I’m traveling sporadically this month, and so I haven’t scheduled a brew night or brewed anything myself, since I can’t count on being there when fermentation is complete.

The 3 Hearts Ale and the Tripel continue to mature, and I’m enjoying both of them. I have one of my ginger beers in the fridge to try next week and see how it’s matured over the past months, but I’m saving the bulk for Christmas time.

Both items in my secondaries are clearing nicely, and I’m really looking forward to trying them later this year. It’s hard to be patient with something that takes this long!

I just got this from the AHA forum, and was happy to learn this–I have bottles that I’ll re-use later, but haven’t put them in circulation because of the paint, especially when I’m trying to work my way to my own labels by only using unlabeled bottles.

I wasn’t sure where I could save it that I’d find it later, so I post it here for my later use and your instruction:

I remove ink from bottles, such as Corona, with acid blend. Acid blend is a blend of citric, malic, and tartaric acid and is available for mead and winemaking. A 2 oz jar is usually less than two dollars. I put about 3″ of water in a bucket with about two teaspoons of acid blend. I fill the bottles with tap water and set them in the solution. I don’t submerge the bottles because I don’t want the dissolved ink getting inside them. I heard that Star San works also, but I have not tried it. Some bottles, such as Rogue and Red Stripe, are not affected by the acid blend.

Finally bottled the wheat ale tonight. FG 1.010. Not going to be very high in alcohol content, but hopefully will have plenty of flavor. I got 37 12oz bottles and 2 22oz bottles (the latter of which I cellared).

There won’t be a brew night in May due to heavy travel schedule (I won’t be around to rack and bottle if we make something), unless something spontaneous happens on Memorial Day.

As you may have noticed above, I’ve started a beer cellar. You can check (at least as often as I update it) what’s in it here.

Tonight I checked the Wheat Ale. It’s fermented a bit further, down to 1.012. I’m going to let it sit another day and see if it drops a little more before I bottle. It could mean letting it sit until I get back into town, but it’ll live.

The more exciting news is that the mead is currently being racked into its new home for the next few months, my new “Better Bottle” plastic secondary. I had wanted another glass secondary (and will get one at some point) but misordered and so the mead will clarify in this. We pulled a glass from the siphon and it is really good. And after clarifying in the secondary and aging in the bottles this ought to be very fine indeed by the time we start pulling corks and drinking.  So just shy of 5 gallons of mead is coming our way in 4-5 months.

No beer night this month–I have a lot of travelling so I won’t be around to check it. *Maybe* the week after memorial day I’ll get a batch in.

SG on the Wheat Ale:  1.020 (or thereabouts).  I added some more yeast because I don’t think it’s done fermenting yet, and aerated it.

SG on the Mead, 1.030.  I’ll rack it into a secondary as soon as I can, maybe tomorrow night, but tonight I am going to go to bed.  Makes sense to do it when I bottle the Wheat, but it may not wait that long.