A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.
Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.
Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
Shoutout to poleslav for telling me to ignore the thermometer and giving general encouragement. My distillation efficiency was absolutely terrible and I got the balance of juniper and hibiscus way off, so it's sweeter than I intended, but it's definitely pleasantly drinkable.
For those that can't read my handwriting, it was a super basic barley mash to make the base alcohol, then juniper, hibiscus, rose, and elderflower as botanicals.
Hell yeah! Efficiency smiffishency, all that matters is that it’s drinkable! Good work my friend
Tbh, I think a slightly sweet gin would be awesome.
Cool, I'm planning on making a gin soon. Does the elderflower come through at all? I was considering using some in mine.
It's present but only extremely light in mine. It got somewhat flooded out by the other flowers in it. I used equal measures of the three, so I guess up the elderflower relative to the others?
Thanks! I'm not planing on using hibiscus or rose, I'm wanting to produce a 'gin' with all botanicals grown on my property. Was thinking of using cypress and blue spruce boughs for the 'juniper' (hence the 'gin'), I've got a bit of coriander seed I grew this summer, dried lemon balm, and elderflowers. I've also got mugwort, rosemary, lavender, costmary, mint, and some other stuff. I'm not sure I'm gonna use any of those or not yet.
That sounds lovely. I've never thought about a spruce spirit before, but I am quite a fan of spruce beer and can definitely see how it would fit in that role
I've used it in a number of beers and it's always been a hit.
What are those black lumps?
In the glass? Whisky stones to chill the drink without diluting it
I almost thought they were coal. Is it lava rock?
Granite, so I guess it probably was lava once upon a time! As it is, I don't think this granite was lava any time recently, even in a geological sense. They're a medium grey most of the time, but darken a lot when wet