New Years Brooze

Another New Years, another year ushered out and in with a buzz. That halfa case of Chilean wine did its job.

We did not run out booze this year (thank god and yeast) but some notes of value to wrap up the year of brewing:

1. The SoMerlot was a huge colossal failure. OK maybe that is overboard, it just did not taste good. I dumped it instead of bringing to the celebration. I have a feeling kit wines may still be a viable means of getting your hands on untreated grape juice but more research must be done as clearly not all kits are the same. Also, extended batch aging did nothing for me here.
2. We need to use labels more. I could not find an oatmeal stout to sample anywhere in the pile. Maybe just little round stickers for the caps because all the little "S" and "B"'s handwritten on the caps started to blur together.
3. Still need to figure out a better technique for force carbonation. Despite 2 days of pressure and chilling and shaking that Belgian white in the keg still got nowhere with its carbonation. WTF is it gonna take?
4. Keeping a carboy of beer on the heating vent does not improve the beer. Not that this was intended or made it undrinkable, but still worth noting.
5. Jon has a very nice basement for washing bottles and aging beer, and a nice routine down for producing some excellent and consistent recipes.
6. We have room for improvement with Hops farming and all-grain brewing. Heres to looking forward to 2010!

Two Year Merlot

This batch of Merlot started as a kit.  A 30-day kit.  Don't get me started on why anyone would want wine produced in 30 days, it should suffice to say that I threw the directions from the kit out and started with this recipe.  I had intended to use that recipe to modify the kit from a 30-day kit to a 180-day kit.  Two years later I get around to bottling it.  Here is my log:

1. 4/16/07: Rehydrate juice to proper volume, added grape tannin and 6 cups of sugar to bring up the starting SG to 1.095.  Rehydrated fresh red wine Lalvin yeast using a starter culture, and pitched 6 hrs later.
   
2. 4/26/07: Added the rest of the juice after vigourous fermentation subsided.
3. 5/28/07: Checked SG: 0.990. Awesome.
4. 6/25/07: Checked SG: 0.988. Added prepped bentonite, oak chips, potassium metabisulfite + sorbate, and finings
5. 3/27/09: Bottle at SG 0.988, after adding 1 campden tablet per gallon