I was bored and wondering what I could do to use the honey so I can give the giant honey containers that I have to my father to fill with fresh honey from his hives.

I kicked around some ideas and just decided to wing it with a kitchen sink of stuff and hope for the best.

I went to the grocery store and shopped around for some concentrate or juice that had no preservatives, was not too expensive, and sounded good in a mead/wine as I had some wine yeast left over from my Perry.

After spending time between the juice and frozen food isles, I decided on a Cherry Melomel using honey, sugar, frozen concentrate, and fruit.  This is a work in progress and will probably get additional doses of fruit and even concentrate if the flavor is lacking after primary fermentation.

Recipe:

• 3 lbs frozen pitted sweet dark cherries
• 4 lbs 8 oz (old) orange blossom honey
• 1 lb table sugar
• 4 cans (12 oz) Old Orchard Apple Cherry Juice (makes 48 oz 100% juice)
• 15 drops pectin
• 2 tsp yeast nutrient
• 2 tsp yeast energizer
• 4 campden tablets
• wine yeast

The Old Orchard Apple Cherry Juice lists as it’s ingredients:

• Apple Juice Concentrate
• Water
• Pear Juice Concentrate
• White Grape Juice Concentrate
• Black Currant Juice Concentrate
• Aronia Berry Concentrate (WTF is this?)
• Cherry Juice Concentrate

And indicates that after adding 36 oz fresh water the resulting juice is 100% juice (which means that there are no additional sweeteners or sugars (I can’t stand that juice is labeled as juice if it’s only 10% fruit juice and high fructose corn syrup as the remainder)).

I put the frozen fruit through a food mill into a nylon bag, added the remainder of the ingredients (minus the yeast) and enough water to equal 4 gallons and will let it sit on the sulfates (campden tables) for 24 hours and will pitch yeast tonight.

My OG was 1.072.

My plan is to let the primary finish and rack to secondary where I will add 5 lbs of milled frozen cherries and potentially another can of concentrate.

I’ll post updates as I have them.

I’m fermenting in a 7.5gal carboy and will rack after a week into a 5gal carboy for a two or three week secondary before bottling.

The recipe I used is:

• 9 lbs 8 oz Pale Liquid Extract (Breiss bulk)
• 1 lb Crystal Malt (60°L) for 30 minutes at 160
• 1 oz Centennial (9%) for 1 hour
• 1 oz Centennial (8.7%) for 20 minutes
• 2 oz Centennial (8.7% for 5 minutes
• 22 g Safale US-05 (two packets)

I will dry hop with:

• 1 oz Centennial (8.7%) after racking to secondary

My OG was 1.062 (down from an expected 1.067 which may be because I was a bit over 5 galons to the primary).

Due to my wife’s job(s), we have had to relocate three times in three years.  We were living in Blacksburg, VA for 4 years.  I had an awesome brewing setup.  I had an entire basic kitchen in my basement along with a double miller sink (stove, fridge, kitchen sink, cabinets, drawers, and the double miller sink) as well as a great cellar for fermenting and even lagering in the winter months. When we had to pack up and move to Raleigh, NC all the brewing gear got shoved in a shed or closet where we lived.

Since I know that was a short term arrangement, I never got around to brewing. Likewise a year later when we moved to Ithaca, NY; where we only lived for 10 months.

We recently relocated from Ithaca, NY to Knoxville, TN where we know we will be at least three if not five years while my wife completes a Residency in Equine Surgery at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. As such, I figured that I would have time to learn my new brewing area, brew a beer a month for a few years and have most of it finished when it’s time to pack up and relocate when she if finished (hopefully to a more permanent location).

I got energized by the Perry and since then I have cataloged my supplies, made  lists of required or replacement equipment, ordered some supplies online from Northern Brewer, and am prepared for this weekend’s brew.

I’ve decided to start back into the hobby slowly. I haven’t brewed in a while and brewing is a process that is mostly defined by your workspace. Since I don’t have the awesome setup I had in Blacksburg, I’m going to be learning my new area before I jump into an all grain batch with all it’s processes.

I opened my homebrew books for the first time in years and started reading How to Brew by John Palmer (I must admit I liked the 2nd edition much better than this current edition (3rd)) just to re-familiarize myself with the setup and refresh my memory.

I’m going to make an extract with specialty grains this weekend. I’ve decided on a robust porter, which is one of my favorite styles, and also one that is rather forgiving on newbie brewers.

I’m going to modify the recipe a bit based upon my tastes and availability of hops, but the base recipe from How to Brew is as follows:

Port o’ Palmer Porter

• 6.6 lbs pale malt extract (liquid)
• 1/2 lb crystal malt (60°L)
• 1/2 lb chocolate malt
• 1/4 lb black patent malt
• 1 oz Nugget (10% alpha) for 60 minutes
• .5 oz Willamette (5% alpha) for 40 minutes
• .25 oz Willamette (5% alpha) for 20 minutes

I’m not going to bump up the OG with another 1/2 pound or so of extract and I probably will not use that hop schedule as I’ll be doing a full volume boil. I’m going to visit Allen Biermakens, my LHBS, today and find some suitable ingredients and similar pacific northwest hop varieties.

I’ll update with final recipe and pictures of the brewing and process this weekend.

Here are the pictures:

The pre-boil:

Just pitched yeast:

The oops (overactive yeast):

The closeup (of overactive yeast):

The solution (1″ blow off tube):

My wife, Stacie, picked the really nice looking ones and is packing them in saw dust to soften so she can eat them (pears are her favorite fruit). I took the middle of the crop and made pear preserves with a very light syrup. This was challenging as there were lots of bad spots that were found once I pealed the pears so some of the medium sized pears were the size of walnut halves once peeled, cored, and the bad spots cut off.

I took the remainder of the pears and made a pear wine, which even though it’s technically not a Perry, (which is either a pear mead or a sparkling pear fermented pear juice and mine (recipe below) has a lot of added water and table sugar), I’m going to call it that as it has a nice ring to it.

I’ll probably end up carbonating some of the product and adding some lactose, maltose, or malto-dextrin or other non-fermentable sugar (or I could just use a stabilizer to kill all the yeastie beasties and then use more table sugar).

Here’s my process and a bit of my history as a home brewer. I used to brew, and brew a lot. I was making about two batches a month a few years ago.  I quit brewing as we were moving across country once a year for three years and I just never got where I wanted to set up all my supplies and brew. We recently landed in Knoxville where we will be for at least 3 if not 5 years. Therefore, I’ve decided to get back into the hobby. I will work my way into it and start with an extract and grains brew or two to get used to brewing and getting my setup all organized before jumping back into all grain.

The pears got me energized. I went to Allen Biermakens, my LHBS (Local Home Brew Store), purchased a new plastic fermenter (7 gal. food grade plastic bucket with lid) as the buckets I had carted around the country for years were in pretty bad shape and since I wasn’t boiling, I didn’t want to take the chance on making pear vinegar. I also picked up some wine yeast (Lalvin K1-V1116), some acid blend, yeast nutrient, some peptic enzyme, campden tablets, a large nylon straining bag, and an airlock.

The recipe I loosely followed is from the Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook, but I took about 20 lbs. of the smallest and hardest pears and sliced them thin with the skin on, cutting out the cores and any bad spots that I came across (much easier than peeling first). I put the slices into a large bucket which had water and a campden tablet tossed in. When I had cut all the pears,  I ran them through a meat grinder into a nylon straining bag suspended over my fermenter (I had already put three crushed campden tablets in the bottom of the frementer) . I ended up with a full bag of pear mush and about a gallon of pear juice. To the juice I added 12 cups of sugar, 9 quarts of water, the acid blend, the yeast nutrient, and the peptic enzyme. I stirred until the sugar was mostly dissolved and then placed the nylon bag of mush in the fermenter.  I let this sit for 24 hours, stirred again and pitched the yeast.  Within 24 hours, I had a very active fermentation and it’s still bubbling along (3 days later).

I’ll pull the bag of mush out after a week and rack after another week to a secondary.  I may have to rack an additional time or two to get the clarity I want.  I’ll post pictures once I have something good to look at (can’t see much now but a bubbling air lock on the top of a plastic bucket).

Here’s the recipe I followed (this recipe is for 1 gallon, which I scaled up by a factor of 3)

Pear Wine / Perry

• 4 lbs Pears
• 6 pts Water
• 4 cups Sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp Acid Blend
• 1/2 tsp Peptic Enzyme (read the label on what you buy as I ended up using 5 drops for the equivalent of 1/2 tsp (I used 15 drops total))
• 1 tsp Nutrient
• 1 Campden Tablet
• Wine Yeast

The process in the book is very detailed and could easily be followed by a beginner.

For the pear preserves, I simply peeled and cored pears until I had enough for very full (heaping) 4 quart saucepan.  While I peeled and cut, I placed the halves or slices (depending on what was left after cutting out the bad spots) into a citric acid solution (2 Tbs citric acid (available at any store that sells canned good … even Wal-mart) to a quart of water) to prevent browning and keep the fruit firm.

Once I had all the pears I needed, I drained them well and put them in a 4 quart saucepan and added water to about 1/2 way up the side (the pears contribute a lot of juice, if you fill the saucepan with too much water you will have a too much juice) and 3/4 cup of sugar (I didn’t want them swimming in super sweet syrup). Alternatives to the sugar would be to use white grape juice or apple juice in place of the water and sugar.  I heated this to boiling an let it boil for 5 minutes.

I had previously filled my canner (just a large enamled pot as I don’t have a pressure canner (yet)), placed my pint jars in the canner and had it at a rolling boil. Using my bottle grabber, I got a hot jar from the bath, filled it to within 1/2″ of the top, put a lid and screwed on the band and returned to the canner.  Once I had all 10 pints back in the canner I returned it to a rolling boil and processed for 20 minutes.

Below is a picture of my finished product. Once we finish eating the ripe pears, I’m sure these will be delicious.

Boiling Wort

Not a whole hell of a lot going on.  I have been playing with the wiki a lot.  I’ve enabled some fun extensions and have been importing data from other wikis to use as a base for some of my extension development testing.  I’ve also procured a couple of domains and have entered into a hosting arrangement to host some of the things I’ve been working on so that they aren’t running on my home server.  A big thanks to those that have assisted, and please feel free to continue to play around with the BoswellWiki.

I brewed a batch of beer over the weekend.  I was making a Sierra Nevada Stout clone, that I call Polemonium Stout.  It was the first batch in several months, and it showed.  My temps got high to begin with, dropped too low when I was trying to compensate which I couldn’t correct for as I hadn’t thought far enough ahead (nor remembered from previous similar situations) to have boiling water sitting on my extra (homebrew) stove.  By the end of the brew day, I drank a few beers with Courtney, who came over to watch, and I think the beer will be a success.  It might not have the exact malt profile I was shooting for (as the temps got too low, it may be more fermentable than designed).  It is bubbling away now and smells great.  Brewing beer is all about ditching the stress and making beer.  Papazian couldn’t have coined a better phrase when he said, “Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Homebrew.”