Scratched and Bottled

So we scratched the mead - it was skunky, didn't taste good, and would probably take about a year to age and actually be drinkable. I may try again eventually on the 1 gallon scale, but I probably won't be soon.

The cider is bottled - there is very little taste difference between the wine and champagne yeasts, though they both taste delicious with a bit of sugar right before consumption. It was very easy to set up the siphon with the bottle wand - which is a clear stick with a pressure release at the end, so when it's pushed, it drops whatever liquid is in it to the container it's pushed against - stuck straight into the hose, and then filled up with water. Then the individual bottles can be put lower than the carboy, and even with the small opening, it's easy to start siphoning and stop the liquid to switch bottles.

And that means that all my jugs are free for hard lemonade. I'm thinking we'll do the full 5 gallon recipe, and then we can do differences per-jug. That way we can at least have a full vat - a good standard baseline/ratio of ingredients and yeast before putting them in separate 1 gallon jugs that we can then play with.

Also, I'm going to the Brew and Grow tomorrow to pick up a few grain bags so I can make Gumballhead - and I'm very excited about that, but I need to take a temp reading of my basement first because my condo is starting to get affected by the Chicago warm-up.