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How did this happen? I just found out today that Anheuser-Busch has stopped production of Tilt. What a tragedy! This fine American product didn’t flop because people don’t like their product, oh no, they went under because a wave of babies used their lawyers to threaten them to stop production.

Armed with only weak statistics funded by partisan organizations (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse, Alcoholism and the Marin Institute), these no-life-crybabies were able to get Busch fold on its product. Now jointogether.org is turning its baby head towards Miller Brewing Company.  They are trying to use a grass roots campaign to force Miller Brewing Company to stop making Sparks.

Where should I even start with this one?  How about the fact that even the partisan reports are completely inconclusive, if not downright laughable. The two studies touted here seem to be the best arguments that money can buy, and even they are weak.  Lets look at the one by Wake Forest University.  They show a correlation between drinking caffeinated beverages and increased injuries. That’s right - a correlation, not causation. This while their summary admits “Greek society member[s]… [are] significantly more likely to consume alcohol mixed with energy drinks.”  Why not draw a the correlation between “Greek society” and alcohol abuse then? Why not show a correlation between inexperienced young drinkers and injuries? Why must your report imply that caffeine + alcohol = bad?  Oh yeah - because you were bought and paid for by a partisan organization.  Way to whore yourself out Wake Forest.

Next is this partisan piece of crap excuse for a scientific study that admits on page two that it can’t even be shown that caffeinated alcoholic drinks are necessarily bad for you.  The best they can come up with is “health researchers agree that caffeine consumption can have adverse health consequences, particularly at high doses”.  That’s it?  High doses of caffeine are bad for me?  Why are we focusing on Miller and Busch then?  Why not steer your angry mob towards Starbucks or Folgers?  If caffeine is bad then those bastards must be the devil incarnate!

Listen up you baby anti-alcohol organizations. If you want to get people to stop drinking alcopop, then convince us that it is bad for us.  You aren’t going to get caffiene off the market, and you aren’t going to get alcohol off the market.  People are going to continue to mix their own caffinated beverages with or without the relatively weaker caffeinated beers. The problem with drinking in the US isn’t that there is alcohol mixed with caffeine in some drinks.  The problem is that we don’t train people to consume alcohol in normal social settings.  Kids don’t get experienced with drinking until they are away from the safety and comfort of their homes. So yes, when exposed to a taboo altered state for the first time away from role models, kids do tend to hurt themselves.  Kids are going to get exposed eventually.  Instead of putting on blinders and blaming a particular drink, why not realize that other countries have different practices and better results than we do.  Why not get your baby heads out of the sand and start pushing an agenda that is show to be effective?  Don’t you have anything better to do with your boring lives then try to control the lives of others?  Jeez, have a Sparks - it may help.

Today we started working on Charles Papazian’s “Holiday Brew” (from the “The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing”). Making the beer was only slightly more difficult than making the wine - essentially just make a sweet tea from hops and what not (also has cinnamon and ginger). Then filter the junk out into a 5 gallon bucket.

I still don’t have a good sense for what each ingredient does and how it would taste different if I changed things, but I think that will come with time. Probably more important is that I just get the hang of the process.

PA is at 6.5%

26 Nov 2007 Update: Checked PA: .5%. Still bubbling slowly.

27 Nov 2007 Update: Racked into a 5 gallon carboy.

12 Dec 2007 Update: Bottled. Tastes pretty good when warm & flat… pretty excited to see the carbonated & chilled version.

I haven’t picked a name for our first batch of wine yet.  Given the more-than-moderate mess ups that went down it wouldn’t be a surprise if this one is a blunder.

OK - I made the recipe labeled “Sal’s Blueberry Wine” in Terry Garey’s “The Joy of Home Winemaking” (page 90).   We got frozen blueberries and went for three times what the recipe called for (so three gallons).

Everything went fine.  Boiled the sugar and water.  Mashed the berries in a nylon bag (in the primary fermenter - a 5 gal bucket).  Put the hot sugar water with the berry bag.  Then added remaining water.  Acid, tanin, yeast nutrient, and Campden (when the temp dropped)… and so on.

This all went according to plan except… after I added the Campden tablet I checked the PA which was around 11%.  My yeast is supposedly lively until 14% alcohol so I decided to kick things up a notch.  I made some more simple syrup and added it the the mix.  Still only around 11%.  So I decided to put in the rest of my sugar (total of ten pounds when the recipe called for 7.5).  At this point I checked the PA, but accidentally read the balling scale - which was around 24 Brix or 13.5% PA.  Having misread the scale, I decided I had to dilute the mixture… only after adding water did I realize that I had misread the hydrometer and that it was actually perfect before I screwed up.

Long story summarized: after adding all that sugar/water I have 5 gallons worth of wine fermenting but I only put in 3 gallons worth of blueberries (and chemicals).  We’ll see how this turn out… but I won’t be surprised if it is a blueberry blunder.

26 Nov 2007 Update: Took out the berries.  PA is to zero.  The fermentation never got violent… it is still just lightly bubbling.  I may have caused this by stirring the yeast in instead of just sprinkling it on the top.

28 Nov 2007 Update:  Racked the wine into a 3 gallon carboy and two one gallon jugs.  Had to add almost a quart of water to top off the last jug.

The Gainesville gang is getting together for New Years.  In our preparatory blog all the guys were asking all the other guys to make some sort of beer.  They all assumed that I didn’t have the capability to make wine too… their assumption was correct - until today!!  For my birthday Jenn got me the necessary goods to get to brewing.

I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, so I think I am going to start with a batch of wine this weekend and hope it can be palletable by New Years.