Various updates

Rather than a post for each project, here’s a round-up of what’s been going on on the brewing and alcohol front:

• The mead has been racked off from the primary fermenter into the carboy. The specific gravity was still a bit higher than expected (1.038), but nothing worrisome. The waiting game continues. In two more weeks I’ll take another reading and see how things are progressing. Thankfully the clear glass carboy makes it easier to monitor the clarity of the mead. The clearer it gets the closer it is to ready.
• The grapefruit liqueur has been bottled. Improved filtering (compared to the limoncello) helped make this crystal clear. Though the flavor is distinctly citrusy there is not a lot of grapefruit-ness in there.
• A week or so after the grapefruit came off, the lime liqueur was also bottled. Disappointingly, it turned out light yellow rather than green. Like the grapefruit, it’s citrusy but not particularly limey. The aftertaste is much more bitter than either the lemon or the grapefruit. Lazy filtering led to a bit of a haze and some sediment in this one.
• This past weekend marked the first foray into beer brewing with a batch of nut brown ale. As this is all new to me, the ingredients and method were provided by a pre-measured kit from The Beverage People, my homebrew pals in Santa Rosa. A quick view of the wort yesterday shows that everything is bubbling along nicely enough so far. The mix had an original specific gravity (OG) of 1.040. I’ve yet to do any research to determine whether this is normal or not. An advantage of beer over mead is that it’s quick. Two weeks in the fermenter, two in the bottle, crack brew.

That’s the quick quick version of what’s been up.