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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  2d ago (text post)   438 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for November 19, 2024

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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Just bottled this year's first batch of homemade sake. I got a bigger umeshu jar this year so I was able to make about 5L of the stuff. Left a good amount of the rice particulate in so it has that nigorizake taste, though much less sweet. We have a lot of sake lees from this batch, so I'm thinking of marinating some pork and probably some cucumbers and carrots. Any other ideas? (Paging @George_E_Hale -- but keep it on the down low!)

I've also got several batches of umeshu in the work, though they won't be done until next summer. But I do have one experimental batch that will be ready next month -- "Christmas umeshu" with a cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, and nutmeg. I expect it will be overpowering and terrible by itself, but maybe okay in a mug of hot water. Looking forward to cracking it open in a few weeks.

Any amateur brewers, distillers, or infusers on The Motte?

I've only messed around with micro batches of turbo cider. UHT apple juice, champagne yeast and a few slices of ginger root. I like it dry and strong so it's as simple as waiting til it finishes and then chilling it to clear. I should test if my yeast is still active, I've been thinking about making another bottle.

I made strawberry infused vodka once and that turned out better than I expected if a little overly sweet and jammy tasting. Would have been improved by cutting it back with plain vodka but I'd used all the vodka for making the infusion.

I did look into home stilling but I don't drink enough to make it worthwhile. Unlike @yofuckreddit the information I found made it look cheaper and easier than I expected. The method basically depends on judging when to cut the fractions (heads and tails from the hearts), and the more you spend on a still the more distinctly and efficiently they can be separated instead of having them bleed and smear from one into the other. There's some fairly straight forward chemistry and engineering underlying the process. As I say I lost interest as I don't drink that much and realised it would be quicker and easier to simply buy food grade ethanol to use for infusions (£20/L 95% according to the notes I took, roughly the same price as cheap vodka by alcohol volume). Still think it could be a fun project though. I saw some interesting videos* steeping different size oak pieces for making whisky that indicated a good product could be made quickly using pieces with the correct surface area, which makes sense as beneath the mystique it's basically a wood infusion. On the other hand this is coming from someone who rates UHT turbo cider as perfectly adequate, so mileage may vary. Now where's that yeast...

*Found it: Final Tasting - How does surface area affect the whiskey aging process?

Yes, although these days I am mostly infusing. I tried my hand at brewing with the beer kits and while the beer was decent, the process of doing it wasn't for me. Too much chemistry and precision. I tend to cook (and craft) like an engineer, so I want things that I can tweak on the fly with ratios I can eyeball.

When it comes to infusing though, I have quite a few recipes I've been perfecting. I used to do Umeshu, but my supplier stopped selling ume and I can't find any others for a reasonable price that will ship to the midwest. Here is what I've infused in order from best to worst: Umeshu Roasted pineapple-cinamon tequila Cranberry vodka Blueberry vodka Brown sugar oatmeal vodka Maple bacon bourbon Limoncello Rhubarb vodka Pompelmocello (limoncello but grapefruit) Roasted walnut/roasted pecan vodka/bourbon Jalapeno tequila: homegrown jalapenos were too spicy Peach vodka Pineapple vodka (if you know how much I dislike peaches, these being ranked lower says a lot) Granny smith vodka Roasted/unroasted murasaki imo (purple sweet potato) vodka/bourbon: absolutely vile, despite trying some different ratios

Got started late on the cranberry this year, so I'm currently waiting on a batch to see if 2 weeks is enough instead of my usual 4.

Thanks, pretty cool. How did you pull these off?

  • Brown sugar oatmeal vodka
  • Maple bacon bourbon

Also, I reformatted your list for easier reading:

Umeshu
Roasted pineapple-cinamon tequila
Cranberry vodka
Blueberry vodka
Brown sugar oatmeal vodka
Maple bacon bourbon
Limoncello
Rhubarb vodka
Pompelmocello (limoncello but grapefruit)
Roasted walnut/roasted pecan vodka/bourbon Jalapeno tequila: homegrown jalapenos were too spicy
Peach vodka
Pineapple vodka (if you know how much I dislike peaches, these being ranked lower says a lot)
Granny smith vodka
Roasted/unroasted murasaki imo (purple sweet potato) vodka/bourbon: absolutely vile, despite trying some different ratios

I’ve made mead before, and beer. It’s not a regular thing.

Is beer worth it? IIRC I tried some homebrew in college and it was very okay. It seems like you'd need to invest in some nice equipment and fancy ingredients to make something that would actually be better than even mediocre craft beers, and it also seems easy to screw up and make something undrinkable.

I've heard nothing but bad things about mead. What was your experience with it?

IME ‘ok’ is a good outcome from home brewing. Mead has tended to turn out better than beer, though.

  • I also did basic homebrewing in college, in this case to get around being too young too buy beer myself. I used low-tier equipment and a low-tier process. With the focus and knowledge of cooking I've gained since then, not to mention the vast amounts of information, I think you would get great results and it would be fun.
  • Mead is in between winemaking and brewing in that you are a bit more restricted in terms of ingredients, so execution is paramount. The guys I know who do it are generally more focused and weird than brewers, and you'll sometimes get sick of drinking your own stuff. You need other people who can drink your product.
  • I investigated home distilling for a bit, which has fewer resources than brewing because of its illegality. My read after watching some videos is that it's far more difficult, has a far longer time between effort and analysis, and requires more specialized equipment. I love whiskey but plan to leave this to the professionals.

Is beer worth it? IIRC I tried some homebrew in college and it was very okay. It seems like you'd need to invest in some nice equipment and fancy ingredients to make something that would actually be better than even mediocre craft beers, and it also seems easy to screw up and make something undrinkable.

My experience is that it's nearly impossible to make something worse than a mainstream (European) store-bought quality beer. Whether they measure up to a craft beer is a matter of taste, mine is arguably quite primitive, and I don't actually like most craft beers. Screwing up in my experience is far from easy, the only place where it can plausibly happen is when you deviate from a recipe, but if you just follow the instructions you'll be fine.

If you have a big pot at home (10+ litres, but the bigger the better) and just want to try out to see if this is for you, you won't need a lot of equipment - there are starter kits in the $50 range with all the ingredients and basic tools. If it turns out you enjoy it, you can start buying extra equipment as needed. For me the gear is less about the quality of the end product, and more about making the production easier - one downside of this hobby is that it's pretty time consuming, especially on the day of brewing.

Due to local taxes, the ingredients for 23 liter batch of beer and the equipment to brew it costs a little bit less than 23 liters of beer does. If you feel like really cheating, there are companies that will "help" you brew and bottle "your own" untaxed beer or wine for a small fee.

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