Around the minute mark, you seem to be having trouble keeping the liquid in the pipette (wine thief?/turkey baster?) when transferring the wine over. Working in a Biology lab I've seen many students make the same pipetting mistake you're making: tilting the pipette as you try and transfer it. It's the intuitive thing to do, but it's wrong. The liquid is held in the pipette by air pressure above it, when you tilt the pipette the surface area of the top of the liquid increases so the pressure per area falls and it doesn't hold the liquid as well. If you keep it as vertical as possible throughout then you should find that it's easier to transfer over. Hope that helps :)
I really like the new format. After you back sweetened it i wanted to perform my usual end-video-scrolldown to the comments and YAY it wasn´t even halfway through. More CS more better. Period.
here in Bengal there's a beautiful fragrant Date Molases we call it Nolen Gur, its basically made with Date Sap Nectar & turned into molases it smells & tastes so nice we use it in making sweets, the pure stuff is a little hard to find but if you ask around in the Bangladeshi Markets they can probably source it for you, try fermenting it with dates I think it will be great.
When it comes to glass marbles, I use them all the time with flavor additions. I have nylon bags, that I use all the time, that I use if I want to add apples, or other fruit, to a brew. I put the apples in the bag, and then I weigh the bag down with those glass marbles. It keeps the fruit from reaching the surface, and it also keeps the fruit from forming a cap that I need to push down every day.
Oooh that is an amazing idea and solution!! (I think my bags are too big for that to work in a one gal) however for smaller vessels using a zip tie or some string to condense everything to prevent the fruit cap just made it so I can steal/use your idea! When the fermenting gets really active in the beginning your idea means that I will have less explosions from blow off (hopefully!).
@@mycrazylifewfawnlisette3582 yeah! It really helps get all the flavor from the additions. I have been using a 2 gallon bucket I got from my old workplace that has been great for doing brews.
Dates taste absolutely amazing with cardamom, cinnamon, rosewater, and saffron Where I come from, we make desserts out of these ingredients PS: They are consumed with red tea (Lipton) or green coffee (Qahwah/Gahwah) Do consider these as ingredients if you’re going to make another batch of date wine Using Dibs instead of full dates can be less messy
I would be careful about some of those spices because if we leave them in for too long they might get tingly and bitter but I'm very curious about this mix left in the brew for a week or two.
Good video. I've added organic dates for complexity to a non-white wine. Good to know that I was feeding the yeast at the same time. The resulting wine did have a little bit more of a kick to it.
I think I might try, and would suggest, letting the dates fully soak in the water and rack the date juice BEFORE adding the yeast. This way we can know an exact starting gravity. I think the reason you went dry is that not all of the sugars were extracted and your original gravity may have been estimated too high.
I followed along with the last video and mine was super active in primary! I actually lost a bit as it overflowed. This looks like its gonna be a fun step to do next. Thanks for the video.
By the way, when I was in Boy Scouts (about 30 years ago) we called jungle coffee "cowboy coffee." It's how we made coffee during weekend camping trips. We didn't clean the pot until we finished striking camp, just adding more water and coffee grounds, so Sunday morning coffee was potent. That definitely affected how I like my coffee, and people don't really comprehend what I mean when I say I like it "strong."
Just found your videos. I just started home wine making a couple of years ago and still think of myself as a novice. I love hearing about what you try and it is giving me some good ideas for my upcoming experiments. I believe you mentioned in your first tasting that it was a bit thin so you added a bunch of stuff to it. In one of his recipes, Jack Keller said that much of the date flavor does not survive the fermentation process, and if you keep the date pits in the primary, they impart a lot of date flavor to the wine.
You can just use regular sugar and add a bit of molasses to imprint the same flavor - it's a lot cheaper and works perfectly. Stores well, too. Not to mention the "choosing your level of molasses" particular, which I find extra interesting. The key for not getting the molasses' funk is not to add too much.
very good video as usual ! in your first date wine video, derica talked about adding some astringency to the recipe. the funny thing is that a very very very fresh date (less than 3 hours since the harvest of its palm tree ! ! ) is very astringent and almost unsweetened. one of those ultra fresh dates, and mouthfeel = the sahara desert! (personally tested in Egypt)
You know, dates are extremely high in potassium. If your banana wine also went to 18%+ percent ABV on just the first ferment, maybe its the natural nutrients helping the yeast not go dormant?
When I first got into making Mead, I was showing a fellow homebrewer my paraphernalia. I had just grabbed the bottling wand and he goes, "Nice, you have a wine thief." He noticed my confused look so he takes it from me and starts explaining how to use it. I tried telling him that it wasn't a wine thief. He tells me, "No, it's a wine thief. You press down on the bottom and dip it in your brew and when you release it, the liquid stays in into you push the button again." I ended up having to show him how to use it since he wasn't listening. His mind was blown.
I use the tube portion of my racking cane and bob it to fill. The ball valve at the bottom keeps the liquid in until I can pour into the grad. cylinder. Not best practice, but it works.
I am currently using for the first time the Lalvin 71Beast and for the first few days, HOLY BUBBLING BREWS BATMAN, Luckily no overflow but boy was I not expecting such an active yeast. I am making 2 different Meads (1 Gallon each) with it (half a pack in each), A traditional mead and a Berry Medley (Straw, Black, Rasp, and Blue Berries) they are only about a week old at this point and I can't wait to see how they turn out.
Good morning ! This looks good . Started six gallons of your banana wine about ten days ago . Still bubbling away . Thanks ! ( My new bottling wand is saving me a lot of frustration and mess )
I know the pain of stuff seeping into plastic buckets. I still use them for larger brews that require fruit though. After primary I will clean out the buckets as normal and then let some sanitization mix(I use Starsan) sit in the bucket for a couple days to let that leech out all the residue from the plastic. Seems to work so far.
Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar.
Actually... cold crashing would cause sediment to collect at the bottom.... what you mean is if you pour carefully there's less in the brew? Well... maybe. Cold crashing and time both clear it out, so... same result really.
@@CitySteadingBrews yeah that's exactly what I meant... Pour clear stuff slowly to not stir up gunk at bottom..... Not much sediment in the clear part (cuz all at bottom)
LOVE your videos!!! Thank you! I've been following your recipes and using your videos. After bit of practice I then ventured out on my own and created Mrs Butter Worth Meade. It tastes like a light rum-- I like it! My wife helped me come up with the idea after watching me soak my pancakes in Mrs Butter Worth she commented why don't you just drink it, so that gave me an idea for new Meade recipe. 1 gal Jar, 1 pack of wine yeast, and 1 24oz bottle of Mrs Butter Worth. Let set about three weeks taste and degas then another two weeks and bottle.
Pretty close to what I’m doing right now except I’m making a mead... I used Earl Grey for that citrussy accent (and simply because I have it and love it). Once it’s done fermenting I’m going to see what I will do in secondary. Add orange zest? Add lemon juice? Leave as is? Given that mine’s a mead, the end result will be different. Mine will have less alcohol as well, as I used baker’s yeast. If it’s missing something, I’m going to add a bit of orange blossom water to my tasting glass and see how that goes down. Regarding glass marbles: A way to add marbles to a bottle without cracking the bottom of the empty fermenter, sit it on it’s side and roll the marbles in through the neck of a bottle. I learned to do this when I wanted to add multi-coloured marbles to a bottle I wanted to put a decorative branch in. The bottle was too tall for the branch and I needed to find a way to make sure that branch wouldn’t go in too low or make the entire setup be top heavy. It worked: no cracked bottle!
Ah bringing back memories of Thailand talking about jungle brew. We had a guy that was smart enough to have a wire mesh and use it like y'all do the sieve when racking, guess he hated the grounds too.
Just made a wine with 71b with Oregon grape, cherry, and grapes it's okay a bit astringent if I did it again I would add just a little bit of Oregon grape to add the acidic zing or maybe freeze them first it makes them sweeter for some reason. Turned out pretty much 14 percent. I only tried it because 25 years ago when I was hiking I saw people picking Oregon grapes and was curious why anyone would want to pick them I new they were edible but sour and they said to make wine with. LoL
when I did the CS version of a first mead for my first mead I substituted dates for the raisins and the mead also went completely dry on me. So dry that I couldn't get the hydrometer to float.
what, you don't like your coffee extra chunky? Oh, there's another name for Jungle Coffee out west, it's cowboy coffee, because when your out on the range you don't necessarily want to carry a lot of gear with you, so you put the coffee in a pot with water, cook it over a campfire. The only difference is a lot of people will then filter that coffee through a bandana, or I've even heard of people using their socks ( hopefully the clean ones ). Anyway, by the end of your trek, your bandana or socks might be getting a little too funky for even the most discriminating of tastes, so the dip method is also used.
This is close to the most common way to drink coffee in Central Europe and Czechia or Slovakia specifically. Drop some ground beans into the mug and pour them over with boiling water. You have your coffe ready in few minutes. True coffee lovers might have stroke but it's just a simplified way of preparation originating from Osman custom of brewing in a cezve.Because of that it's known here as "turek" or "Turkish coffee". Arabica has not been too common here for most of the 20th century so it's mostly made from some robusta mix.
I have only made a few batches of mead at this point, using Lalvin 71b, and all of them have exceeded 16%: one has reached 18%. I don't know what's going on, but that yeast seems very happy.
I joined the fray after you all have already made LOTS of videos and I am getting tons of info (overload LOL) and as you have been going along some of your thoughts on things or uses of things have evolved some seems like making it a little confusing sometimes because I am bouncing around from 2018 to 2021 to 2019, etc. One thing I am getting a little confused on is yeast. In the beginning it was all about Fleishman's and then you started using D47 and now 71B. I know that you are experimenting with different yeast for different reasons but I want to know what I should use to get a good feel for all of this. If it isn't necessary for me to go through a progression then I would rather go to a general use one that you would recommend? I can experiment after I get comfortable.
We like 71B. However, we use different yeasts for different brews, as they are all al little different. th-cam.com/video/NaQWaYfxFKA/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=CitySteadingBrews
my grandma has a trick for jungle brew: she splashes some water on top and the grounds settle, then she simply serves it into cups (yes, she makes it when she doesn't want to use the coffee maker, but in little pans, not in those big things to cook a whole goat or something)
I just made some plumb wine ig was 1.158 fg was .098 . Its dryish but i used 2 packets of red star levure séche. I back sweatend with black berrie it not to bad. Thanks yall for insperation
I love your videos! I had a mead-y question and I thought putting it here would be easiest for everyone. I have a Green apple hydromel (Green apple infused Honey), and I am sure its done fermenting, it has a tiny bit of sweetness left (1.005 spgr) and im sure its done fermenting, but it has a sour (as in bad taste, not the sour apples themselves) flavor, but it cleared out beautifully! Should I let it bulk ferment until it tastes better? Or could it be fine bottle aging? Thanks! Anyone feel free to give your input, not just Brian and Derica!
Since the use of the yeast hulls is something new and I've noticed each time you use it you seem to get a boost. I'm wondering if the yeast hulls aren't made this one go so high as well.
Just got off of deployment. I didn’t have jungle brew coffee but it was very satisfying to properly make my own coffee again! I almost counseled a soldier because he makes weak coffee.
I have got to try this--I have incense recipes that call for "palm wine" or "oasis wine" and date wine is the closest I think I can get. I think I'll try backsweetening with date syrup; you can buy that, the sugar extracted from dates, from a Middle Eastern grocery.
Hmmm 🤔 Wonder about doing a Date-Mead mashup with the 71Beast, Hulls, Tannin Tea and back-sweetened if necessary for a Hi ABV lightly-semi-sweet. But would hope to keep some of its date’iness in flavor and not lose to alcohol production, might not be worth it. Still interested in seeing how it might work (but small batch for sure as a test maybe)
I made up some date mead yesterday using M05 mead yeast from mangrove jacks in a 5ltr demijohn I’m looking forward to how it turns out I used 1kg of my own honey from my hives 500 grams of dates a 3rd of a stick of vanilla and filled up with spring water
I think I like the "Livingston" brand wine 3L bottles better than your "Carlo Rossi" 3L. The 3L ones that I have I can actually tip the syphon a little better and don't hardly have as much "wastage". I probably would have bought the same 3L as you but Caro Rossi only comes in 4L where I can find it (which makes for good fermenters! But I thought I would throw the Livingston out there so if you see them, I would recommend a buy. Plus the wine is pretty good too.
I have watched your channel for a while now, and finally decided to take the plunge, I bought all the equipment and made the mead from your Making your first mead video. I used lavilin 71b instead of bread yeast, since that is what I had (I plan to make a cherry mead next, and wanted to buy one batch of yeast) and figured since it has a slightly higher alcohol tolerance I used a mead calculator to find how much honey I needed to add to end with the same specific gravity you did, but 14 percent alcohol instead of 12. My starting gravity was 1.125 - 1.135 (I am mostly sure I read it right) useing 3.25 - 3.50 pounds of honey (I'll need to get better and making accurate readings). was this the correct thing to do for this yeast? Thank you very much for your videos!
Oh. We don't do jungle brew anymore. Nespresso did us a service by doing single use packs. And if you pack those paper ones, you don't even have to carry it on you, just bury it. I'm sorry you had to do jungle brew :P
Just ruined a gallon of pumpkin ale by letting the airlock go dry. It was high abv and i wanted to let it age an extra month. It ligit turned black. So bummed to send it down the drain.
All my yeast goes over tolerance to the point i got a 7% beer yeast to try to remedy that issue it's going to 14% happily it's actually really annoying i like my mead sweet.
I wonder how adding some dates to a bochet would turn out help to bump up alchohol content and help with unfermemtable sugar from carmilizing the honey. Dates had a Carmel flaover as is im thinking it would add a great flavor to a bochet. Once I free up some fermentors I will try.
@@CitySteadingBrews ok, yeah was a bit ago wasn’t it. Lol. Well started mine today, so set up a blow off tube just in case,. Pretty much followed your recipe, very mild differences at best. (Imported or more exotic brands/types of ingredients when able) -2 pounds Deglet Nour Dates (instead of medjool) -1.45 pounds Demerara Sugar -Peel of small blood orange plus 2 teaspoons of the juice -Tannin tea (imported robust red Arabic tea, tsp lemon zest, handful raisins steeped & strained) Spring water till full (1.5 Gal little big mouth bubbler filled just over the 1.4 gallon mark at shoulder) -71Beast👹 full packet OG is based off your measurements but shouldn’t be much different at OG 1.126’ish So now to sit for 4’ish weeks till it’s time to rough rack off the dates (give or take however long till it’s done) Hopefully end up at 0.990 like you did or least at the 1.000 mark. Presently all my different attempts, with different yeasts, are ending on the sweeter side (1.026-1.034)
"The rules have changed", welcome to 2020! It is more important than ever to live our lives to the fullest! After all w survived the worst scourge to face the planet, that took so many old and infirm...
Does anyone have any experience with fermenting watermelon juice? Started a batch of watermelon melomel yesterday, seemed fine became visibly active in about an hour or so. Gave it a quick swish round this morning before heading to work, got back home maybe half an hour ago and went to give it another swish. And found some spillage along with about 2 inches of redish goop sitting on top of a further 1 inch of fine bubbled white foam with the rest of the liquid underneath that (which is also now colourless after starting out as a pinkish red). It smells fairly strongly of alcohol even now with barely 30 hours of fermentation time. I started with an OG of 1.115 and using lalvin 71b. Has anyone encountered this before? Is it just a vigorous ferment?
Sounds like my first cyser. It kept blowing it’s top. I ended up using a blow-off tube setup. Basically, instead of an airlock, you put a tube in the bung and run it into a bottle of water or sanitizer through another bung. That way, you still have an airlock but it can accept a lot more volume of material.
About the brown sugar, I have a question! So I made an Apple Wine in April with brown sugar and apple juice. Around July (when I bottled it) it tasted amazing, like apple crisp in a bottle. Now, it tastes kind of bland. Would you recommend just drinking it and maybe cutting it with some apple cider or wait it out and let it age more? How long does it usually take for brown sugar to taste good? I'm just confused why it changed so much. Thanks in advance!
Odd, normally it tastes better as time goes on. It's possible you're experiencing what we did with our sweet red wine. It's great for about 2-3 months, then malolactic fermentation occurs and it's not as good. That's my guess.
Similar to making a wild yeast Bug. Can you take say, 1/2 of your yeast pack and just cultivate more yeast so you don't have to keep buying more? That is if your only making 3 gallons or less. I think over 3 gallons it would be hard to determine your Bug yeast level when pitching. Say a 2 cup bug, pitch 1 cup, then cultivate another 2 cups with your remaining Bug.
The plastic vs. glass comments remind me of my misspent youth when I took analytical chemistry. I was doing a lot of titration with sodium hydroxide--a strong base you may know better as Drano crystals. I had to recalculate the concentration of my solution each lab session because sodium hydroxide leeches material from glass.
Dates themselves contain a lot of pectin and other wild yeast in them, In Iran when we make date mash or date wine we don't use any yeast at all, that is probably the reason your wine turned into fuel :D
Around the minute mark, you seem to be having trouble keeping the liquid in the pipette (wine thief?/turkey baster?) when transferring the wine over.
Working in a Biology lab I've seen many students make the same pipetting mistake you're making: tilting the pipette as you try and transfer it. It's the intuitive thing to do, but it's wrong. The liquid is held in the pipette by air pressure above it, when you tilt the pipette the surface area of the top of the liquid increases so the pressure per area falls and it doesn't hold the liquid as well. If you keep it as vertical as possible throughout then you should find that it's easier to transfer over.
Hope that helps :)
Yes... I am actually aware of this, but do it anyway, lol.
That was super informative! I've been driving myself crazy for a year tilting my baster... Thank you!
Super true and super informative, not as easy to actually do!
I love Science and your scientific explanation btw.
LOL!! Oh yeeer Now I've got it!!!! You tilt the Turkey and NOT the baster!!!!!!!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
@@karlcolt LoL
I really like the new format. After you back sweetened it i wanted to perform my usual end-video-scrolldown to the comments and YAY it wasn´t even halfway through. More CS more better. Period.
You know... they are FATMAN and SADWOMAN!
here in Bengal there's a beautiful fragrant Date Molases we call it Nolen Gur, its basically made with Date Sap Nectar & turned into molases it smells & tastes so nice we use it in making sweets, the pure stuff is a little hard to find but if you ask around in the Bangladeshi Markets they can probably source it for you, try fermenting it with dates I think it will be great.
When it comes to glass marbles, I use them all the time with flavor additions. I have nylon bags, that I use all the time, that I use if I want to add apples, or other fruit, to a brew. I put the apples in the bag, and then I weigh the bag down with those glass marbles. It keeps the fruit from reaching the surface, and it also keeps the fruit from forming a cap that I need to push down every day.
Oooh that is an amazing idea and solution!! (I think my bags are too big for that to work in a one gal) however for smaller vessels using a zip tie or some string to condense everything to prevent the fruit cap just made it so I can steal/use your idea!
When the fermenting gets really active in the beginning your idea means that I will have less explosions from blow off (hopefully!).
@@mycrazylifewfawnlisette3582 yeah! It really helps get all the flavor from the additions. I have been using a 2 gallon bucket I got from my old workplace that has been great for doing brews.
@@joshholsopple1435 I don't have one that big... But extra flavor, Yum!
I totally believe it. I used 71b in a peach wine that went to 18%. One glass of that has me not feeling any pain.
This was an emotional rollercoaster
Dates taste absolutely amazing with cardamom, cinnamon, rosewater, and saffron
Where I come from, we make desserts out of these ingredients
PS: They are consumed with red tea (Lipton) or green coffee (Qahwah/Gahwah)
Do consider these as ingredients if you’re going to make another batch of date wine
Using Dibs instead of full dates can be less messy
I would be careful about some of those spices because if we leave them in for too long they might get tingly and bitter but I'm very curious about this mix left in the brew for a week or two.
@@mortisCZ good point! I’d be delighted to see how a pro would incorporate such ingredients!
Good video. I've added organic dates for complexity to a non-white wine. Good to know that I was feeding the yeast at the same time. The resulting wine did have a little bit more of a kick to it.
@26 mins thanks for the plastic container talk with solvent and all that. You answered a question I hadn't gotten around to asking yet
C. S. Mead now stands for Completely Schnockered Mead.
I think I might try, and would suggest, letting the dates fully soak in the water and rack the date juice BEFORE adding the yeast. This way we can know an exact starting gravity. I think the reason you went dry is that not all of the sugars were extracted and your original gravity may have been estimated too high.
Soaking won't extract all the sugars.
So you now know this one went super high ABV, but... how does it taste? th-cam.com/video/cO9_1FISaUo/w-d-xo.html
Jungle coffee ~= cowboy coffee made in a huge pour pot. That is kinda ok if the person making it knows what they are doing.
And horrible when they don't. :)
I followed along with the last video and mine was super active in primary! I actually lost a bit as it overflowed. This looks like its gonna be a fun step to do next. Thanks for the video.
19:42 begins an amusing sequence:
B: I will put this here.
D: No, it goes over here.
B: Compromise - it goes down here.
By the way, when I was in Boy Scouts (about 30 years ago) we called jungle coffee "cowboy coffee." It's how we made coffee during weekend camping trips. We didn't clean the pot until we finished striking camp, just adding more water and coffee grounds, so Sunday morning coffee was potent. That definitely affected how I like my coffee, and people don't really comprehend what I mean when I say I like it "strong."
The back and forth between B&D is so cute!
Dates can be a bit WOW at first but as it mellows I find it starts to get a lovely caramel toffee warmth.
The nutrients are strong with this mead... (Brian 2020)
I found raisin/date wine to be very raisin-y with a weird finish that I can only attribute to the dates... yeast absolutely love dates :D
i always get crazy abv with dates and bananas wines even with using bread yeast.
theres something in them makes the yeast very happy
Both are very high in Potassium.
There should never not be a smirk on you face when saying "master baster" lol
I actually laughed when I read this! So true!!!
arabic people did fermented the dates and add anise, they call it arak. it of course is a distilatted beverage but the idea is same
Add some acacia and Syrian rue and you have Soma lol
Just found your videos. I just started home wine making a couple of years ago and still think of myself as a novice. I love hearing about what you try and it is giving me some good ideas for my upcoming experiments. I believe you mentioned in your first tasting that it was a bit thin so you added a bunch of stuff to it. In one of his recipes, Jack Keller said that much of the date flavor does not survive the fermentation process, and if you keep the date pits in the primary, they impart a lot of date flavor to the wine.
Great video, I thought about this mead the other day when I saw dates at the store 😆👍🏼🍯🐝🐝🐝
Alcohol and plastic very very frightening lol. Happy Friday guys
I was hoping you'd say brown sugar. One of my favorite ways to backsweeten. Lends a nice flavor.
I like it too when the flavors meld well :)
You can just use regular sugar and add a bit of molasses to imprint the same flavor - it's a lot cheaper and works perfectly. Stores well, too. Not to mention the "choosing your level of molasses" particular, which I find extra interesting. The key for not getting the molasses' funk is not to add too much.
very good video as usual !
in your first date wine video, derica talked about adding some astringency to the recipe.
the funny thing is that a very very very fresh date (less than 3 hours since the harvest of its palm tree ! ! ) is very astringent and almost unsweetened.
one of those ultra fresh dates, and mouthfeel = the sahara desert! (personally tested in Egypt)
Interesting!
You know, dates are extremely high in potassium. If your banana wine also went to 18%+ percent ABV on just the first ferment, maybe its the natural nutrients helping the yeast not go dormant?
When I first got into making Mead, I was showing a fellow homebrewer my paraphernalia. I had just grabbed the bottling wand and he goes, "Nice, you have a wine thief." He noticed my confused look so he takes it from me and starts explaining how to use it. I tried telling him that it wasn't a wine thief. He tells me, "No, it's a wine thief. You press down on the bottom and dip it in your brew and when you release it, the liquid stays in into you push the button again." I ended up having to show him how to use it since he wasn't listening. His mind was blown.
Welcome to my world.
I use the tube portion of my racking cane and bob it to fill. The ball valve at the bottom keeps the liquid in until I can pour into the grad. cylinder. Not best practice, but it works.
I am currently using for the first time the Lalvin 71Beast and for the first few days, HOLY BUBBLING BREWS BATMAN, Luckily no overflow but boy was I not expecting such an active yeast. I am making 2 different Meads (1 Gallon each) with it (half a pack in each), A traditional mead and a Berry Medley (Straw, Black, Rasp, and Blue Berries) they are only about a week old at this point and I can't wait to see how they turn out.
Good morning ! This looks good . Started six gallons of your banana wine about ten days ago . Still bubbling away . Thanks ! ( My new bottling wand is saving me a lot of frustration and mess )
Date juice, alone, is a fantastic autumn drink. Warm it and add cinnamon and it riggity wrecks pumpkin spice.
I can't say I've ever tried it, to be honest, love dates though.
I know the pain of stuff seeping into plastic buckets. I still use them for larger brews that require fruit though. After primary I will clean out the buckets as normal and then let some sanitization mix(I use Starsan) sit in the bucket for a couple days to let that leech out all the residue from the plastic. Seems to work so far.
Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar.
Yup, and it has a lot less molasses than if I used pure molasses.
Holy shit, I watched and upvoted but did not comment. Thank you for your work. Take that, algorithm!
I made this with kalahs dates and grapefruit zest instead of orange peel and it actually was really good in the end
at 22:12 your carboy looks like there is a smiley face from the light reflection...kind of like the Kool-aid man :)
I saw that, too. It was a very happy 3L bottle!
I miss WBOL. I hope that gentleman is doing well and getting plenty of whatever makes his elevated heart happy.
7:50 I am so glad that wasn't an onion you were going to add.
Why would I add an onion?
@@CitySteadingBrews that should be a challenge what mix could you add onion without it being terrible.lol
We made Pineapple wine that smelled and tasted like banana, and grapefruit that was a bit smokey.
Unbelievable adjustments 😀😀
When you cold crash there really isn't much sediment (if you pour slowly) however since Derrica cleans up she disserves that little treat!
Actually... cold crashing would cause sediment to collect at the bottom.... what you mean is if you pour carefully there's less in the brew? Well... maybe. Cold crashing and time both clear it out, so... same result really.
@@CitySteadingBrews yeah that's exactly what I meant... Pour clear stuff slowly to not stir up gunk at bottom..... Not much sediment in the clear part (cuz all at bottom)
LOVE your videos!!! Thank you! I've been following your recipes and using your videos. After bit of practice I then ventured out on my own and created Mrs Butter Worth Meade. It tastes like a light rum-- I like it! My wife helped me come up with the idea after watching me soak my pancakes in Mrs Butter Worth she commented why don't you just drink it, so that gave me an idea for new Meade recipe. 1 gal Jar, 1 pack of wine yeast, and 1 24oz bottle of Mrs Butter Worth. Let set about three weeks taste and degas then another two weeks and bottle.
I would use real maple syrup. That’s mostly corn syrup and likely will be pretty harsh.
@@CitySteadingBrews Yes, I'm two weeks in on the maple syrup Meade. It is bubbling like crazy yeast must really like it:-). Thanks
Using the more involved (and accurate) formula results in 19.7% 🤯
Pretty close to what I’m doing right now except I’m making a mead... I used Earl Grey for that citrussy accent (and simply because I have it and love it). Once it’s done fermenting I’m going to see what I will do in secondary. Add orange zest? Add lemon juice? Leave as is? Given that mine’s a mead, the end result will be different. Mine will have less alcohol as well, as I used baker’s yeast. If it’s missing something, I’m going to add a bit of orange blossom water to my tasting glass and see how that goes down.
Regarding glass marbles: A way to add marbles to a bottle without cracking the bottom of the empty fermenter, sit it on it’s side and roll the marbles in through the neck of a bottle. I learned to do this when I wanted to add multi-coloured marbles to a bottle I wanted to put a decorative branch in. The bottle was too tall for the branch and I needed to find a way to make sure that branch wouldn’t go in too low or make the entire setup be top heavy. It worked: no cracked bottle!
Awesome Jungle Brew rant! I can totally relate:)
Ah bringing back memories of Thailand talking about jungle brew. We had a guy that was smart enough to have a wire mesh and use it like y'all do the sieve when racking, guess he hated the grounds too.
Just made a wine with 71b with Oregon grape, cherry, and grapes it's okay a bit astringent if I did it again I would add just a little bit of Oregon grape to add the acidic zing or maybe freeze them first it makes them sweeter for some reason. Turned out pretty much 14 percent. I only tried it because 25 years ago when I was hiking I saw people picking Oregon grapes and was curious why anyone would want to pick them I new they were edible but sour and they said to make wine with. LoL
We don't have any experience with Oregon Grapes, but it sounds like you have a good plan to create a flavor that would work for you! :)
when I did the CS version of a first mead for my first mead I substituted dates for the raisins and the mead also went completely dry on me. So dry that I couldn't get the hydrometer to float.
what, you don't like your coffee extra chunky? Oh, there's another name for Jungle Coffee out west, it's cowboy coffee, because when your out on the range you don't necessarily want to carry a lot of gear with you, so you put the coffee in a pot with water, cook it over a campfire. The only difference is a lot of people will then filter that coffee through a bandana, or I've even heard of people using their socks ( hopefully the clean ones ). Anyway, by the end of your trek, your bandana or socks might be getting a little too funky for even the most discriminating of tastes, so the dip method is also used.
This is close to the most common way to drink coffee in Central Europe and Czechia or Slovakia specifically. Drop some ground beans into the mug and pour them over with boiling water. You have your coffe ready in few minutes. True coffee lovers might have stroke but it's just a simplified way of preparation originating from Osman custom of brewing in a cezve.Because of that it's known here as "turek" or "Turkish coffee".
Arabica has not been too common here for most of the 20th century so it's mostly made from some robusta mix.
I have only made a few batches of mead at this point, using Lalvin 71b, and all of them have exceeded 16%: one has reached 18%. I don't know what's going on, but that yeast seems very happy.
I joined the fray after you all have already made LOTS of videos and I am getting tons of info (overload LOL) and as you have been going along some of your thoughts on things or uses of things have evolved some seems like making it a little confusing sometimes because I am bouncing around from 2018 to 2021 to 2019, etc. One thing I am getting a little confused on is yeast. In the beginning it was all about Fleishman's and then you started using D47 and now 71B. I know that you are experimenting with different yeast for different reasons but I want to know what I should use to get a good feel for all of this. If it isn't necessary for me to go through a progression then I would rather go to a general use one that you would recommend? I can experiment after I get comfortable.
We like 71B. However, we use different yeasts for different brews, as they are all al little different. th-cam.com/video/NaQWaYfxFKA/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=CitySteadingBrews
@@CitySteadingBrews Thank you. I bought 71b and started thinking I messed up.
my grandma has a trick for jungle brew: she splashes some water on top and the grounds settle, then she simply serves it into cups (yes, she makes it when she doesn't want to use the coffee maker, but in little pans, not in those big things to cook a whole goat or something)
@27.25 so cute and funny! Derrica definitely got you!
Like the smilie face in the glass jug lol
Jungle Coffee? When I was in the Army we'd swipe the Lt's brand spanking new socks to use as boiling bags LOL.
i did a date mead in 2019, about 10 months later racked it, tasted like smell of paint thinner. retrying it with date syrup, but way expensive
Try racking around five months I found that worked better
I just made some plumb wine ig was 1.158 fg was .098 . Its dryish but i used 2 packets of red star levure séche. I back sweatend with black berrie it not to bad. Thanks yall for insperation
Totally with you on the sediment man.
"Unbeknownst to Brian but knownst to us."
I love your videos! I had a mead-y question and I thought putting it here would be easiest for everyone. I have a Green apple hydromel (Green apple infused Honey), and I am sure its done fermenting, it has a tiny bit of sweetness left (1.005 spgr) and im sure its done fermenting, but it has a sour (as in bad taste, not the sour apples themselves) flavor, but it cleared out beautifully! Should I let it bulk ferment until it tastes better? Or could it be fine bottle aging? Thanks! Anyone feel free to give your input, not just Brian and Derica!
Bottle or bulk aging doesn't make a LOT of difference.
Since the use of the yeast hulls is something new and I've noticed each time you use it you seem to get a boost. I'm wondering if the yeast hulls aren't made this one go so high as well.
I believe they just give a quicker start really. We have a test going now, so there will be more in the way of results in another video :)
@@CitySteadingBrews Thank you, I appreciate the way you approach things in such a scientific way.
Lol i appreciate the "Tastes like chicken" Matrix referance.
Just got off of deployment. I didn’t have jungle brew coffee but it was very satisfying to properly make my own coffee again! I almost counseled a soldier because he makes weak coffee.
I love you guys,im learning so much
I have got to try this--I have incense recipes that call for "palm wine" or "oasis wine" and date wine is the closest I think I can get. I think I'll try backsweetening with date syrup; you can buy that, the sugar extracted from dates, from a Middle Eastern grocery.
We made something else with that, yup!
Hmmm 🤔 Wonder about doing a Date-Mead mashup with the 71Beast, Hulls, Tannin Tea and back-sweetened if necessary for a Hi ABV lightly-semi-sweet. But would hope to keep some of its date’iness in flavor and not lose to alcohol production, might not be worth it.
Still interested in seeing how it might work (but small batch for sure as a test maybe)
I made up some date mead yesterday using M05 mead yeast from mangrove jacks in a 5ltr demijohn I’m looking forward to how it turns out I used 1kg of my own honey from my hives 500 grams of dates a 3rd of a stick of vanilla and filled up with spring water
It’s the first time using this yeast so we will see how it goes.
I think I like the "Livingston" brand wine 3L bottles better than your "Carlo Rossi" 3L. The 3L ones that I have I can actually tip the syphon a little better and don't hardly have as much "wastage". I probably would have bought the same 3L as you but Caro Rossi only comes in 4L where I can find it (which makes for good fermenters! But I thought I would throw the Livingston out there so if you see them, I would recommend a buy. Plus the wine is pretty good too.
71 beast!!!! Yes!!!!
What would you think of using a few dates in an other brew just for nutrient?
Curious about this, myself. I have a mead that’s stuck and it might be nice to add a date to contribute both nutrients and flavor.
Hello, Some thing else to do with the left overs is to use it on steaks. Let them sit in it a while before cooking. You will be surprised.
Jungle Brew, here in the southwest we call that Cowboy Coffee 🤠
Date fruit is awesome.
I have watched your channel for a while now, and finally decided to take the plunge, I bought all the equipment and made the mead from your Making your first mead video. I used lavilin 71b instead of bread yeast, since that is what I had (I plan to make a cherry mead next, and wanted to buy one batch of yeast) and figured since it has a slightly higher alcohol tolerance I used a mead calculator to find how much honey I needed to add to end with the same specific gravity you did, but 14 percent alcohol instead of 12.
My starting gravity was 1.125 - 1.135 (I am mostly sure I read it right) useing 3.25 - 3.50 pounds of honey (I'll need to get better and making accurate readings). was this the correct thing to do for this yeast?
Thank you very much for your videos!
Oh. We don't do jungle brew anymore. Nespresso did us a service by doing single use packs. And if you pack those paper ones, you don't even have to carry it on you, just bury it. I'm sorry you had to do jungle brew :P
when making dates wine always add honey, mix dates with few raisins and wild berries.
Brown Sugar = white sugar + black molasses added back. Way back in the day it was partly refined sugar.
Just ruined a gallon of pumpkin ale by letting the airlock go dry. It was high abv and i wanted to let it age an extra month. It ligit turned black. So bummed to send it down the drain.
All my yeast goes over tolerance to the point i got a 7% beer yeast to try to remedy that issue it's going to 14% happily it's actually really annoying i like my mead sweet.
Embrace backsweetening.
@@cherisseepp5332 kinda have no choice their :)
I wonder how adding some dates to a bochet would turn out help to bump up alchohol content and help with unfermemtable sugar from carmilizing the honey. Dates had a Carmel flaover as is im thinking it would add a great flavor to a bochet. Once I free up some fermentors I will try.
Time to buy some dates...that didn't sound quite right.
Quick question:
Did you end up needing a blow off tube for this one, or were you fine using just and S-airlock with no crazy over-foaming?
I honestly don’t remember but I wouldn’t be surprised if we needed a blowoff tube.
@@CitySteadingBrews ok, yeah was a bit ago wasn’t it. Lol.
Well started mine today, so set up a blow off tube just in case,.
Pretty much followed your recipe, very mild differences at best. (Imported or more exotic brands/types of ingredients when able)
-2 pounds Deglet Nour Dates (instead of medjool)
-1.45 pounds Demerara Sugar
-Peel of small blood orange plus 2 teaspoons of the juice
-Tannin tea (imported robust red Arabic tea, tsp lemon zest, handful raisins steeped & strained)
Spring water till full (1.5 Gal little big mouth bubbler filled just over the 1.4 gallon mark at shoulder)
-71Beast👹 full packet
OG is based off your measurements but shouldn’t be much different at OG 1.126’ish
So now to sit for 4’ish weeks till it’s time to rough rack off the dates (give or take however long till it’s done) Hopefully end up at 0.990 like you did or least at the 1.000 mark.
Presently all my different attempts, with different yeasts, are ending on the sweeter side (1.026-1.034)
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Brian/Derica
Is there a rule of thumb concerning how long to keep fruit in primary. I did a 5 gallon apple pie mead using apple pie filling. Thank you
Rather than using tea leaves, have you considered using freeze dried tea??
Yeast really like dates. Mine came out around 16% with bread yeast
Does anyone have any experience with fermenting watermelon juice? Started a batch of watermelon melomel yesterday, seemed fine became visibly active in about an hour or so. Gave it a quick swish round this morning before heading to work, got back home maybe half an hour ago and went to give it another swish. And found some spillage along with about 2 inches of redish goop sitting on top of a further 1 inch of fine bubbled white foam with the rest of the liquid underneath that (which is also now colourless after starting out as a pinkish red). It smells fairly strongly of alcohol even now with barely 30 hours of fermentation time. I started with an OG of 1.115 and using lalvin 71b. Has anyone encountered this before? Is it just a vigorous ferment?
Sounds like my first cyser. It kept blowing it’s top. I ended up using a blow-off tube setup. Basically, instead of an airlock, you put a tube in the bung and run it into a bottle of water or sanitizer through another bung. That way, you still have an airlock but it can accept a lot more volume of material.
As DukeTrout said!
Brown sugar is just white sugar with molasses added.. unless using “real brown sugar” un bleached cane sugar.
I use dates in place of raisins in all my meads
If I got headspace I add some apple jack to mine to get it up
Have you guys ever thought of doing a fig wine/mead?
About the brown sugar, I have a question! So I made an Apple Wine in April with brown sugar and apple juice. Around July (when I bottled it) it tasted amazing, like apple crisp in a bottle. Now, it tastes kind of bland. Would you recommend just drinking it and maybe cutting it with some apple cider or wait it out and let it age more? How long does it usually take for brown sugar to taste good? I'm just confused why it changed so much. Thanks in advance!
Odd, normally it tastes better as time goes on. It's possible you're experiencing what we did with our sweet red wine. It's great for about 2-3 months, then malolactic fermentation occurs and it's not as good. That's my guess.
Similar to making a wild yeast Bug. Can you take say, 1/2 of your yeast pack and just cultivate more yeast so you don't have to keep buying more? That is if your only making 3 gallons or less. I think over 3 gallons it would be hard to determine your Bug yeast level when pitching. Say a 2 cup bug, pitch 1 cup, then cultivate another 2 cups with your remaining Bug.
You can try... the life span of that culture is limited though.
@@CitySteadingBrews Good to know, thanks.
Does it matter if you Degas before or after a cold crash?
Not really no.
The plastic vs. glass comments remind me of my misspent youth when I took analytical chemistry. I was doing a lot of titration with sodium hydroxide--a strong base you may know better as Drano crystals. I had to recalculate the concentration of my solution each lab session because sodium hydroxide leeches material from glass.
What calculator/calculation factor do you use? My calculator says 17.7%abv with the numbers you mentioned
Dates themselves contain a lot of pectin and other wild yeast in them, In Iran when we make date mash or date wine we don't use any yeast at all, that is probably the reason your wine turned into fuel :D
Have you thought about making a date mead with date honey‽ Just a thought...
Diabetics are told not to eat dates because they are high in sucrose.
What type of 3 liter jug is that? Love the look.
It’s a Carlo Rossi wine bottle :)