A teaching brew: our neighbors Jack and Hannah want to learn some brewing basics, so we're starting a simple batch of cider and a simple batch of mead to show them the basic elements of fermentation. Hopefully the brew is delicious.

I'm going to call this batch I sure did do that thing after a courtroom-impersonation sketch in the third episode ever of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 1 gallon Kroger apple juice.
  • 3 quarts RW Knudsen unfiltered pear juice.
  • 2 lb. dark brown sugar.
  • 1 LD Carlson pectic enzyme.
  • 1 large brewing spoon's worth of Omega Yeast OMY-500 (Saisonstein's Monster) cropped from the bottom of batch 161, which is still fermenting slowly.
  • 1 lb. light brown sugar, added on 1 July.
  • approx. 2 oz. Hungarian oak cubes, previously used in batch 093, then soaked again in miscellaneous bourbons for several months, added 10 Sept. 2019.

Sanitized. Mixed the brown sugar into the apple juice, then poured the pear juice into the carboy. Added pectic enzyme. Beat the surface with a sanitized wire whisk until it was foamy as hell. Cropped some yeast from batch 161, then sealed the bucket and popped in an airlock.

Brew date: 11 May 2019.
Original gravity: 1.095. (But I'm calculating this ABV as if the O.G. of the brew were 1.115 due to later sugar additions.)
Bottling date: 30 September 2019
Final gravity: 1.009.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 14%.

Yield: Not measured or counted, alas.

Notes and observations

  • 2019-07-01: Added another pound of brown sugar to the carboy.
  • 2019-09-30: Bottled.