Adventures in apartment beer + wine

Having newly found myself with less space to work with, making my own beer has required some creative solutions. Gone are the giant laundry sinks and endless shelves for holding carboys and bottles. A trip to my local homebrew shop shortly after moving in solved a lot of issues. I came back with a sink attachment that will pressurewash a bottle, a "bottle tree" for drying bottles, and new iodine sanitizer that doesn't need 15 minutes of soaking time to do its job.

There's lots going on in this picture. Front and center is the bottle tree - ain't she purty?

In the sink there's the pressurewash attachment (2 black nozzles) and the sanitizer sprayer (red). Background is the sanitizer solution (yellow) and my plum wine and blackberry wine

Then, sadly, the foreground shows my wild-yeast-infected IPA. That white stuff floating on the top of the beer isn't supposed to be there - probably got in during an accident while moving, where the carboy tipped over inside the truck. The good news is, after lots of research, most folks agree that this stuff won't affect the taste of the beer at all! In my case, they were right - that IPA is long since bottled and drank. The white stuff stuck to the glass while I siphoned off the beer, and it never made it to the bottles. I've since figured out that dipping a sterilized glass rod or thermometer into the beer causes all the white stuff to cling to the rod, then it can be pulled out.

J. and I also tried our hand at making wine around Christmas - a "Cheeky Monkey" 4-week pinot noir wine kit. It hasn't quite aged yet, but we've drank half of it already. *hic*
It's good :)

Goal for the summer - all-grain brewing!

Primary: BrewHouse Red Ale
Secondary: Niagara Mist tropical fruit riesling (cheerleader booze for J.)
Bottled: Brewhouse WinterFest Ale
Drinking: Coopers Stout with espresso + cocoa added just before bottling (4 shots/4 scoops)