Of kegs and overpressure infusion...

Cream Ale sitting under 30psi in the fridge

Kegging brew is a whole new animal. It's totally dissimilar from bottling with one exception, everything still has to be uber sterile. Other than that though - there's no bottle conditioning and your brew can be ready to serve within just a couple of hours. It's significantly more consistent than bottle conditioning as you can directly control the carbonation of the beverage and to some extent the head and head retention of your brew at the time it comes out of the tap. On that note - you tap it, how awesome is actually pouring your homebrew from a tap? Not to mention that you can now transport and serve your entire 5 Gallon batch with only a few parts instead of 64 individual bottles, and I for one find that quite excellent!

After sanitizing your keg - standard 5 gallon StarSan solution directly into the keg add some pressure (10psi) slosh it a round a little, then dispense the solution through the draft lines (sanitizing the lines) and empty the keg - simply rack your brew into the keg! Now, you want to force carbonate it right? This is a simple process also; in general add 30 psi pressure and let the keg sit in the fridge for a day or two (CO2 still hooked up and at 30psi). Doing this creates a pressure differential and allows the CO2 to dissolve into the beer, carbonating it. Now disconnect the CO2, release the excess pressure, reconnect the CO2 and dial up 10psi (drafting px) and the tapping lines and it's ready to serve!

Now, there are of course ways to fine tune/tailor this to specific beer styles - this is homebrewing after all, if you can't tinker then what's the point?! To do this you will have to reference a chart that lists the pressure required to dissolve the desired amount of CO2 into solution, and then you have to know how much carbonation you'll actually want. Mr. Papazian provides both of these in his book so that would be a good place to start!

I have already kegged four brews - one five gallon batch (an Irish Red Ale) was run dry in a matter of minutes by my friends!

Let it flow, let it flow,
Jack

Mead! A short history

Often called "man's oldest brew", or the first alcoholic drink, usually both, mead is unanimously touted as a magical beverage. Admittedly it is not beer, but then again it is not wine - as so often it is called; honey wine. It is mead. And Upship! Brewing is making some! So, I thought I would share what I've learned about this mystical fluid.

As early as 7000BC folks have been brewing up mead (in China). These days I can't find the stuff anywhere! The standard ingredients are Honey (and lots of it too), Water, and yeast. From here you can take off in whatever direction you like. There are cysers (apple and honey), Braggot (honey and hops, or honey and barley, or all three? Very confusing), Capsicumel (with chili peppers!), Melomel - current Upship! preference (fruit added), Midus (made with berry juics, herbs, spices, and usually distilled down to a high proof "nectar"), and Great Mead (aged), to name a few - and only a few. The names of these brews alone bely the ancient legacy of this substance, and the few examples I just provided of it's branch off's should give you some idea of the endless possibilities provided by mead.

There is no shortage of myth and legend behind "the drink of the gods" often thought to be the same as the Ambrosia of the Greek Gods, most certainly the drink of legend from norse mythology, and slowly becoming a legend of its on in the brewing community. If you're looking for a recipe yourself, you could start with this basic formula:

-13 pounds of honey
- 3 or 4 Gallons of clear cold water
- Your chosen yeast; there are special strains for mead, or you can use high gravity, or champagne yeast
- You know what to do with it from here, the mead can take between 6 weeks and a year to fully ferment and mature - taste it as you go, and drink it when you like it.
For a little more detail on how I went about it - see the previous post about Y.U.M.!

And finally, a little about the honey and therefore the Bees! As with all brewing, your final product is completely correlated to the ingredients you start with and with mead that starts with the honey - which starts with the bees and the places they collect their nectar from. This is what defines the honey - clover honey comes from clovers, orange blossom from flowering orange trees, buckwheat from - yep you got it - buckwheat! Then there are different grades of honey - based mostly on moisture content (18.6% being the greatest percentage allowed for Grade A), taste (the absence of off flavors - Grade A = totally void), impurities (the visible sort), and clarity; HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COLOR! Great honey can be anywhere from water white to dark amber - and color has nothing to do with taste either. One thing to note is that moisture content is important as higher moisture content can allow wild yeasts to be carried by the honey - which may throw off your fermentation (haven't heard of any specific examples though). In short, find some quality apiaries and do some research on what kind of honey you want to use!

Buzz Buzz Buzz,
Jack

Y.U.M. (Mk1) - Strawberry Mead

Yak's Uplifting Mead! I may quit this beer thing all together if this mead tastes anything like I think it's going to taste which is simply AWESOME! Started it on 20 February - added (A LOT) strawberries on 18 March and the fermentation kicked back into high gear - the entire pantry smells like strawberries now! I literally have not brewed anything that has tested my patience as much as this mead with the desire to taste it; stoked.

Here are the basics of what's in Y.U.M. and how I put it all together.

Ingredients:
- 20 lbs of Grade A fancy White Clover Honey (SueBee Honey) - I went cheap
- 1.5 Gallons of fresh filtered water (additional as required to fill fermenter)
- One Vial of White Labs Mead Yeast (sweet mead)
- 5 medium packages of ripe strawberries (just cut the tops off of them - and as required to get in the secondary)

Process:
- Brought about 1.5 gallons of water to boil while the honey "loosened up" in a sink full of hot water
- Let Water cool to ~160 degrees F (maintained at this temperature)
- Added all honey and kept at ~160F for 35 minutes
- Poured the pot into the fermentation BUCKET (had cream ale in the primary and the barleywine in the secondary).
- Added cold water to fill to the 5 Gallon line - took temp reading and pitched yeast (might have been a bit hot for the poor yeast ~75F)
- Sealed and put in the pantry - Fermentation was active for exactly 2 weeks.

That's it! To start with...then there is the strawberries!
For those, I sanitized the secondary (5 gallon glass carboy) rinsed it (yes somewhat taboo for a no-rinse sanitzer - I use StarSan - but we're working with ~11% ABV at this point and I was not worried about any last minute contaminants). Then I sat down with the strawberries and cut them up and added them one at a time to the secondary. Finally I siphoned the mead into the secondary over the top of the strawberries and put the stopper/airlock assemply on. Easy. Minus the damn fruit flies that are bugging the hell out of me - no pun intended. One finally made it INTO the airlock water?! Bothered me a fair amount so I added a couple dribbles of StarSan to the airlock to ensure the sterile barrier - again not worried, thanks to the excellent alcohol level!

Hard to tell but its actually RED now thanks to the strawberries!

Bottling soon...or maybe kegging - I'm running out of bottles! Look for an update to come on the flavor - speaking of, I sampled some of the dregs after I racked into secondary...already tastes like heaven; hence the anticipation! Y.U.M.!

Upship! out.