Thank you so much to all who attended our Ginger Beer and Mead workshop with Scott Mansfield at LRE/Kitchenette on April 28th. We all had a great time learning and sampling Scott's fermented beverages!
Scott taught us how to easily and inexpensively make delicious fermented beverages right in our kitchen. To pick up your home brewing and wine making supplies in San Francisco check out San Francsicso Brewcraft or if you are in the East Bay check out OakBarrel Winecraft. Both SF Brewcraft and OakBarrel also source grapes so if you are feeling adventrous and want to start completely from scratch you can contact them for grape orders. Grapes are harvested in the fall, but most places start taking orders in the summer.
A great tip from Scott is to source your juice for wine from top quality wine producers. Some Napa producers, whose wine sells for $40 a bottle, also sell kits which enable the home winemaker to make a bottle for about $4.00. How can you beat that? When you're searching for wine kits and juice Scott suggests figuring out the type of wine that you want to make and search the web for “gold medal” versions of that kit and then search again for the best price, including shipping. He said that he hasn't found one source that consistently has the best prices for kits but he notes that beer-wine.com will show you the incredible variety of what’s available. Wine kits usually make 6 gallons and the better quality ones have 4 or more gallons of juice in them.
For on-line beer kits, he prefers Coopers, they offer a wide variety of styles and quality ingredients. Another resource that Scott has sourced beer ingredients from is Muntons.
For follow up questions for Scott and discussions go our Facebook Fan Page.
Hard Cider
Forget orange juice. Hard cider is the original breakfast drink. President John Adams used to drink a quart of it before starting his busy day and I’m sure it made him not only more agreeable, but as regular as a Swiss watch too.
Making traditional hard apple cider is easy. You can buy pasteurized apple juice, add yeast, and in a week have an acceptable dry beverage. But making a great hard cider is a challenge; arguably even more challenging than making a fine wine.
What’s so hard about making a great hard cider? Just as there are particular grape varieties that are mixed to create fine wine, so are there varieties of apples that were bred as hard cider ingredients. But unlike wine, in which winemakers focus on one type of grape, and then add small amounts of others as an accent, cidermakers routinely mix several varieties of apple juice to make a great hard cider. Most, then, are blends.
For the purposes of hard cider, an apple species can be categorized in four ways:
- Sweet apples—Sweet apples that are high in sugar and low in acid. Varieties include Red Delicious, Cortland, Rome Beauty, and York Imperial. These constitute 25 to 50 percent of a hard cider.
- Tart apples—Slightly acidic apples that give zest to the juice. Varieties include Jonathon, Northern Spy, Winesap, and Granny Smith. These make up 25 to 40 percent of a hard cider.
- Aromatic apples—Fragrant apples that contribute to a blend’s bouquet. Varieties include Macintosh, Gravenstein, Pippin, Golden Delicious, and Gala. These constitute 10 to 30 percent of a hard cider.
- Astringent apples—Highly acidic apples that also contain tannin. Varieties include crabapples and wild varieties sometimes called “spitters” for obvious reasons. These apples are used in small quantities to give the blend a unique character and also to help preserve it since they have more tannins that other varieties. These make up less than 10 percent of a hard cider.
In the 18th century, when cider making was arguably at its peak, cider makers did their work in the fall. This was when apples were ripe, and perhaps more telling, there was no other fruit available. Today we have a wide variety of juices available year round, so we aren’t restricted to using just apples to make cider. But the flavor ratio still holds, so when mixing other fruit juice into your cider, choose juices that have the following profile:
- Sweet juice – Most apple juice works well, 50 percent of the total used
- Tart juice – Citrus juices serve well here; 20 to 25 percent of the total
- Aromatic juice – Stone fruits or berries are a good choice, 20 to 25 percent of the total
- Astringent juice – Cranberry is good in this role, 5 to 10 percent of the total
Balanced Hard Cider
1 gallon apple juice (no preservatives)
1 quart Knutsens Black Cherry Juice
1 quart Knutsen Rasspberry Lemonade
1/4 teaspoon grape tannin (optional)
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient (optional)
1 packet ale yeast
- Pour juice, yeast nutrient, and grape tannin into primary fermenter.
- Add yeast.
- Fermentation is usually complete in a week to 10 days. You can bottle it, or if you want a sparkling cider, add six teaspoons of corn sugar, then bottle in beer or Champagne-style bottles.
- Whether you make a still or sparkling cider, you don’t need to age it more than a couple of weeks.
Serving Suggestion: Hard cider is similar in character to a light lager and goes especially well with Spanish food or by itself. Serve cold in a pint glass.
Ginger Ale
Although we normally think of ginger ale as a soft drink, it was originally an alcoholic beverage consumed as both a refreshment and tonic. Ginger is an extremely healthful herb. It causes the heart to beat more strongly and slowly and can help reduce migraines. It removes cholesterol, it’s an anti-viral, anti inflammatory, antibiotic, and alleviates nausea.
1 gallon water
2 ounces ginger root, peeled and sliced
1 pound malt syrup (unhopped)
6 teaspoons corn sugar
.5 jalapeño, sliced (optional)
2 lemons, juiced
1 packet ale yeast
Note: The jalapeño gives the beer zing.
- Put the sliced ginger and pepper in a hop bag and simmer in two quarts of water for half an hour.
- Remove the bag.
- Pour in the malt syrup and when it’s fully mixed, and add the lemon juice to the hot liquid.
- Add two quarts of water, let cool to room temperature, and add yeast.
- Attach an airlock and wait until fermentation has stopped, usually after a week.
- Add 1.5 teaspoons of corn sugar to each quart and bottle in Champagne-style bottles, beer bottles, or soda bottles.
Serving Suggestion: Ginger ale, served cold in a pint glass, makes a refreshing summer drink and pairs extremely well with Asian food.
Blackberry Melomel
Blackberries have traditionally been prescribed for digestive problems: sore throats, hemorrhoids, and all parts in-between. The berries are loaded with antioxidants and nutrients such as vitamins C and E, folate, potassium, manganese, and other good stuff.
These berries grow wild in northern California and it’s fairly easy to gather a few pounds. If you can’t collect enough in one picking to warrant a batch of wine, freeze them until you can. Or buy them frozen. Frozen berries are just as good as fresh ones when used to make this melomel.
2.5 pounds clover honey
2 pounds blackberries
3 quarts water
½ teaspoon pectin enzyme
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
½ teaspoon Bentonite
1 Campden tablet
1 packet Pasteur Red yeast
- Heat the water and slowly stir in the honey and yeast nutrient. Note that honey is heavier than water and will sink to the bottom and scorch if you don’t mix it well. Simmer, do not boil, the liquid. If white foam rises to the top; skim it off and discard. If you see brown foam, turn down the heat.
- Turn off the heat when the honey is thoroughly mixed with the water.
- Put fruit into a hop bag, place it in the sanitized primary fermenter, and squish it with your hands.
- Pour the hot liquid onto the bag of fruit in the primary fermenter. Since blackberries have pectin in them, you don’t want to boil them in the liquid.
- When the liquid has cooled to room temperature, add pectin enzyme and yeast.
- Cover and let ferment for a week.
- After a week of fermenting, remove the bag of fruit and rack the liquid to a carboy. The remaining solids in the beverage will eventually sink.
- Wait until all fermentation has stopped, this could take a month to six weeks.
- When fermentation has stopped, add a crushed Campden tablet.
- To expedite the clearing process: boil a cup of water and thoroughly mix in 1/2 teaspoon of Bentonite. Then pour this mixture into the carboy, attach the airlock and swish the fermenter around to mix the fining agent into the liquid.
- When clear, bottle and age two months.
Pomegranate Wine
I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate. Song of Solomon 8:2
While we might suspect that there is a bit more to this woman’s invitation than having her man over for a tipple, this biblical passage does show that pomegranate was once commonly used to make wine. In the early 21st century nutritionists and pomegranate growers have touted the fruit juice as an elixir that improves heart health, lowers hypertension, eases the difficulties of menopause, and fights breast and prostate cancer.
1.5 quarts pomegranate juice
2.5 quarts white grape juice
1.5 cups sugar
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
6 teaspoon corn sugar
2 packets Pasteur Red yeast
- Pour juices, sugar, and yeast nutrient into a glass jug or carboy and swirl till mixed.
- Pour one packet of yeast on top of the juice and attach the fermentation lock.
- Wait until all fermentation has stopped and the wine clears, this could take three or four weeks. Degass, bottle and age a month if you want a still wine.
- If you are making a sparkling wine, do the following:.
- Two days before bottling, remove the white grape juice from the refrigerator and pour in the other packet of yeast. Screw the cap on very loosely so the carbon dioxide can escape and leave outside the refrigerator.
- When bottling, siphon the still wine into quart bottles and add 1.5 teaspoons of corn sugar and one teaspoon of fermenting white grape juice to each. Seal each bottle and store upright in a cool place for six weeks before opening
Note: If you will be making a sparkling wine, put the rest of the white grape juice in the refrigerator.
Click here to print Scott's Fermented Beverages recipes
Click here for Scott's Hard Cider recipe