A catch up Rack n Bottle Day!

Well it's been quite a while since I did any thing in the Brewery, took a little time out today to catch up on a few jobs.

The main aim of  the day was to check and rack Alex's Mead that we made back in September 2014. I checked the SG during transfer and it's now at 1.050 down so a current ABV of 9.3%, drank the sample as you do to make sure that all was okay and it's very good.

While I was  there I also Racked the Elderberry Wine, that was made a while ago as well, August 2014. It had quite a bit of sediment so it needed doing. Sampled this wine which I make each year and yet again it's beautiful fruity wine. I really should make a lot more each year.

As I already had the cleaning and bottling gear out and ready, I decided to bottle up a couple of wines that had been sitting in their demijohns for quite a while and where now lovely and clear. The first to be bottled was the Rhubarb wine that was made nearly a year ago, the one with banana added. Then bottled up the Apricot Wine that was made with the little apricots that Les at work gave me.

Ended up with 5 and a half bottles of Rhubarb (we'll drink the 1/2 bottle tonight) and 5 bottles of Apricot, one of which is ear marked for Les for letting me have the fruit. The Rhubarb came is as a Medium wine and the Apricot as a Dry wine which are now all labeled up and in the Cabin Brewery.

Started the Allotment tidy up

With not a lot growing down the plots, I have not been down there much over the last couple of months. Got down there today for a check over and start the preparations for this years harvest. The Garlic is doing well, hoping for a bumper crop this year as we are now getting low on garlic in the store cupboard.

All three types of garlic are shooting above the ground with nearly every one that I planted showing signs of life.

Got the greenhouse tidy and removed all of last years chili plants. Weeded the green house beds and had a good old clean up.

Dug over a couple of the beds ready for this years crop, but there is still plenty to do. As always at this time of year the Allotment looks a bit tatty, but it won't be long now before things start growing again.

Started the Chillies and some Toms.

Planted this years chillies and sweet peppers today (New Years Day) as I have done for the last few years.

I have still bags and bags of frozen chillies in the freezer, jars and jars of pickled, dried and powdered chili, so this year I have sown less hot peppers and more sweet peppers.

In fact the Capsicum list this year is a total of three, Jalapeño, Sweet Yummy (Snack Bite), and Ancho Poblano. So really no really hot peppers at all this year. I do have a over wintering Ghost Pepper.

The Sweet Yummy peppers are all grown from seed save from last years crop,  so free  plants this year, hopefully they are true to form as they where grown next to Orange habaneros.

Sown the seeds this year in a tray with just compost instead of the coir pellets I normally use. Just to see if works it works out better.

I have also started of some Tomatoes, Craigella a little early maybe, but the packet did say from January onwards.

A Quick Visit

Took a wander down to the Allotment this morning, it's been a little while since I did anything, it's hard to get motivated at this time of year.

I was surprised to see the chilli plants still doing okay in the greenhouse. Even with the cold spell they are still nice and green, with some fruits still ripening on the bushes.

Got yet another small harvest of Yummy and Habañero  peppers, at this rate I won't have to grow any hot peppers next year at all.

The Garlic is all still doing great, so had a good weed around all the plants, Marco and Elephant Garlics are all doing the best so far with the Germidour Garlic that was planted a bit later on just starting to poke their heads up above the soil.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="702"] Before Weeding[/caption]

Next year I really need to get some more Autumn & Winter veg going as apart from a bit of Kale there is not a lot growing for us to eat over the Winter months. I do have a small amount of cabbage that was just chucked in from a few old packets of seed, but apart from one they don't seem to be doing that great.

All in all I only spent a few hours weeding and hoeing but it didn't look like I made much of a dent in the weeds really, but to be fair  that's a job for the spring.

More Garlic Planted

Planted some Germidour garlic on plot 120 this week, that I bought from the good ol' garden center.  2.99 ukp for three bulbs which I thought was quite good. Once it was split into it's cloves I got 39 cloves in total, which has nicely filled the garlic bed up.

 

The Elephant Garlic and the Marco garlic's have already poked thier heads up, so hopefully this years garlic crop will be prolific as in total I have planted 84 cloves of garlic.

Good job we use garlic alot, because if they all do well, that's one hell of alot of garlic. Some of which I'll keep for growing on next year as I did with the elephant garlic from last year.

Rain Stopped Play.

Got some more digging done today before the rain stopped everything. Was quite happy to see that the Marco Garlic that was planted at the end of last month was already shooting above ground. No sign of the Elephant Garlic as yet though.



The climbing beans are still not ready to pull up as I am collecting the seed from what is left growing on the plants. The weeds are taking over that section of the plot and I am now dreading the time when I have to dig it all over, but at least next year I'm dividing that area into two sections to hopefully make things a bit easier.

Talking of which, on another part of plot 120, where the broad beans and beetroot grew this year, I'm also sectioning up this area to make things better next year coping with the weeds. Still have to harvest some more beetroot from this area, but I took to the spade and fork and sorted half of it out.



Took loads of hardwood cuttings from the blackcurrant and Jostaberry bushes, about 10 of each and planted them where the courgettes,squashes and pumpkins  where growing as this section has now been cleared of plants.



So that's all the courgettes and butter-nut squashes done for this year, there's still one pumpkin hanging on in there.



The sweet peppers and chillies are still fruiting but it won't be long now before there are finished for the year, the one's that are left I will pick next week maybe and then one or two of the plants I'll try and over winter. The rest will hit the compost heap.

Still loads to do, mostly tidying up and getting ready for the new year of growing.

Bottled : Fat Rabbit IPA

After a total fermentation time of 15 days the Fat Rabbit IPA is now in bottles, 42 500ml bottles all nice and full.

This beer was brewed on the 18th Sept 2014 and was left in the No-Chill cube on top of 25g of Challenger & Redsell's Eastwell Goldings hops, then was fermented for 5 days at 20'C, at this point I added 50g of hops as a dry hop addition, and left this to finish fermenting until today when it was bottled. The final SG did not fall as far as I had hoped. It finished at 1016 from 1058 so around 5.5% ABV which is fine by me.

Each bottle was primed with 1/2 a tsp of normal granulated sugar apart from one special bottle, where it had a added kick in the form of a whole dried home-grown habanero chilli. This is a special bottle for a friend.

Thanks to everyone on the Home-brewing Community on Google for their assistance on the final SG of this brew.