Spring brewing

You can see one of my little home brew helpers cleaning a carboy for me. My family loves to help me brew one thing or another, especially my kids. Probably because most of it is splashing in a bucket. I currently have a double batch of beer going, a Black Dog Ale and a Smooth Nut Brown Ale. Both are kits from  http://www.midwestsupplies.com. I find they have good prices and an excellent selection! I also branch out on my own, last year we made 1 gallon of Dandelion wine, delicious! This year we will be making 5 gallons of Dandelion wine, and my experimental wine will be Oak leaf wine. Supposedly young oak leaves are full of sugar and make a refreshing country wine. Of course it could taste horrid, but that's part of the fun finding out. I used this recipe for Dandelion wine from this site:  http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/dandelion.htm

I used Cote de Blanc yeast and the wine came out heady and sweet, with a mead like mouth feel. I also added ginger to my recipe and boiled all of the ingredients in a mesh bag (available at midwest) and for the sugar I used brown C & H cane sugar. 2lbs / gal. After an appropriate amount of time 3 months I think, I killed off the yeast and used a clarifier then bottle aged thew wine.
My next beer is a high gravity kit from midwest called a Power Pack Porter. It's a deliciously thick porter with a high alcohol content, it has about 9 lbs of fermentables in it. The down side is I have to wait 6 months for that one, the upside, it'll be really tasty!