Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
We should file this under “from every life, a little brew must be dumped.”
I’ve got a cellar. I store things down there. Completed/bottled brews; conditioning kegs; empties of all sorts. Also things undergoing long fermentations, or bulk-aging.
It’s those latter that are… well, persnickety. They tend to have airlocks. The thing about airlocks is that they require maintenance. Periodic top-offs of water, to keep the bad things from getting in.
If you neglect that over a period–like, say, since about this time last year, maybe longer–you’ll find that your brews have, at best, oxidized. At worst, they’re developing pellicles. Nice if you’re souring a beer, but not so much if you’re not. (And when you’re developing a pellicle, it needs to be the right kind–not fuzzy, but spongy. More like mother-of-vinegar.) Regardless, they’ve become bad brews.
So, this weekend just past, while working on the underside of the kitchen (putting in insulation; this required passing repeatedly through the cellar), I took it upon myself to deal with several of the carboys. So far, I’ve dumped and cleaned four 5-gallon carboys of various liquids. One of them might have been saved, possibly–but really, at that point, the simplest route was just to dump it.
Remaining is one 5-gallon carboy, and four 2.5-gallon carboys. All full. All at various points of bad. I’ll work on the rest of them over the next few days, and I fully intend to develop a monitoring schedule, to keep on top of things, so this doesn’t happen again.
Other Not Bad Brews
Meantime, the beehives have done their thing, and reproduced like crazy this season. I went from two hives in the fall, to six hives right now. Of the four new ones, three are in regular Langstroth hives, and one is in a top-bar. The two “old” hives have produced some honey, and I’ll be harvesting (“collecting the rent”) this weekend–probably extracting the honey next week.
My theoretical maximum harvest this year is about 120 pounds. (I’ve got three medium honey boxes on the hives; they can store a maximum of about 40 pounds each.) I don’t think I’ll get nearly that much; 35-40 pounds is much more likely. It might reach to 50, depending on a number of factors (they’ve been bringing in stores from somewhere, I just don’t know how much), which would tickle me to no end. We’ll see just how it goes.
There have also been several other brews initiated, in the last few months. I’ve done a Blackberry Stout that I think will be quite nice. I started an IPA using the Voss Kveik strain; when it went into the keg, it was delicious. Waiting impatiently to see how it is, once it’s carbonated. And a variety of meads are in process, not least of which is an experimental braggot I did, using the lees from the kveik, the leftover beer from the IPA, and 3 pounds of honey.
I’m also looking at converting 2 gallons of one of the more “normal” meads into something that I can give to the King & Queen of Atlantia, either for personal use, or to gift others as largesse. It seems that adding a handful of Thai Butterfly Pea flowers will give a burst of color to the brew–said color depending on the pH of the liquid. Most meads run about 3.5 or so, which imparts a reddish-purple color. Adding a little potassium carbonate will bump the pH up to about 4.0, which should turn the mead to a delightful blue, without harming the flavor overly much. And blue is, after all, one of the Kingdom’s colors…