nutrient. Along side my meme I’m going to turn into moonshine I’ve also got a fall beer my girlfriend requested. I’ve made the pumpkin ale loads of times but this is the first time I’m doing it without pumpkin (the one I bought was rotting when I cut into it and I didn’t feel like going back out and buying another)

I don’t quite know why I didn’t realize I’d have to individually unwrap these and it’d be a pain in the ass, but there’s no going back now. Blue razz jolly rancher distillate soon. I’ve also got my sweet potato beer fermenting (it’s supposed to be pumpkin and sweet potato but the pumpkin I bought was rotting on the inside, so I just rolled with what I have). I also ended up making 80 dog treats from some of the spent grains from the beer, if pupper is happy I’m happy. Over all I think I’m coming back from my one year brewing break with a vengeance.

From left to right. Blueberry brandy with home made blueberry syrup for color and flavor, 48% ABV. Blueberry brandy, no additives, 54% abv. Flamin hot Cheeto liquor with 15 dehydrated Carolina reapers added to it for a few hours (it’s so spicy it makes my stomach hurt) 48% abv. Cheeto liquor 48% abv. All my fermenters are empty now. Let’s see what else we can do. Think I’m gonna do a beer and another meme spirit, but sadly I can’t find bulk sour warheads in a single flavor online so I’ve gotta spin my wheel of random shit to brew

This was by far the weirdest distillation I’ve done from a process perspective. I’m a fairly green distiller but usually I can tell when something is hearts or heads or tails but this? Strong Cheeto flavor the whole way through. I’ve never seen color come off a still but it came out with a yellow tint the entire time. Split it into two batches, one just straight on its own and one sitting on a handful of dehydrated Carolina reaper peppers and some other hot peppers. Clocking in at 48% abv. What’s it taste like you might wonder? Wash all the powder off of a Cheeto and suck on it for 5 minutes. After that take a shot of vodka. I think the flavor will be almost dead on to what this tastes like. Admittedly, I poured 750 mL down the drain, I can’t justify using another jar to store a meme. Over all, 10/10 would science again.

There was a video posted on this community from the brushow on YouTube, and while most of the things were cool, I found this to be brilliant. Seeing as one of my other hobbies includes 3d printing, I decided to give it a go. Not sure if it’s entirely homebrewing related but, once I get the single screw to mount it to my tap, I feel this will be an awesome addition whenever I stop making horrid creations and go back to doing beer

Well, can’t call it anything besides sparkling beverage since it wasn’t produced in the Cheataeu region of France but… it’s done fermenting. Came in at a whopping 12% ABV. For something that fermented completely dry it’s got an unbelievably sweet flavor to it. It has the tiniest hint of the hot Cheeto flavor without any of the spice. Maybe like if you licked your fingers 10 minutes after washing your hands post Cheeto binge. I’m assuming there’s some sort of artificial sweetener in the Cheetos that the yeast couldn’t quite chew up, it smells similar to the corn ale I made but taste wise is much different. Next step is to let the liquor fairies have their way with this the next moment they have some free time.

From the picture, this tops my list, flaming hot Cheetos… after mentioning it yesterday, my enzyme came in later than expected but I decided to send it anyways. It’s so greasy it’s probably turned me off Cheetos forever. However, science must ensue. Here we have 15 pounds of flamin hot Cheetos mashed with enzymes for an hour and 8 pounds of sugar. Honestly, after tasting the mash, the heat doesn’t come through, and frankly it mainly tastes/smells like a corn mash. Personally I’ll be surprised if I can tell the difference between this and a white whiskey made from straight corn. So, what’s the dumbest thing you’ve done?

Decided to start a blueberry “wine” today. I only have wine in quotes as it’ll only go for a week or until it’s fully fermented before the liquor fairies have their way with it. About a year ago I made a comment here that I like doing and trying wild things. Well, prepare for an affront to whatever diety you may or may not believe in. Assuming my enzymes come in at a reasonable time, tomorrow’s post may very well be a flamin hot Cheeto fermentation. I apologize in advance to everyone here, and no, I don’t know what’s wrong with me but it sounds hilarious so I’m gonna send it.

Everything I read on research into watermelon wine or brandy people mentioned to not bother and that it never turns out. Decided to buy and blend 6 watermelons and give it a shot anyways. I must say, my apple pie brandy was my go to crowd pleaser, but this? This easily overtook it! (Aside from the 3 hours of cutting watermelons, that was a pain)

After leaving Reddit one thing I was missing was the home brewing community, really glad to see there’s a thriving one here!

I tend to experiment and make off the walls type of beers, this one’s technically maybe a hefe? I added more grains to get it to be more of an imperial beer, clocking in at a whopping 9%. I then let it sit on 6 pounds (2.72kg) of blue berries and 4 pounds (1.81kg) of kiwi. It came out deceivingly light tasting for how strong it is, but it’s got a nice tart flavor on the back end from the berries and kiwi.