I think this is the first weekend I've had open for a while where I'm not working, but unfortunately, I came down with some sort of cold.  Because of this, I don't think it would be wise to do any baking, or brewing.  However, in the past few weeks, I have been making hard cider.  Two of the gallons (Using D47 yeast)are sitting outside in a shed where it's cold, and one is in a fridge (using EC1118 yeast).  I have two more gallons in my regular fridge waiting for yeast to be added, however I'm not sure which I want to use.

I feel like trying to do this one gallon at a time has been rather annoying.  Because of the one gallon quantities, I have to bottle them up, especially if I want them carbonated.  If I left them as a still (non-carbonated) drink, I suppose I could put them into a gallon sized growler so it's still not sitting on the yeast.

I've toyed with the idea of combining all 5 gallons into a single container, but I'd prefer to keep them slightly separate for the taste difference between the yeasts.  Next year, I'm going to get 5 gallons at a time, just so it's easier.  I'll eventually bottle these into champagne bottles, which means I need approximately 20 or so bottles (50 bucks).  It'll definately be easier to keg next time.

Speaking of kegs, I picked up another keg, as well as some supplies to make a kit wine.  I've been wanting to try making a wine and thought it would be easier to use a kit, a kit being mainly juice and a few other additives.  Many people have said that kits are pretty decent and that the lower end kits will create wines that are around $8 a bottle retail, and that the higher end kits can do wines that are similar to the $20 a bottle retail.  Kits contain supplies to make about 6 gallons of wine and can range from 60-several hundred.   Ideally, I'll be using a large bucket to start this in, then move it to a plastic carboy (I'd use glass, but the weight and possiblity of breakage dissuaded me), then move it to a keg and bottles.  From the keg I expect I can bottle whenever I want to.

Also, I had actually picked up the keg since I *thought* that my earlier lager was ready to be transfered.  It turns out that it probably wasn't ready, and that the gravity was 1.020.  About midway between beginning and ending and that it had just stalled.  I did wind up transferring it to the keg and it seems that the fermentation has restarted.  I keep measuring the pressure since I had added some sugar to carbonate prior to testing and it keeps jumping up to far higher than I want. 
What I'll do is let it ferment more completely, keeping it at a pressure of around 30 psi, then transfer back to an empty keg.  I suppose that I should let it stay in the cooler environment outside, because inside, it's around 68 degrees, which is too high for the yeast.
I keep having trouble with the new keg though, and it seems to be holding pressure, but it's annoying that I had to continuously reposition the lid and pressurize it in order for the pressure to hold.  We'll see how this holds up and what I may do with the cider.

I've been extraordinarily busy lately with work and haven't been doing much around the apartment work at all.  I've been hoping to once again try the tiramisu, however have not had the time to bake. 

I somehow did manage to start up another batch of beer though.  It was composed of  just under 4 pounds of brown rice syrup (3 pounds 15 ounces, since each jar was 1 pound 5 oz)
2 pounds 12 ounces of sorghum extract (two varied sizes of 45hm syrup)
and later on 8 ounces of honey (I put this in at the end so it would decrystalize)
I used 1 ounce of Saaz Hops at 60 minutes and .5 oz at 10 minutes and some irish moss (about 1/8 tsp at 10 minutes)
I overdid the water again since I expected more evaporation during the boil, but I had it completely covered so I wound up with about 6 gallons of liquid.  I added a packet of Saflager W-34/70, the Weihenstephan strain.  There's not much details about it on the saflager site, other than that it's a classic pilsner.  Wyeast (who doesn't do gluten free) says that it's a wheat beer strain which produces a "balance of banana esters and clove phenoics" and that overpitching would lose this banana character (which I wish I did) and that a higher fermentation temperature, hidensity wort or low pitch rate would get more of that banana flavor.  I dislike the banana flavor to be honest and I believe I underpitched. 

I stuck the keg and gallon jug out into the outside shed where it's been slightly below target temperature.  The range is from 9c to 15c, or 48.2F to 59F where the target is really 12c or 53.6f.  The temperature out there normally ranges from 40 to 50 and can go up to 60 on a warm day.  The temperature has been swinging back and forth in my area too, which has not really helped.  We'll see what happens.

Alternately, I've been having more trouble with the chocolate beer from before.  I had left the keg's pressure valve open, which meant no pressure or carbonated beer and I cannot seem to get it to carbonate now.  Hope I figure it out and that I won't have to toss all 5 gallons of it.