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Black Friday Deals?
Anyone get any good deals on brewing supplies/equipment today? I missed out on some deals but did buy eight pounds of hops at Farmhouse Brewing Supply. $107.25 shipped, which comes out to eighty cents an ounce. I should be set for hops for quite a while now.
Wow! Is that all one variety?
No, not one variety, eight different ones, a pound a piece. Mostly the C hops, but a few I haven't used before. I wanted some Columbus and Willamette, but they were sold out when I was there. I found better prices on them elsewhere, but I figured I had better not push the envelope, Carol is probably going to think eight pounds is overkill.....now I need to find a cheap price on wine kits for her, have to keep the wife happy too. 
In all fairness 8 lbs may have been overkill. Haha. I wouldn't have passed that deal up either tho. Brew a few DIPAs and that 8 lbs will start dwindling.
Good Grief. That would be like seven years worth of hops for me. I am getting way behind. 
Just a thought for next year, I have should have some Mt Hood, Sterling, Willamette, Chinook, K. Goldings, and Cascade hops available if any is interested. This will be the second year for all of them with only the Chinook and Cascades giving me cones this past year. Pending weather and yield, I will post my harvest in 10 months!
Rural-
Wine kits are way to expensive, take up meads for the lady. Cut them with some fruit juice & make 'em cysers.
10# of honey at Sam's Club is about $12 -13. 5 gal of brew @ 10% ABV, 9# ferment, 1# back sweeten.
Brewski - I have never made a mead, but I have been meaning to start one. From what I understand meads take a fair amount of aging to be real drinkable. I'm not sure if she would be willing to wait that long, not that she would ever admit to being impatient or anything.........
She loves her Chardonnay, and she likes it dry. I could probably add some alum to it and she would think it was even better! Most of the mid price kits make some pretty good wine and the cost comes to around $2-3 a bottle. I made a Gewurztraminer a while back that turned out fabulous. Dry, but fruity and spicy, it is a very nice wine. They are easy to make, and at that price per bottle for a decent table wine it is a pretty good value. And on top of that, I get brownie points for making her wine........
I still want to get a batch of MadScientistMike's Oaked Mead started, I guess I have just been lazy. I would check out the honey at Sams Club, but I think our membership expired. Now that the younguns are on their own or away at school we aren't buying groceries in bulk anymore.
I have several good cyser recipes, but I forgot if you are kegging or bottling?
If you make meads that are lower ABV, they don't need to age as long. Might think about something like "Apple Pie Mead" Cider & honey w/ apple pie spices. A little late for Xmas this year, but ferment for about a month, kill the yeast & back sweeten to taste. Carb or not depending on your situation.
My dry cider is actually comperable to a chardonay, and it's a little hot but didn't change as much over the year as the cranberry cider did, I was drinking within a week of bottling. That was about a three month brew. And you can do as much as you have room for. As well you know don't fill the 6 1/2 gal fermenter to the top for a primarry, but when you rack to the secondary you can top it off with fresh cider right up to the neck and your pretty good. 5 gal carboy should make about 25 wine bottles. 1# white sugar to 1 Gal cider, Red Star champagne yeast, about 30 rasins per fermenter (primarry, secondary, tertiarry if needed) and two whole cinnamon sticks in the bottom of the secondary (this actually helps cut the acidity quite a bit). If you started now you could be bottling by March and have a wife pleaser. The hardest part is not drinking it all yourself. If you threw in some toasted oak chips it may be even closer to the chardonay oakiness she probably likes, but I found the cinnamon sticks had almost the same effect.
Brewski - I am bottling. Someday I will probably get to kegging, but for now I need to work on my process and upgrade my brewing apparatus first. Then work on fermentation temp control, so many people say that is where they have seen the greatest improvement in their finished product. Then I'll worry about kegging.
I would be interested in your cyser recipes.You could PM them to me, or better yet, post them here in the appropriate area. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested.
I actually have three ciders going right now, the malted cider that I need to rack again. I'll probably put a little priming sugar in a bottle and fill one bottle when I rack it, just to see how it would taste when it is carbonated. Then I have my cranberry cider that I need to rack to the secondary. Hopefully I will get to that this week. And then my "Dubbel" cider, that I added the home made dark syrup and Special B LME(I steeped some Special B and boiled it down to a syrup so I wouldn't be adding so much water to the cider). I fermented with T-58 and let the temp climb up into the 70's, so it should be kind of fruity. It smells good, but I need to take a gravity reading and see what it tastes like.
Urchin - Your dry cider sounds pretty good. I'll probably start a four gallon batch once I have a fermenter open up. I guess if I can find something the wife likes that costs less than wine kits that would be a win - win situation. So much to ferment, so few fermenters
If you add priming sugar to the bottles of the dry cider that's my cider champagne recipe...it's even better as a bubbly, but since you mentioned your wife liked chardonay I left that out as the still cider would be more like it. But if you prime it, rule of thumb for me is 1/2 tsp of white sugar for a 12 oz bottle, or a heaping tsp for a champagne bottle. And if you're buying for new years, american champagne bottles can use a standard bottle cap instead of needing the belgian cork.
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