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.

Bottled : Peach Wine

As from this post I'm trying out a new format to the blog and not going to post every stage of the brew process as individual posts anymore but will post just 2 blogs post per brew with the brew-day being one and the bottling day as the other, with a break down of the process. Just to save a little time and make the posts easier to find when I look back at them.

Bottled the Peach Wine today that was made on the 26/05/14. Got 5 full bottles (750ml) and a half bottle for drinking young. So pretty good all in all. It's a nice colour and from a quick taste test not a bad wine at all.

• 26/05/14 Made up the wine Must
• 27/05/14 Yeast and Nutrient added.
• 01/06/14 Racked into Demijohn
• 14/07/14 Racked
• 15/07/14 Clear-It wine fining's added.
• 30/09/14 Bottled

Autumn is here, Garlic Planting time!

Well Autumn seems to be here, and the harvesting from the Allotment is now slowing down.

I went down to the plots to do lots of sorting ready for winter, a general dig over and tidy up, with no more beans to pick I was preparing to remove all the canes to be stored over winter in the shed, but I have now decided to leave the beans alone for a while while I collect some free bean seed for next year from the pods that were to big and stringy  to eat.

So I just ended up pottering around doing bits and pieces around the site but not really accomplishing much.

There is so much to do, but I just can't do it at the moment. The Hops need relocating but I can't do that until the plants die back, the canes need taking down where the climbing beans are and the whole bed needs a weed and a dig over, but I am collecting seed so thats on hold. I'm splitting another bed into two parts for next year but I can't do that until the beetroot is up.

I did plant my Elephant Garlic cloves that I grew last year, so hopefully FREE garlic for next year. 18 cloves planted with still loads left to cook with here at home. I can't remember when I planted the Elephant Garlic last year, it was sometime around now I think. The internet says it's planted in the Autumn so they are in. Along side the Elephant Garlic I have also planted 27 cloves of Marco Garlic (Softneck) £2.99 for two bulbs at the Garden Center. I still have room for another type of Garlic in that bed and as we use it quite a bit and it stores so well I might invest in another garlic as it becomes available in the garden centres to fill the bed right up.

I'm still picking Chillies and Sweet peppers from the Greenhouse, with so much more to come that are still unripe. Had another bumper harvest I'm running out of things to do with the Hot Peppers.



There are a few more things still growing and that I am able to harvest, the Autumn fruiting raspberries are now fruiting well and I have now collected a good half of a icecream tub that are in the freezer. Which for their 1st year in the ground I don't think thats to bad so far, I have made a wine with them already and we have also had a load in a trifle so half a tub saved so far is doing good . The courgettes and patti pan's are still coming, but a lot slower now. Chard is doing well, and the Kale is nearly at a point that we can start to eat it.

The Kale has been a lot slower this year but I think thats due to it being the wrong side of the polytunnel and it's not getting quite enough sunshine with it there.



I had to pick 2 of my three Invincible Pumpkins today as the plants had died right back to the stalks of the fruit. I still have one going strong which I hope will get to full size as the packet says 5kg each fruit, but my ones I had to pick are only just over 1.5kg each. Should still make a good Pumpkin Beer though.

Got a couple of butternut squashes doing okay, they seem to grow so slowly though.

Well I think that's it for today. Next time I'm down the 'Lottie I need to have a good look on my cabbages, and see how the Savoy's are getting on/eaten

Fermenting/Dry Hop : Fat Rabbit IPA

The Fat Rabbit IPA sat in the No-Chill Cube on the 25g of mixed Challenger/Redsell's Eastwell Goldings hops for 2 days until a got the fermentation fridge sorted out ready for this brew to ferment with Safale S04. I dry pitched the yeast right on top of the sweet wort. Really should have made a starter or something as after I pitched the yeast, I noticed it was nearly a year after it's use by date. Got away with it though as it started fermenting by the next morning.

I set the fridge to 22'C as the Temperature Range for this yeast is  15-24'C. This was left to ferment undisturbed for 7 days before I checked the gravity, it dropped down to 1020 SG from 1058 SG. So Happy days.

Sample tasted very good, and it's a great colour at the moment. A pale gold.

Due to the fact that this beer is using home grown Hops and I have plenty to spare I am having my first go at Dry Hopping a beer.

I spent a day in town trying to hunt down a nylon or muslin bag to use to dry hop this brew in the Primary fermentor (I don't have a second 25litre bucket) ended up finding one of these.

So in went a Jack Daniels glass and I StarSan'ed the bag and glass, added a massive load of Hops (50g) and dropped it into the fermenting bucket in the fridge. Dropped the temperature in the fridge to 20'C and the bag and Hops will now stay there for a few days to extract the aromas.

I expect I'll be bottling this by the end of the month and hopefully it will turn out a good brew, as I'm hoping this will be the basic recipe for my House IPA