ohhhh shit gang.

I took a gander at my red ale and it was looking like there was some good precipitation at the bottom of dead yeast cells, so that was cool.. but holy shit. There was a funky film on the top of the beer, and it had me geeking out something wicked. I decided I shouldn’t wait any longer, and get that action into a keg with some potassium metabisulfite. I have had that film in the past, and everything has been fine, but I just hate seeing it, and didn’t want to risk an infection. When you go all grain with your brewing, and you start from crushing grain, it’s scary to think of throwing all that beer down the drain when you’re done. For those of you that don’t know, potassium metabisulfite is what you use to kill any microorganisms that are in your alcoholic beverages. Yeast, Bacteria – gone. They sell it in tablet form – Campden tablets they’re called. Wine makers use them to kill yeast before sweetening wine – otherwise you’d have carbonated wine, or explosions.

Anyways, I went in hard tonight, and racked that red off onto some crushed up campden tablets in a keg.

you can see the film on the outside of the keg – as the liquid level goes down, it just clings to the glass – thank god – I’d hate to be slurpin up that trash when drinking my beer. Here’s a close-up!

I know right? wtf is that shit? there really wasn’t a lot, but there was just enough to make me scared. I tasted the beer, it tasted ok – with a little bit of weird taste..  it wasn’t super noticeable, but I’m hoping that cooled down and carbonated, it won’t be as prominent.

I washed and sanitized the carboy and thought – well shit, I have some wine still in a PET container that’s been fermenting since september.. why not rack that off while I go carbonate this keg?

I chose a Fredonia grape this past year for wine, because it was the economical choice. That, and I wanted to be able to say I was using a locally grown grape that was named after the college I attended! I tried it, and it was sweet and tart, and highly alcoholic – pretty excited about the way it tasted actually – Racking it will allow for it to clear and not leech up any of the nastys from dead yeast bodies… pretty excited about this one.

If you’re not familiar with Walker’s Farm, and you’re from Western NY, you gotta get out there. They have every type of wine grape juice you could ever want. It’s very affordable too – 5 gallons of wine is basically going to cost me about hmmm…. $30? That’s less than $1.25 per 750ml bottle. Yep, it makes sense to make your own shit now doesn’t it. I usually let my wine go for a year and a half or two..  racking maybe 2-3 times throughout that process. The wine might need some sugar, might need lemon or lime juice..  it’s all a matter of taste.

Anyways, the Keg is pressurized, I’ll probably pull a pint off tomorrow and report back..

Cheers y’all !