My First Brew: a citrus peel cordial wine

Pith · 09-30-2011, 01:08 PM

Hi, all. This is where I'll be talking about the reason I signed up to this forum in the first place.

I only decided to get into brewing after having made an awful-tasting cordial from a bunch of grapefruit peels covered with water and boiled for a couple of hours then strained and mixed with an equal volume of white sugar. I thought fermenting it might make it better. Time will tell. To increase the volume, I did the same with lemons.

I boiled it all together (1. grapefruit peel cordial, 2. lemon peel cordial, 3. the small remainder of the delicious grapefruit JUICE cordial I had also made, [all three of which were about 50 percent white sugar] and 4. around a litre of water, approximately 3 litres altogether) in a saucepan to kill anything that might've been floating around in there. I then let it cool to room temp.

Apparently baker's yeast is okay in citrus wines, so I bought some Tandaco Dry Yeast (98 percent baker's yeast, emulsifiers, vegetable gum, ascorbic acid) and mixed a 7 gram sachet with nearly a cup of warm water, let all the yeast get wet without stirring too early, then added a couple of tbsp of white sugar, left it for 30 minutes or so until there was around nearly inch of foam on top, then divided it between three bottles (2 x 1.25L, 1 x 750mL). Had poured a bit of cordial into the 750mL with yeast already in it before remembering it was a smaller bottle, so poured a bit of the mixture into each of the 2 larger bottles. Divided most of the rest of the cordial into the three bottles (filled a new bottle and am storing it in the fridge) and put clingwrap around the tops and left them in the corner of the kitchen. A small amount of foam appeared a few hours after mixing, in the shape of the five wells at the bottom of the 1.25L bottle; I guess that's where the yeast had settled. The foam disappeared soon after.

It's about 7 hours since, and I've just had a bit of a listen and there's a very exciting

fizzling

sound coming from each of the bottles that I can't stop going back over there to listen to, but only a few visible bubbles around the edges. I was worried that there might not be enough yeast (only 7/3 grams each; that's nearly half a tsp), but it seems to be working. Will update at breakfast (about 9 hours from now).

I've been getting a good deal of my info from these places:
http://www.crfg.org/tidbits/makewine.html
http://www.warpbreach.com/6/6.html
...but I don't have any yeast nutrient. I used the nutrient-barren "white sugar" for yeast food. Would the contents of my citrus peel steeping contain anything the yeast can use, or will I have to go and find/make some nutrient before the poor buggers die on me?

Also, since my mixture is so sugary (probably around about 25-30 percent white sugar), do you think there will be sugar left behind after the yeast has reached its whaddya-call-it... attenuation level? Will I have to go and buy a more resilient yeast to ferment it further?

Thanks for reading.

Pith

BONUS question:
Do you think the citrus peel would have leeched those complex sugars that "wild yeast" like? Yesterday (29/9) I left 1 jar with a bit of lemon peel cordial in it and 1 jar with a combination of juiced/strained apple and honey in it, each with Chux and a rubber band over the top sitting outside, as per the information gleaned from various places in the wild yeast section. They said to use cheesecloth, but Chux keeps wildlife out just as well. Hopefully I'll catch something white in one of them, and hopefully it will be of use to me. Chances are slim due to cutting corners and having no experience or intuition. Again, time will tell.

Noe · 09-30-2011, 05:17 PM

It all depends on what alcohol level the yeast die out on. I really don't know anything about baker's yeast because I have never used it. I guess you could look up the alcohol tolerance for it.
You can get a hydrometer and it will tell you exactly how much residual sugar is left in your drink once fermentation stops and you can decide where to go from there.

Pith · 09-30-2011, 11:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noe

Thanks. I just looked it up and apparently baker's yeast has a fairly low attentuation level, so I might rack and taste it when the fizzing stops, and if it's still too sweet but has promise, I'll see what I can do about getting some more powerful yeast to add.

Day 2:

It's still fizzling exactly as it was last night, if anyone's interested. I shook each bottle a few times about 15 minutes ago, and then had a taste just now. It's really interesting. The awful sourness has mostly gone, and now it's sweet and yeasty and just a tiny bit fermented. It seems astounding that it could become so delightfully bearable over the course of about 18 hours. Obviously there's much more to happen, but I'm newly hopeful.

Pith · 10-02-2011, 11:57 PM

Day 5:

Little bubbles are still rising to the surface. There's about 1/8 of an inch of white stuff on the bottom of my bottles. Is that the stuff I should be racking to get rid of? It seems awfully early to be racking, and since they're in soda bottles, all the stuff is forming in the 5 little knob bits at the bottom so racking without losing a lot woutl be difficult. Should I transfer into flatter bottles now, or wait?

Each day I've ben inverting my solution and swirling it to disturb the bottom. What should I be doing different, if anything?

**oldmate** · 10-03-2011, 12:12 AM

You can make your own yeast nutrient by adding a small amount of water to some bakers yeast then killing them in the microwave. Otherwise just hit up a brew shop, I'm sure there would be one in the mountains somewhere! You should wait to rack until fermentation has stopped. The yeast cake at the bottom of the bottles is a valuable source of nitrogen and may cause a stuck fermentation if you rack too early. The best thing you can do is just sit back and watch it go

I would rack when it has both finished and cleared, so you're a bit of a way off yet.

Pith · 10-03-2011, 07:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oldmate

You can make your own yeast nutrient by adding a small amount of water to some bakers yeast then killing them in the microwave. Otherwise just hit up a brew shop, I'm sure there would be one in the mountains somewhere! You should wait to rack until fermentation has stopped. The yeast cake at the bottom of the bottles is a valuable source of nitrogen and may cause a stuck fermentation if you rack too early. The best thing you can do is just sit back and watch it go

I would rack when it has both finished and cleared, so you're a bit of a way off yet.

Thanks for the tips. I'll do absolutely everything you just said. It's great to see someone so close to home. We'll have to meet up so I can give you a taste when it's done. I'm sure it'll be nothing special, but fellowship is fellowship.

**oldmate** · 10-03-2011, 10:01 AM

Sounds great, don't hesitate to send me a PM if you need some help or would like to organise a trade sometime

Pith · 10-04-2011, 01:53 AM

With regards to the bonus question at the end of my initial post, here's what is happening to the honey/apple solution:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/wild-yeast-appeared-272468/#post3354199

If it ends up being usable, I might make a wild cider, mead or cyser as an unusual trading item.

**oldmate** · 10-04-2011, 08:36 AM

If you plan on using wild yeast I would try and stop the fermentation at around 1.010 gravity as wild yeast tend to give off flavours when fermented too dry. Also with using honey you will need to add nutrient as honey has little to none and will stress out the yeast also causing off flavours!

Pith · 10-04-2011, 09:20 AM

Okay. I'll add some dead yeast. I also added some mashed fruitcake, just to confuse the buggers.