April 2010 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Lisa & Lori please come in
I want to make booze.
We are thinking about brewing beer or making wine, but can't decide which if either to do. Please share the pros and cons of your beer (Lisa) and wine (Lori) making experiences.
Also do I need a lot of space?
Re: Lisa & Lori please come in
I have not done it yet myself, but DH has a number of times, years ago and once in the last couple weeks. I helped a little so I'll tell you what some of the steps are. (I could even scan and email you the instruction pages for the ones we'll be brewing)
You have to have a giant pot for cooking ingredients. It does take a few hours to cook and be monitored, and the has to be cooled and sit for a few days before its ready to be bottled. You will need sanitizer (you can buy the equipment and supplies at a homebrew store), bottles, caps, a capper to seal the caps on the bottles, and a rack to dry bottles. The bottling is pretty easy, I fed a tube into the bottles which had a shut off valve on it, then DH capped them.
These are very crude instructions and summary so I will try to get those instructions to you so you can see for yourself. You might want to look into taking a class then buying equipment if you feel it's feasible for you to do. I would also love to make wine so I'm looking forward to Lori's response!
April 2010 Siggy Challenge: Next Vacation Destination
Okay, here's the deal with the wine. There is a place here in NJ called Grape Expectations where you go to make the wine. I imagine there are similar types of business around the country, so maybe if you Google "winemaking in Florida" or something you can find a place by you. It's a big warehouse type place since they store all of the barrels there, and they guide us through crushing, bottling, etc.
You do need a barrel, which from what I understand can be costly. In our case a friend of a friend had a barrel he wasn't using, so he let us use it this year. I think we could have rented one also. The barrel turns out 24 cases of wine/12 bottles per case. Ours was split 4 ways since we went in with 2 other couples and 1 single friend, so we ended up with the equivalent of 6 cases of wine, although we chose to get half of it in half size bottles - perfect for weeknights!
So, you pick the grapes you want - they have a selection from around the world, Napa, Italy, France, New Zealand, etc. We did a Cab/Merlot blend from Napa Valley. You go in every few months to do the next step in the process. The first step is to go in and feed the grapes into the crusher. I forgot the next one - I think we strained it or something? When the wine had been fermenting for ~6 months you can go in for a tasting. Then, a couple weeks ago we went in to bottle it. You can make up labels to put on the bottles, but we never got our act together and we now have like 100 bottles of label-less wine.
I have to say, it came out really really good. I think with grapes, supplies, etc. it ended up costing around $8 a bottle, but that depends on what grapes you choose. It was really fun too, especially since we did it with close friends. We would bring in some snacks and some wine and gossip as we were working. It wasn't a lot of effort, just a few hours of work on 4 Sunday afternoons.
As for beer, I asked Dave about that since he would like to do this someday. He said that you need a cool place to store it, and it can be a little smelly so you want it in a room you're not in that much. So, a garage or a section of a basement would be perfect. He wants to do this once we have a house.
Lori that wine making process sounds awesome that you don't have to buy equipment for it! That is a lot of the expense for beer brewing. Apparently the homebrew supply place near us has wine making stuff too so maybe I'll try that and see how that is.
Rach I just forwarded the instructions via email which are much more complicated than some options are. You can make it as easy as you'd like or as complicated as you'd like. Lori's H is correct you do have to regulate temperature for it; Alex put it in front of our window AC unit and it was fine. I really don't like the smell of hops but when he made his batch two weeks ago I couldn't smell it in the house and he did not have windows open. When he opened the bucket YIKES it smelled funky but as I said I don't like hops (which is why I'm doing Belgian Wheat). So I don't think the after smell should hold you up, Alex said it smells while cooking though. I guess it depends on your smell sensitivity :-)
April 2010 Siggy Challenge: Next Vacation Destination
hijack-
We made skittles vodka a few months back and it.was.delish.
Thank you - this is a plethora of information, just what I needed! And thanks for the email Lisa
I'm concerned about keeping beer cool b/c it's warm here always, so in the garage it would still get warm. Hmmm...