Homemade Grapefruit Soda.

        This is a recipes for a homemade grapefruit soda. I have been making homemade ginger ale for a while now, actually its tastes more like a ginger beer than an ale, so I'm gonna just call it ginger beer. Anyway when I was backpacking through Costa Rica and Panama I couldn't get enough of the Fresca down there, its made with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

 So I had some extra Grapefruits in the fridge and thought what the hell. The process I use in making ginger beer is the same one I used in the grapefruit recipe, I am going to do post on the ginger beer recipe soon. OK lets get to it!

This makes 2 liter, You will need.... 

1 empty plastic 2 liter bottle... OK, I know some people have an aversion to using plastic, and your more than welcome to try using glass. Just be warned that with glass you cant tell how much pressure is in the container and it could blow the top. With the plastic bottle its easy to push on the side to check for hardness. 

3-5 Grapefruits... depending on the size and amount your doing, you could use more grapefruit juice to less sugar really.

1 cup - 1 1/2 cup Cane Sugar.

1 cup water

1/2 a lemon

1/4 teaspoon Champagne yeast... If you live somewhere that is unfortunate enough not to have a home brewing shop then I'm so sorry, but you can pick up this yeast at Northern Brewer 

Ok, your gonna be amazed at how easy this is! The first thing your gonna want to do is Juice the grapefruits and the 1/2 lemon. The juice can be set aside in a container, next boil the 1 cup water and remove from heat, you don't want the sugar to burn to the bottom of the pan.

Now you can add the Sugar and mix until dissolved. So what I said earlier about the amount of sugar to juice would apply here. If you add less sugar it will be less sweet, but the juice is is somewhat sweet already, so I would recommend making the soda my way first if this is your first attempt at making soda and then tweak the recipe to better fit what your looking for.

. From here add the Juice that was set aside earlier, you can let the sugar water cool or not, I don't think it really matters. The juice is going to cool it down anyway. Once the juice is added, use a funnel to pour the the sugar/juice mixture in to the bottle. 

Next top off the bottle with water (very important, leave about and inch of head space at the top)  and give it a taste. You can add more sugar at this point if its not sweet enough. 

The head space will allow for room for carbonation. Next add the 1/4 teaspoon champagne yeast, and cap the bottle and shake to mix the yeast (not hard). 

 


  

Real quick about yeast, the reason you want to use champagne yeast verses bakers yeast or ale yeast. Is because your just using it to carbonate the soda. A beer yeast would add to much flavor and through off the taste of the soda, champagne yeast doesn't add much for flavor. As far a bakers yeast goes.... I wouldn't try it, I mean any yeast added to any sugar should make carbonation or even alcohol given enough time. Just stick with the champagne yeast! 

Alright your done! You just made homemade soda! All that's left is to let it set for a day or two. Just let it set on the counter out of direct light for 24 to 48 hours, I have had ginger beer ready in 24 hours before but I normally let it go for 48 hours. Once the bottle is hard when you try and push in on the side that's your cue its done. Put the bottle in the refrigerator until chilled, this will also stop the yeast from eating anymore sugar, stopping it from carbonating anymore.

I would also recommend opening the bottle over the kitchen sink and open very slowly!

Pour yourself a glass and enjoy. Cheers!  

As always thanks for reading and never stop creating!

Oak Celtic Mash Paddle

             Awhile back I did a post on a mash paddle I had carved out of a piece poplar, it was a completely aesthetic piece. The soft poplar wood is great for carving, but for a usable mash paddle it is to absorbent and fragile.  I loved the design of the poplar paddle so much I decided to remake it using a piece of oak. I'm not going to go in to a big explanation of the steps I took to create this paddle. I did however use a wood burner this time around for the decorative features. I hope whoever is looking at this page, likes what the see and if so please re-post any pictures on Pintrest or Facebook. Thanks!

Again Thanks for checking out the blog, and as always "never stop creating"

Keggle Mash Tun

Hey, so its been months since my last post. That doesn't mean I haven't been busy though. I'm going to try and pay more attention to the blog this year. I've been an extract home brewer for about a year and a half, and finally wanted to get my hands in to all grain brewing. All grain is just cheaper per recipe and it allows for more personal input of your beer.  A buddy of mine had a keg laying around his place, and was nice enough to part with it.

Now a mash tun can be made out of all sorts of things, coolers, pots, and kegs. The reason I went the keg rout was because I prefer metal over plastic, its easier to clean and it will last forever.

So the first step is to release the pressure inside the keg, this accomplished by pushing straight down  on the ball valve. I would recommend placing a rag over the ball to keep stale beer from spraying you in your face. After the pressure is released you can do one of two things. 1 is to use a screwdriver to pry out the retaining ring, this can be a pain in the ass. 2 is to use your angle grinder to make a cut s to split the ring in half, this makes it very easy to pop the ring out. You don't need the top anyway as your about to cut a big hole in the top.

Once the dip tube is removed, make a circle around the top with a marker. I used the lid off my 5 gallon kettle as a template, although I did make it slightly smaller so I could use the lid on the keg, I think it was 11 inch diameter. Your gonna want to use stainless steel cutting discs on your grinder, I barley used a quarter of an inch of my disc.

Just go slow, there is no rush. Once the top drops, take a file and some sandpaper to the cut edge and smooth out the edge. Be careful metal splinters suck!

Next step is to install the valve, this is just as simple as drilling a home and tightening down the valve nuts. I'm not going to go in to great detail about this step because its really simple.

Just make sure you don't make the hole to big, because if you do your in for some extra work to correct the mistake. I suggest picking up a caliper at Harbor Freight for $3, Trust me you'll use it more often than you'll think.

Go slightly smaller, and ease it to the right size.

Pre-drill a hole to make the bores work a lot easier.

If your using a valve from a brew shop, its pretty standard install. 

And last but not least, do leak check and that's it.

So you might have noticed I didn't install a filter, and there is a few inches from the drop tube and the bottom of the keg. I still have some fine tuning to do before I cook up a batch.  I opted out of a false bottom, so I will do an update when I put on the filter.

Thanks for reading and looking at the page, I hope you got something out of it.

Celtic mash paddle

This was a project I did a while back and am just now getting around to posting pictures of it. This project was a lot of fun, for one I have never dabbled in wood carving before and it gave me a reason to try my hand at making mosaic pins. So a Mash paddle is a tool used in brewing beer (is basically a big stir stick) I wanted to play around with a carving project and this gave me that opportunity. Typically a mash paddle is pretty basic, but whats the fun in being basic when you got skills right!

Because this was my first attempt at carving I used a softer wood (poplar) which I would have rather used oak or maple, but finding maple in Florida is damn near impossible. This paddle is more decoration than functional. Like I said I was looking more at the carving aspect that the practicality of the piece, but the next one I do will be oak.

I started out by laying down a pattern on a 3/4 board, then used a jigsaw to cut out the body of the paddle.

 Once the body was cut out, I drilled holes in each negative space on the knot section of the paddle. Then using a copping saw I cut out each negative space. This part takes a while so don't get frustrated.

After a rough sanding to clean up the edges and crevices, next is time to break out the chisels. Now I would not recommend using carpenters chisels but if that's all you got I'm sure you can pull it off with some fineness and patient. What I would recommend are carving chisels, you will have more versatility than you will with a straight edge chisel.

To get the affect that the wood is knotted, I dug down a 1/4 inch or so on the parts that would give it a uniformed weaved affect. It sounds more difficult than it is, the hardest part of doing a Celtic knot is making sure its consistent.

After I was satisfied with the knot work I carved a Scottish thistle in the handle, and because this is not a functional piece I used a not food grade stain. If this was a functional paddle I would have used a butcher block stain that is food grade or I would have just used mineral oil.  

  
I was really happy with the final product and would defiantly make another. As always I hope you enjoyed the post, if you have any feedback feel free to leave a comment and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

Remember, all that makes a person an expert in a craft is practice!

Thanks.