Brewing week :D

This week was brewing week in the Audet home. After handing in my stats assignment on Saturday (yeah lots of numbers :)), it was time for some more fun activities. So Sunday we decided to give my lovely strawberry-pear cider kit a go. We first tried this yummy drink when we stayed with our friends Angie and Clint over Christmas and I just looooved it. So we thought it was time to brew it ourselves to make sure we know exactly how to make it before our families are coming for a visit at the end of the year, because we know they will love it too (especially Mareike who is a cider fanatic). So we went out to buy a second bucket and started mixing all the ingredients. To make sure that the temperature would stay between 18 and 24°C we covered it with two blankets (Angie suggested we should use the blankets for ourselves instead, but hey who needs to be warm if they can have cider)  and stored it in the living room. Don't worry, it's in the corner and not very visible. Next Sunday the cider will be ready to for bottling and then we just have to wait another two more weeks before we can start drinking it :) Fingers crossed it turns out ok!

The kit I used - easy and yummy.  Give it a try if you can.

Sorry, a little dark, but you can see the cider in the back and the beer in the front

And because making cider was so much fun and Matt's first batch of beer is running out, we also made a new batch of beer today. But not any beer ... nooooo just the best for Matty: Good old German wheat beer. He even bought the proper German Weihenstephan liquid yeast for the extra nice banana flavor. So as you can imagine, making the beer wasn't quite as easy as making the cider. First we had to sterilize all equipment including the yeast bag and the two cans of liquid beer stuff (I don't actually know what was in them, but they smelled good and where nice and sticky haha). Then, because the yeast was stored in the fridge, Matt had to run around with the bag of yeast under his sweater for three hours to heat it up. I thought he had hurt himself when he opened the door holding his side when I came home from uni, but no he was just cuddling with his yeast :) Anyway, we got it all mixed together and now it is sitting next to my cider, happily bubbling along. Apparently wheat beer goes crazy when its fermenting, so we might wake up in the middle of the night thinking we have a tooting elephant in the living room. We'll see...

That's what we hope the beer will look like. Hmmm and those yummy brezels and obatzda (camembert mixed with cream cheese, onions, pepper, salt and paprika powder)