Monthly Archives: May 2010

Three Country Wines

By Mark | Published: May 31, 2010

Most of the wines I’ve done so far were made with grocery store ingredients. I’ve wanted to make wine using local flora — not easy in the middle of a big city — but certainly possible nonetheless. When I was gathering ingredients for my Ontario Spruce Pale Ale I also picked some Northern White Pine branches, [...]

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Apple Mead

By Mark | Published: May 31, 2010

I swear at some point soon I’ll get back to blogging about code and computer programming! At the moment however I’m still finalizing some contracts, so I’ve been killing time by running more crazy homebrew experiments in my kitchen. Fiesta Farms has a sale on gallon jugs of 100% pure apple cider, with zero additives or [...]

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Black Cherry Wine

By Mark | Published: May 24, 2010

My local supermarket, Fiesta Farms, specializes in organic and natural food and they often have good deals on high grade fruit juice. One day I stumbled on an amazing sale for pure black cherry juice ($2.99/L!) and I couldn’t pass it up… I’ve never made wine from cherry juice before so I wasn’t sure how to [...]

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Ontario Spruce Pale Ale

By Mark | Published: May 24, 2010

It’s been a long time since my last entry, I’ve been busy brewing and haven’t had much time for writing! With spring in full bloom here in Ontario I decided to make use of some local flora for my first beer of the season. This is Simon’s recipe and I am unabashedly stealing it… but I [...]

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Viking Mead with Mandy

By Mark | Published: May 10, 2010

Many years ago I tried brewing a traditional honey mead. I made all kinds of calculation errors and used ghetto honey — the end result was watered down, tasteless and thoroughly unsatisfying. Recently a shop around the corner had a good deal on bulk honey so I decided to have another go at it. I got [...]