Bottled: Wilco Chardonnay

The Wilco Chardonnay has now been bottled. Although it's still immature, the flavours are already showing through. I left it for two weeks - rather than the on week suggested in the instructions. Using the hydrometer (properly) for the first time, I made sure the gravity was down to 1.000 before ending the fermentation.

The OG I recorded of 1.070 is a bit low in retrospect. From what I've read, it should have been closer to 1.090. I'm not not sure I read the gauge correctly. According to the Brewer's Friend ABV calculator, from my readings, the wine is only 9.19%. I'll be more careful with my readings next time...

Woodford's Wherry

My daughter gave me a Woodforde's Wherry kit for Father's day. I'm not sure how/why I forgot to blog this brew: but let's just say that there are only the last few bottles left and it was a real success.

As with other brews, I've found that leaving it to mature for a few weeks does make allow the flavours to improve greatly. With this brew, I couldn't decide whether to add the priming sugar for a second fermentation or not. I found the sediment it leaves off-putting with the lager before Christmas, but eventually settled on a half spoonful of brown sugar. There's still a sediment in the bottle, but it's less fizzy and so not so much of a problem.

Wilco Chardonnay

My next brew is overdue: the last bottle of Young's Chardonnay May '14 was drunk last weekend. Sad times. It's really noticeable how the wine has improved with age over the months we've been drinking it.

Now for an own brand wine. Still Chardonnay; this time Wilkinson's. On offer today, reduced from £23 to £15. Bargain!

While mixing in the yeast, I came up with another theory of how/why the previous wine bubbled over: perhaps the yeast was not fully mixed into the liquid, and so all the fermentation happened on the surface. Time may tell...

This time, the yeast has been thoroughly mixed, and as a bonus I remembered to take the original gravity reading: 1070. Now I should be able to calculate the alcoholic strength.

Labelling the Bottles

The latest brew - a Youngs BrewBuddy Chardonnay kit - seems to have turned out well. It's still a bit young, and the flavours should mature over the coming months, but it seems to be rather good in an early tasting. (Well, there was a half-bottle left at the end of syphoning off ... it would be silly not to drink it!)

I'd been idly thinking about labelling the bottles. It's really only going to be immediate family and friends drinking it, but as I'm already thinking about another brew there'll be a need to tell which is which.

Having done a little research on the internet, there is a great range of labels available commercially. These range from simple, rectangular labels with either a simple border or just blank - to customisable, bespoke designs which look fairly professional. At the cheaper end, these still end up costing 40p or so each - which significantly adds to the cost of each bottle.

I decided to continue the home brew thinking and see what could be achieved myself. Another search online shows up many document templates which can be downloaded and printed out at home. These vary in quality, but can of course be adapted to your give the desired effect. I didn't want anything fancy - and many of the examples I found looked rather amateurish - so I had a go at creating my own.

Having done an image search for wine labels, I arrived at a basic design on a scrap of paper. I created a logo, using the family crest and a spidery font. The name of the wine is in a scripty font, and a plain font for the details of what went into the brew. Add a couple of horizontal lines and that's good enough for what I want. Recreating this in a wordprocessor took a bit of trial-and-error, but I'm quite happy with the result. Printed 8-up on A4 marbled paper they look pretty much exactly how I wanted.

Fermentation Too Lively?

This morning (day 2), there was froth all over the place. The bubble trap was full of it; there were puddles all over the lid and it had run down the sides of the bucket onto the surface.

Has something gone wrong?

Well, perhaps. Let's check:

• The temperature is OK (thermometer on the fermenter bucket says 22-24°C ... towards the top end but within the 20-25°C range specified).
• All the ingredients were added according to the instructions.
• Everything was cleaned before I started.

... So why is the brew so lively?

I'm currently running on the theory that I over-filled the fermenter. The head which forms on top of the liquid fills the space between the liquid and the lid... and is being forced up the tube into the bubble trap.

Time will tell whether the wine is OK. Meanwhile I'm having to clean up the mess twice a day. I may syphon off some of the liquid to see if that helps...

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UPDATE: Sunday 11 May 2014

I'm pleased to report that - despite the bubble trap being encrusted in goo this morning - it seems to have calmed down a little. Having cleaned everything up, it is now bubbling away happily without constantly spurting froth.

Chardonnay

I'm kicking off the most ambitious brew yet ... well, the biggest brew anyway. I've bought a 30 bottle kit of Chardonnay (white wine). Having looked at the costs, it seems that wine offers bigger savings over the prices in the shops. The cost breakdown is at the end.

This is the same volume as the 40 bottles of lager before Christmas, but it feels bigger because I've had to get some proper grown-up kit. I am the proud owner of a hydrometer and a bubble trap. I've got a second bucket, too (one with a hole in the lid for the bubble trap).

The instructions said to rinse out the bucket then add 5 litres of boiling water. This was 4 kettles full. There must be a neat way to boil 5 litres in one go...

Next, the 4Kg of sugar is dissolved into the water. I found it helped to use a torch to see that the sugar was all gone.

Then the bucket is topped up with the concentrate, the yeast, additional flavouring and water to fill the bucket. Again, lots of kettles full.

Now we just have to wait and see...

Additional kit bought:
Youngs Chardonnay kit ... £25
Brew bucket ... £11?
4Kg brewing sugar ... ~£8
2 bubble traps ... £2.25

This works out at around £1.55 per bottle. That's at least £3.45 less than I would normally spend, whereas the beers only saved about 60p each.

Next week we'll see how it turns out.

First Lager Kit - Lessons learned

I have been collecting beer (pint) bottles for a few months, now. I had a 40 pint Lager kit ready to go. I considered buying plastic or even glass bottles - but since I'm doing this at least partly as a cost-cutting exercise, it made more sense to reuse what I had.

Collecting the bottles could have been more efficient, and I could have made better choices of bottle. The first mistake was not rinsing out the bottles immediately after drinking the original contents.

• It only takes a day for mould to start growing in the bottom of the bottle. I had to throw away too many bottles due to lazyness (into the recycling bin).
• When it came to bottling (more on this later),  I had a long and tedious job removing the labels. This would have been better and easier if I'd soaked them off as I collected the bottles.
• A number of the bottles had a short neck; especially the distance between the top and the "collar" which sticks out. This made using the capper much harder work on these bottles.

For the brew itself, the kit consisted of a tin of wort and a sachet of yeast. I had to add the sugar (bought previously: see Starter Kit). I was pleasantly surprised that this really only needs room temperature. In fact, it can easily be too warm from the reading I've done. The fermentation was really quick and much less dramatic than the wine. After 6 days it had all calmed down. I should have tested the OG (the kit came with a hydrometer) - but I didn't have a tall container and was short of time. I may live to regret this...

The bottling was done last night. I realised way too late that the labels needed to be removed from the bottles. I also hadn't really thought through the sterilization process. In the end I ran them all through the dishwasher. I figured this runs hot enough (particularly when drying). The proof will come in the drinking...

The kit instructions called for a teaspoon of  sugar in each bottle for secondary fermentation. I had used all the sugar in the main brew, so used caster sugar for this. Thinking back, the spoon wasn't sterilized. Time will tell if this is a problem. The bottles are all now sat where the brewing was done. The instructions said "a warm place" - but I don't know how warm is needed. A bit of reading suggests it should be about the same temperature. I've used a couple of collapsible crates I had to make handling the bottles easier.

Capping the bottles was pretty simple for most of the bottles. The capper was easy to use. It did need a bot of a steady hand for some of the bottles so as to get the crown cap crimped straight. Some of the bottles were hard to cap due to the shape of the neck, however. More careful selection of bottles will make this easier next time.

In a day or two, the bottles will need to be moved to somewhere cool for a couple of weeks. According to what I've read on Lagering, this should be as close to freezing as practical to ensure a clean taste and clear finish. I might resort to leaving them outdoors as it's Winter: it's not freezing temperatures, yet.

The additional kit for this brew:

• 40 pint (5 gallon) brewing bucket (which came with the kit)
• 1kg brewing sugar (bought previously)
• A bag of crown caps (£2ish) - enough for about two lots
• A capper (£13?) - reusable, obviously

An approximate calculation makes the brew cost about  £48, assuming a £25 kit. This works out at £1.20 per bottle - which isn't bad. The next kit will be much cheaper (about half the cost per bottle).

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UPDATE:

The Lagering appears to have worked - though not as well as it might have. I opened one of the bottles experimentally last weekend and there was an audible hiss. The beer hadn't fully cleared, but I tried a half pint and it has a slight fizz on the tongue. It's not as gassy as I'd expect a Lager to be (but I prefer that to be honest as I'm an Ale man really). Very pleased with the taste, though: beery enough for me and Lagery enough for the wife. I have no idea about the strength as I didn't measure the gravity ... subjectively OK: it's got alcohol in  :^).

My thoughts on what might have affected the Lagering:

• We used a small spoon when measuring the sugar; perhaps more sugar should have been added.
• We added normal golden caster sugar rather than brewing sugar. From stuff I've read, this shouldn't have an adverse affect, but it's a difference...
• The temperature was not stable during the Lagering as it was whatever the room temperature was in the kitchen (which would have dipped at night and gone up a lot while we were cooking).

All in all, I'm pleased with this first effort. Must take on board some of the learnings for next time.