January 28, 2011 - Bottling
Did not get a chance to check this much, so I was hoping that the booch would be good. Tonight it just started to change from sweet to sour, so I knew the time was right.
And then there were three.
The baby scoby is the one on the left. Hannah's is the pretty one on the bottom. Not sure why my scobies look so poor, I'll have to get a little more scoby advice going forward. The new one on the left is in a few shreds, not looking healthy at all. Hopefully she'll get better
On my own this time, no flavor packets from Hannah. Since the ginger really stood out on the last batch, I wanted to incorporate it as much as possible. Making 3 flavors:
Dark Red Cherries. If you can identify them, let me know. This time of year at Kroger, they are just labeled "cherries".
Lemon and Ginger has been a popular flavor in twitter-land. I'm showing rind here, but I also made a bottle with lemon slices instead. I want to see which is better.
My daughter brings these home from school all the time. Never seems to eat them, so I thought I would try them as well. In this pic I show slices, but I also grated rind to compare the two
My spigot is slow. Its a personal issue.
One glass left which I shared with Maddie over ice. Actually she only took a sip, she claimed it had a winey taste to it. Which just dawned on my how she knew what wine tasted like hmmm.
Clementine/Ginger - ounce of Clementine juice, 3 slices of clementine, 3-4 cubes of ginger
Open - February 4 - Just OK, same as the others, too light on the ginger.
Dark Cherry - 5-6 cherries pitted, chopped up
Opened - February 12 - Sour cherry. Big Fizz, very good. Nice dark read color.
Lemon/Ginger - ounce of lemon juice, rind of 1/2 lemon, 3-4 cubes of ginger
Open - February 3 - Almost no fizz, way too lemony, almost no ginger. Drinkable, but barely
Dark Cherry - 5-6 cherries pitted, chopped up
Open - February 4 - Very good, nice and red. fizzy. Very tart.
Lemon/Ginger - ounce of lemon juice, 3 lemon slices, 3-4 cubes of ginger
Open - February 12 - Better, crazy fizzy, but still too tart, and needs more giner
Clementine/Ginger - ounce of clementine juice, grated rind of 1 clementine, 3-4 cubes of ginger
Open - February 10 - Mildly fizzy, good, but needs more ginger. Mild orange flavor
Wonder what Hannah does to grow such a beautiful SCOBY. I like the flavors you used, I forgot all about ginger when I bottled my first batch yesterday. My spigot is also slow, I took it apart and it was all clogged up. Can't get it back together again, I'll let my son try when he gets home from school.
ReplyDeleteSometimes pieces of the culture get stuck in there - they love oxygen and since the spigot is a source of that, they grow right in there and block it up - you might try sticking a toothpick in there to see if you can dislodge any pieces.
ReplyDeleteHow did these flavors turn out? Which one is your favorite?
Hmm, from the looks of your SCOBYs, I'd dial back the steep time to 5-7 minutes. Your cultures will get thicker as time goes on.
I'm updating this as we speak, the dark cherry was probably the best. I used regular lemons, and not enough ginger on the others. The lemon was way tart, and I clearly needed to add more ginger. They are getting better now though :)
ReplyDelete