And all is quiet. Thankfully.
It has been an interesting few days. Friday I stopped by the local home brewers "outlet" to pick up some stuff to make more meade and try my hand at some cider. Apple cider is in season now and having some hot ass-kicking cider around the holidays sounds really awesome.
So I picked up a couple of carbouys, some "bubblers" (I know that isn't the proper name but that's what they are to me), yeast, and some stoppers.
Then on Saturday I went in search of fresh apple cider. Fortunately, there are several farms pretty close so I picked up 3 gallons of the stuff plus 3 pounds of fresh honey for more meade (hey, if you're gonna brew, BREW!)
Saturday afternoon was spent sanitizing and brewing. Man, let me tell you what, that cider right out of the jug was AWESOME!! Damn! I kept some of it back just to drink it unfermented!
To the "to be fermented" stuff I added lots of cinnamon, 1 lb of brown sugar, a touch of nutmeg, a touch of ginger and some cloves. I kept adding and tasting until it was where I wanted it. Then I put it in a carbouy, tossed the yeast in, plopped the bubbler on top and away the yeasties went.
Now it's sitting here in my kitchen floor all covered in a bag with the bubbler sticking out so I can watch it. (And I do, too. It just fascinates me for some reason to watch that thing bubble).
The meade, however, is not co-operating. Damn that honey for being sterile anyway. The dude that I bought the honey and cider from actually looked horrified when I told him I was going to ferment them both. Like, hello? Hard cider is about yummy. Especially around Christmas when you can heat it up and it makes the whole house smell good.
I pulled the meade down and put some raisins in it and shook it up a bit to get some air into it. It looks like it might be doing ok now. We'll see in a week or so when I pull it out to give it a taste.
Haven't been doing much cooking lately. Truth be told, I haven't been really very hungry which is odd. I would expect to be starving about this time of year (close to hibernation time). And I'm not sleeping well, either. I'm sure it will all pass.
I've started bringing the plants in for the winter. Getting them used to staying inside by bringing them in more and more each day. They seem to be taking it ok altho their growth has slowed considerably.
Oh, and mom finally realized she could grow a fuschia. Just like I told her. She kept telling me how "sensitive" they are and how she could never grow one. I told her it was because she didn't put it in the morning sun, out of the wind and water it enough.
So I left mine with her when I went on vacation with explicit instructions to water it every day and guess what? It did great. And I let her keep it. Now she's fussing over the thing (she doesn't want it to die off this winter) because it has grown like a weed for her.
I think I might take a cutting of it and try to root one and get it to grow. We'll see. I haven't had much luck growing stuff from seed. I haven't really tried cuttings but why not?
Today I went home and took a bunch of stuff to mom & dad.
I helped Dad get the front door put back on (he had taken it off to paint it and was having trouble putting it back on). Then I "made" him go to the hardware store with me. (Because I know he likes to get out of the house).
We walked around looking for about an hour. I picked up a standing plant rack but when I got it home I found half of the parts were missing. So I'm going to have to take it back this week. I'll certainly need it this winter to keep the spider plants off of the floor.
Not much else which is nice. Just brewing, getting the plants ready for winter and running some "experiments". My first cider experiment that I ran last weekend went horribly awry. OK, maybe not "horribly" since I was only out $3 but still . . .
Word to the wise - you can't ferment anything with sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate in it. It kills the yeast. (Heh, but the upside to that is once you've fermented to where you want, you can add this stuff THEN add sugar to taste. That way the little beggars don't gorge on your sugar and leave you with too dry of a brew.)
What else? Well, I missed my violin lesson last week because I scalded my bow hand running the botched first cider attempt. That was not good. I had a blister on two fingers that I had to pop. Ick! But it's all better now.
Then I was going to skate tonight but the ice was down. Bogus! So now I think I'm just going to find a book and hit the sack.
The Rogue Goddess saw shadows dancing at 8:23 PM
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