poleslav

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?