It'll get you drunk

For some reason I like making alcohol in the fall. Maybe it's football or maybe it's the depressing gray and wet days we have here in the Pacific Northwest that last from now until sometime in the late spring. You know why many Irish drink heavily? Because Ireland is wet, gray and the food isn't any good. Regardless I like making adult beverages and this year I decided to try some new things. First of all a few weeks ago I decided to use and old cider press we had in our shed to squeeze apples for hard apple cider. Lets just say it takes a ton of apples to make 5 gallons of cider and by the end of squeezing them I was pretty tired. If I could just buy the cider it would totally be worth the time savings but the problem is store bought cider is pasteurized and often has preservatives in it. As you could imagine sugar loving yeasts don't really like preservatives so you are kind of stuck making your own cider unless you know someone. Basically you can make hard cider with fresh apple cider and yeast. I went a little farther than that and talked to my local brew shop and obtained specialized yeasts and additives designed for hard apple cider brewing. The big disappointment I found was that it really takes a year to have a good cider that is drinkable. It's been like 3 weeks but I couldn't wait, I had to taste it. Really I'm thinking to myself currently that there is no way this vat of alcoholic cider vinegar could ever taste good. Maybe I could be wrong but something tells me I did something wrong, using unripe apples could have something to do with it. Eh, it's not going to hurt me to leave it in the basement for a year, well unless it turns into some noxious poison, it'll get you drunk or kill ya, same dif.
To something I'm more successful with, beer. This weekend I made a batch of Pirates Brew Irish Stout (recipe in the brewing bible). If you don't know how to make beer I suggest going to a brew store and talking to the fine people located inside. With any luck in a month I'll have a stout to enjoy with my friends or possibly just by myself looking out at the gray mucky skies (sigh.....). P.S The picture above is a beer I made, it's pretty but for all intensive purposes taste like crap. You win some you loose some....