Most Recent Brewing Adventures.

A couple weeks ago I made my most recent two creations a Red Ale and a Cider. These both were recipes that I got from a homebrewing site and tweaked to my liking. The Red Ale was an all grain recipe that used some crystal malts, 2-row, and a little bit of roasted malt. I changed the hops used to just two varieties rather than three while still keeping the same addition times and number of additions. It came out at 5.1% abv with a nice deep red color, a full bodied mouthfeel and nice bitter finish. However, if anyone wants any you'll have to come over because I kegged it so its on tap only. Some pics below....

The second project I have been working on, which is almost complete, is a hard cider. This was my first attempt at one and from the small taste tests I did while bottling, it turned out a lot better than I was expecting. For those of you wondering how to make a cider, it is pretty simple. You just get either apple cider or apple juice, put it in a fermenter and pitch some yeast into it. There are other things you can do to make it sweeter or have a higher alcohol content, but essentially its apple juice and yeast. Mine was not overly sweet or too dry. It's bottle conditioning and carbonating right now so I'll see how the carbonation is in another couple of days. I was surprised when I did the abv calculations and found it was at 8.4% so it is a strong cider to say the least. Unfortunately I only made a gallon so not enough to share with everyone this time. Next round I will make more.