Watching the bubblies

[columbiacritter]

Not a question just a comment. It's fun to stick a flashlight against the side of the fermenters and watch the fantastic number of bubblies in the must. Don't do it often or for long, but it is fun. I showed a friends young son and he was fascianted by the idea of living things breathing out the bubbles in the "Honey Juice". Now he wants his dad to make some so he can help and watch. Taking a bottle of Mead to Show and Tell for 1st grade should be interesting.

 

[SCviking]

I know what you mean lol. I'm brewing my first batch and keep catching myself going and checking the bubbles

 

[Chevette Girl]

Every now and then you get a batch with chunkies and you end up with this awesome lava lamp effect

 

[youngmeadman]

Taking a bottle of Mead to Show and Tell for 1st grade should be interesting.

I can't stop picturing this...My fiancé is a grade one teacher, wonder what she would do in this situation?

I do know a highschool teacher who made ginger beer with his science class using the fermentation to carbonate it and just downplayed the alcohol content immensely. It would not have been much I think it was only two days of fermentation or so, but teacher making alcohol with minors in school....not very professional.

Young

 

[wayneb]

Interesting, how times have changed. My very first fermentation experiment was in 4th grade (back in the early 1960's), where I mixed up a gallon of water, honey and molasses and then inoculated the result with bread yeast. Fascinating little science project, where we got to pull samples of the must for a view under the microscope - we could see actual budding yeast cells!

Although the experiment was my idea (I got the idea from a book of easy science experiments that I'd borrowed from the library; it had been published back in the 1920's), the nuns in my Catholic School not only approved it, but they encouraged me.

Interestingly, that gallon jug of must disappeared shortly after the yeast stopped fermenting... I wonder whatever happened to it?? ;D

 

[youngmeadman]

Wayneb, so you have been brewing for a long time!

I love reading the recipes for wines/meads from 1920 cook books. It's always interesting to see how they dealt with things like sanitation and weird things that they thought of. I remember one that specified not using a metal spoon to stir the must, but a wooden spoon instead.

About that disappearing jug.... How else do you think the nuns put up with a life of service and little fun

 

[columbiacritter]

I first learned about fermenting as a little kid when grandpa used the berries from his berry farm to make wine when the prices at the cannery were to low to bother selling them. I know he never "sterilized" anything, but he did bleach wash everything before he started a new batch. The carboys were all lined up in the laundry room in the garage and usually had a cat or two sleeping around them. I have no idea where he got his yeast, but I know it wasn't bread yeast. The airlocks were glass and god help any kid who broke one! We occasionally had a batch go bad, usually early in fermentation, but we had more than a few bottle bombs go off after bottling. It would have been nice to have a hygrometer back then. We also made hard cider from apples that we distilled to apple "brandy" that could knock your socks off. No idea what the alcohol level was, but when we did the old lighting a teaspoon to see how it burned it was like lighter fluid. We always had plenty of customers for whatever we made and the farm needed the supplementary income.