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**oldmate** · 12-06-2010, 07:57 AM

Got all excited to smash out a brewing sesh after work today, went up to the LHB shop and they told me tannins were out of season and they don't have any.. Is there a way around this? Can I use something else or leave it out completely?

Justibone · 12-06-2010, 11:32 AM

If you boil oak chips, that will give a tannin solution. Don't know how strong or weak it will be.

Try ordering off of the Internet. Just search in Google, you should see some results.

akthor · 12-06-2010, 02:34 PM

Tannin for me came in a little white bottle was sold near the yeast nutrient ect. Contains a yellow powder, don't see how that would be "out of season"?

klcramer · 12-06-2010, 03:28 PM

I didn't use it at all and mine turned out just fine. There is an off smell that most people don't notice. I wonder if not putting in the tannin caused it.

59f100292 · 12-09-2010, 06:38 PM

Well I started to try my first batch of skeeter pee last night, and to make a long story short, I F'd up,-- I F'd up bad. Now Ive got my own theory on where it went wrong, but I'm going to tell you exactly what I did and u tell me where I went wrong.

I was going to use the yeast left from the 1 gallon of Clementine wine I have in the primary right now. So I adopted the 5 gal recipe off SP's website, and devided all the steps by 5.

instead of 8 Cups of water, I put 1.6 cups of water in my stainless steel pot. Unfortunately, the only stainless pot i Have is a 4 gal, so it only filled up maybe a half inch or so. Instead of 16 cups of sugar, I put in 3.2 Cups of sugar. And Instead of 14 Tsps of lemon juice, I used 2.8 tsps in. I heatedd the water and juice and mixed the sugar as I went to help it dissolve fully.

While that was heating for the prescribed 30 minutes,

I added the other lemon juice, (2x32oz bottles = 64oz / 5= 12.8 oz, or just over 1.5Cups) straight in the empty primary.

Now i started to figure I had screwed up somewhere along the way, but kept going anyways. The heated sugar water was turning Brown. I was making caramel/ribbon candy in the pot.

By the time I went to add it to the Primary, i KNEW i had screwed up but at this point said F it and kept going. It was cooling and hardening faster than I could pour it in.

Topped it to 1+ gallons with water.

My end result? A 1 gal carboy with an inch of solid, brown rock hard caramel at the bottom with water and 1.5cups of lemon juice on top.

So lets hear it, did I not follow directions or miss something? make a mistake going from 5 gal recipe to 1 gal recipe? I should have known better than try to make a drink that involved cooking.

59f100292 · 12-12-2010, 03:31 PM

any help?

akthor · 12-12-2010, 08:36 PM

I think you need to start over and just follow the directions. You can divide it into 1 gallon jugs when you are all finished. But make it in a normal 6.5 gallon fermenter first.

BTW after my latest batch finished I added a can of frozen concentrate and 1 1/4 cups of sugar to 5 - 1 gallon glass jugs.

I used 5 different juices:

Lime
Orange
Apple
Cranberry
Fruit Punch

Wefilled the jugs about 1/2 way then shook the hell out of them till the sugar was dissovled then filled them the rest of the way.

We poured a small bit of each and tasted them:

Lime - By far the best tasting one

Orange - This was my 2nd fave, tasted like a screwdriver

Apple - This was my least favorite, lost all the lemon flavor and made it taste like apfelwein

Cranberry - Probably a tie between these two for 3rd best
Fruit Punch

akthor · 12-12-2010, 08:38 PM

Also this stuff is a little bit of a PITA to make (compared to apfelwein) and trust me it goes FAST, everyone loves it. You are gonna be bummed if you somehow do make a 1 gallon batch you will be bummed when its gone so quick

**jtkratzer** · 12-14-2010, 04:26 PM

How long can you save the yeast slurry from a batch of wine? My parents make wine and they just bottled a white and I figured I'd use that over a red they're doing later, but I don't have plans to make skeeter pee for at least a couple weeks.

Can I just pour the slurry into sanitized mason jars and seal them for a month or two?

Justibone · 12-14-2010, 05:20 PM

A month or two might be pushing it.

A week or two in the fridge, I've heard a lot of people do that. I've kept it overnight in the fridge (for a barleywine, not skeeter pee).