wine and beer supply catalog

[drinksgin (deceased)]

For the closet alkys here, I just received some tools  for winemaking, came with a catalog from E. C. Kraus.
Interesting reading, I am sure the same things are available else where and  likely at better prices but this would be a place of last resort.

[gitano]

I've made both. "You" can have the wine-making. I do like the beer that I make though. Mostly because I get the kind of beer EYE like, not what some brewery thinks I should like. Also, wine really takes 6 months to complete. Good beer can be made in a couple of weeks.

I won Honorable Mention at the state fair with some Banana Beer I made. (Technically, I think since it's made from fruit not grain, it should have been called banana wine.)

Paul

[drinksgin (deceased)]

I would think so,you might e mail me your recipe for it.
What yeast did you use?

[gitano]

What I recall is that I didn't do anything special, BUT I think I used champagne yeast. I'll look up my recipe and send you a copy. One special note: Drink it RIGHT NOW. It does not keep. I decided I'd let a bunch of mine age and see if it would improve the taste. I let it go at least 6 mo before trying it. I'm pretty sure you could use it for paint remover. REALLY, REALLY, bad. After reading up on the brewing and use of banana 'beer' by those that live in the tropics world-wide, I saw that EVERYONE says "It does not keep". They are RIGHT! I'd say it's good for maybe a month, no longer for sure. If I understand the processes correctly, it is the "esterization" that fouls the taste.

I'm busy working on the other Morris chair and the recipe is 'buried' on one of my other computers, so if I don't get it to you in a day or two it probably means it has slipped my mind. Please remind me. By the way, let me relate how EYE came to banana beer.

'Long ago and far away' (I was living near Fairbanks at the time), I would buy 'old' bananas, peel them, put them in empty and cleaned margarine tubs, and then freeze them for use later in making banana bread. One day I went down to the basement where the freezer was and while looking for something else, I took a couple of those frozen tubs of 'old' bananas out of the freezer and set them on top of the freezer while I looked for whatever it was I was looking for. You guessed it; I forgot they were up there and left them out. It was some time later - weeks at least - that I 'discovered' those tubs. "Oh boy!", I thought, "This is gonna be a 'science' project." I carefully cracked one of the tubs open, and to my pleasant surprise, there was NOTHING inside except pure, honey-colored, liquid. NO solids at all. Furthermore, it was 'effervescing' - bubbling. "Hmm..." I knew the fermentation process and this was clearly the result of that. I took a sip. It was GREAT! Between the two tubs I was able to get about 2/3rds of a Grolsch bottle of banana wine.

For years after that - decades actually - I 'threatened' to make some more. It wasn't for about another 15 years or so that I actually got to doing it. The results were as good as the first time. I think the effervescing is what prompted me to use champagne yeast. I was attempting to recreate what a few weeks on the top of the freezer had produced.

What I like at least as much as the banana wine is "Birch beer" which I made from birch sap I got from tapping the birch trees on my property here in Wasilla. It produces - by my recipe - a very dark, sweet (I hate hops), potent (about 11.5%), beer. It is, to my palate, the best beer I've ever had. However, it's very labor-intensive. I've only made the one batch. Just too much work. You have to get 'married' to the process for about 3 weeks: A week to 10 days of collecting sap, all the while boiling it down to get the "malt", then the normal couple of weeks of brewing. I threaten to do it again every spring, but as yet those threats prove to be 'idle' ones.

Paul

[drinksgin (deceased)]

I am about to make a product that is sorta an ancestral thing.
Apfel wein, or apple wine.
I have been waiting on the fermentation locks to come in, they made it today.
I have the rest of the equipment and some Lanvin wine yeast for light , fruit wines.
I shall see how it does,
I made some wine a number of years ago, sugared up a bunch of strawberries and put in the refrigerator, forgot about  them,( even in my 20's it happened), found the mess several weeks later, um -um -um!
When we lived in north Texas we had plenty of mustang grapes, which come with their own yeast on the fruit, just rinse lightly, leaving the white film on the grapes, mash, strain, let set in the refrigerator about 3 days, the fruit are full of oxalic acid , siphon off the juice, in a jug with a balloon over the neck with a couple of needle holes, wait until the bubbles quit, siphon off again and enjoy.
Real pore boy stuff.

[drinksgin (deceased)]

I now have everything on hand, so I shall start a gallon batch tomorrow, All I have read about apple wine recommends using it quickly as it does not really improve much with age. I shall find out.

[drinksgin (deceased)]

I gave up, the drilled stoppers for the fermentation locks came, too big!
I have ordered some in the correct size but I am tired of wasting time so I pore boyed it. a piece of plastic wrap, a rubber band , a quick poke with an icepick and off to the closet for about 4 weeks.
VERY complicated recipe!
1 gal of pure apple juice, no preservatives, 1, 4 liter glass jug ,1/2 cup of sugar and 1 tsp of Lanvin 23 wine yeast.
I shall see how it does. If it is okay the grocery store has plenty of pure juices without preservatives, so I may have apple, grape, cranberry and other , including blends and for about $5 or less for 1 gal. of wine
I have a sampling tube, hydrometer and plenty of empty canning jars.
Hey ,I is from the backwoods, we drink all the good stuff out of  mason jars!

[sakorick]

Hey ,I is from the backwoods, we drink all the good stuff out of  mason jars!

Good wine either comes in boxes or the premium stuff in mason jars.

[gitano]

Rick beat me to it!

Paul

[drinksgin (deceased)]

I have the first gallon in the dark closet, little yeasties working away!

[drinksgin (deceased)]

Do not do this if you tempt easily, the aroma is something else, I have a hard time just thinking about waiting 4 weeks.
Woo, woo!

[gitano]

Paul