Warning: Today’s post contains science, and may not be of interest to all readers. For the rest of you, wonder nerd powers activate.
Photo from flickr user simbajak
If you look back to the post about “Batch the First“, then you’ll discover something at the bottom. I reference “SG” numbers for the wine and beer. Those are specific gravity readings. The link will take you to wikipedia, where you can read all about it in a variety of detail. However, I’m going to discuss it in relation to brewing. Your hydrometer can tell you a variety of things about your brew. As visible in the photo, a hydrometer has various numbers on it. With 1.000 set as the baseline for water at a specific temperature. This means that a hydrometer submerged in water will float with 1.000 at the water line if at the temperature the hydrometer is calibrated to. As a note, my hydrometer (and many others) are calibrated to 60F. Now using that 1.000 marker as a base, we can establish the relative density of a liquid. Adding sugar to a solution will increase the density of a liquid. Alcohol is less dense than water, so increasing the amount of alcohol in a solution will decrease the density. I’m sure some of you are relatively quick, and picking up on what is going on here.
The yeast are hungry, hungry little hippos. Yeast eats sugar, and crap alcohol. Yes, that’s right. Your lovely beer, wine, cider, etc… they are made from yeast farts. Delicious! So in order to brew, we need to have sugars for the yeast to eat. This increases the density of the water, and we can use our hydrometer to measure! The readings I listed in the previous post were taken before the yeast was pitched, and corrected for temperature. Handily, my hydrometer is marked on the back side for predicted percent alcohol, but you can find a variety of calculators out there if you have one that isn’t. Judging by the calculators, the beer is a predicted 6.57% and the wine 11.16% alcohol. That is making the assumption that we’re going to let all the sugars be eaten, which we will be in this case. However, if we were to halt the fermentation early, we could take a second reading. Let’s say we wanted a sweet wine, and stopped the fermentation at 1.020SG. Now, 1.020SG equates to 2.63% potential alcohol. Basic math (assuming you can do it) can find the answer for us, as 11.16 minus 2.63 equals 8.53, the actual percentage of alcohol. Science, plus a little knowledge, helps us know more about what is happening with our brews. Isn’t science great?
Birch IZZE
Drink of the Day
My apologies for the short post, but it is New Years Eve. I also apologize for not doing a sparkling wine. I would have, but we had no sparkling wine in the house. Instead, you get sparkling birch! Nearly the same, right? I touched on it yesterday, but I thought I’ll go in to a little more detail here, as the idea of a birch soda is just interesting. This is also a great chance to do something that isn’t alcoholic.
Like most IZZE beverages, it isn’t thick or syrupy. It is nice, light, and bubbly. I did expect it to have a much stronger aroma, but it is very faint. Really it is where I feel a little let down. Some earthy, rooty smells would have been awesome. Though better weak aroma, than an aroma bolstered by chemical means, so I won’t fault them too much. It is surprisingly sweet, and I wish they would have cut back on the sugar. The birch flavor is good, but with so much sugar it tastes like one of those root beer barrel candies from when you were a kid. Now, I really liked those candies, so this isn’t a bad thing at all. It is a good candy, after all, and I’ll happily drink a liquid form of it. This, of course, means it has earned the space is occupies in my fridge. However, it didn’t satisfy what I want; a semi-sweet, woody, or earthy taste.
To all of you, happy new year! You must raise a glass (and please, put your damn drinks in glasses!) of whatever suits you best tonight, and ring in a new year of new memories, new friends, and most importantly… new drinks!
If you like the hydrometer photo, then please visit flickr user simbajak here and leave a comment!