New to Brew

[godfrey]

Hi everyone !

I am new to home brew ( well apart from the time when I had a go at a boots beer kit may moons ago ) my impatience on that occasion gave me a bad first experience, but that is a different story :-)

I have been brewing now for about a month, it all started with the elder in my garden, after filling the fridge with cordial my tree was still covered in flowers, so I thought I will have a bash at the champers I saw on river cottage a long time ago.

after reading everything I could find on elderflower champagne I decided that Hugh's recipe was not the best so I took several recipe's that i found and made my own, please don't ask for it i didn't write it down lol

I have recycled all the champagne bottles from local bars and restaurants cleaned and sterilised them all and used 29mm crown caps after bottling

the first batch of elderflower I got 28 bottles ( I have now had a few of them and they are fantastic !) so I thought to myself this is easy what can I do next ? I was speaking to my neighbour, and he has a ( triffid / florescent pink / dog rose ) in his garden, the bush must be over 15 feet high, so we collected all the rose petals and made a rose petal sparkling wine, again I have not written my recipe but we got 26 bottles out from this batch !!

I told my friend about my adventure in home brew and he asked me to make the champagne for his wedding next year, so i ordered some dry elderflowers and dry rose petals and made another 58 bottles of fizz that will be hidden away for over a year until his wedding day.

I currently have a 3 gallon batch of cherry wine on the go, using the recipe from the book "Booze for Free" by Andy Hamilton as my starting point. I used 5KG of cherries and doubled everything else in his recipe, I have not pitched my yeast yet I am expecting a Vinters Harvest VR21 in the post tomorrow but I have also have the Gervin GV2 still not decided which one to use yet.

after adding some pectolase to the cherry must the other day, I have a foam on top and my air lock is bubbling, I guess this is pectic foam?

so that is my adventure in home brew so far, about 110 bottles in my first month with another 18 on the go :clap:

I will now be taking a very short break, but plans for the future include the elderberry's, rose hip's and dandelion in the spring, oh I forgot the 5 plum trees that will be ready to harvest soon :party:

well not a bad start, for a noob, hope to see you around...

:

 

[dennisking]

Hi and welcome, great intro.

 

[RobWalker]

welcome! :

 

[godfrey]

thanks for the warm welcome :-)

one last thing, my SG for the cherries is about 1100, if it is active yeast and not pectin causing the foam then this will go down..

I guess i should not add yeast if there is already an active yeast in the must.

I hope it is a good one :grin:

 

[joe1002]

Welcome to the forum :

 

[godfrey]

I just found the recipe I used for my first batch of elderflower champagne :-)

I did write it down after all !

40 large heads of elderflower
20 litre spring water
juice of 14 lemons
juice of 4 limes
juice of 2 oranges
3 kg sugar
3 spoon white wine vinegar

I did have a a problem with a slime/mucus when I transfered to the FV filtering the organic out probably due to my lack of attention to propper sterilisation (noob mistake)

but a 0.5KG sugar bomb brought all the scum to the surface and it was easy to scoop out :-)

at this point I did not own a hydrometer so I have no SG for the batch :-(

I did have the hydrometer in time to know when it was ready to bottle :-)