Saturday 2 May 2009

Decisions, decisions

I've not got anything fermenting at the minute, due to not having a kit. I do however, have 20 one litre cartons of Princes apple juice. We did an on-line shop and it was a 2-for-1 offer so I thought, as I didn't have to carry them up the road I might as well. I can't decide whether to just chuck it all in the fermenting bin and do a large batch, or whether to continue with the smaller, experimental batches.

Daz and I are supposed to be going up the allotment today. One of the jobs is to pick and dry some nettles to make tea, as I saw a program on TV that said it's good for hayfever, which Daz suffers from. I had the bright idea of picking a bin liner full and making a nettle beer after seeing some recipes on-line, so that might get done this weekend.

My mate Martin, also said he has a pressure barrel and fermenting bin that he might want to give me on permanent loan. He's got a young baby and needs the room for pushchairs and the like. That will give me loads of fermenting capacity, or the possibility to do clearing using finings plus of course meaning that I can forget bottling (hurrah!). I could possibly convert one bin into a boiler at some point too.

Beer 003 -Bottled

I bottled the Coopers bitter last weekend.

2009-04-25: Gravity: 1012, bottled. Estimate 4.4%.

Cider 004 -Bottled

Cider 004 stopped fizzing and got bottled during the week.

2009-04-28: Gravity: 1006, Bottled. Estimate around 5.8%