Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Montrachet
Yeast Starter: N/A
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: N/A
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 0.998
Boiling Time (Minutes): 5
Color: Dark
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 28 @ 65F
Additional Fermentation: N/A
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 @ 65F
Tasting Notes: Sweet tea with notes of lemon and citrus, alcohol at the end, not hot.

This is for a 5 gallon batch, but you can easily scale it down just by reading this post. I call it Mississippi River Water because I live near it, it's inspired by it, and it looks like it. Tastes nothing like it lol.

Ingredients:

- Water to end up at five gallons
- Generic tea bags, I use Walmart brand. 12 tea bags for every gallon of water. So for five gallons use 60 tea bags.
- Two packets of Montrachet yeast for five gallons, under three gallons one should work.
- 1.5 Cups of regular sugar per gallon, so 7.5 for five gallons.
- One whole lemon. I don't use the juice for this, in my opinion it has to be an actual lemon.
- One whole orange

Steps:

1) Boil a gallon of water in a pot. Once you get it up to boiling, add all of the tea bags and maintain the boil for five minutes. I leave the strings on the teabags and tape them all together so I can just pull them out easily later.

2) After five minutes, remove from heat and cover, leaving the tea bags in for one hour.

3) After one hour, remove the tea bags and place them in the primary bucket (or clean pot if using better bottle) for the moment. Top off to replace the water the tea bags took with them, and add half the sugar to the boiled mixture, stir to dissolve. Toss in half the lemon, and half the orange, and cover again. Thirty minutes later, add to primary.

4) While you are waiting that half an hour, use a large spoon or stir paddle to gently press the water out of the tea bags leaving it behind in the primary. This little bit is very potent and adds to the flavor. You can now throw the bags away.

5) Boil another gallon of water, dissolving the rest of the sugar only. Add to primary after a slight cooling.

6) Boil remaining gallons of water and add them to the primary after a slight cool. I do this to make sure the entire primary of mixture is nice and hot. Just take caution not to add it while it is boiling, especially those of you with better bottles because they will implode.

7) Place the unused half of the lemon and the orange into the primary while the mixture is still good and hot.

8) Cover for an hour (or until it reaches 80F). When 80F is reached, pitch both packets of yeast.

You are going to let this ferment in primary for 28 days at around 65F, and then rack to secondary for 14 days at 65F. I do the primary in a pale with the lid cracked, and secondary in a better bottle under airlock. When in the primary, for the first few days it needs agitation. Take a stirring spoon or paddle and twice a day spritz it with Star San and give the primary a vigorous stirring for around ten minutes. This introduces oxygen to help in yeast production. If you are using a better bottle or carboy you can use an air pump with a filter, or just do it the good old fashioned way and rock it around.

Do not worry about clearing it up, it's going to be dark. You can back sweeten before bottling with 11oz of lemonade concentrate to five gallons of brew, thats what I do. For smaller batches, scale the concentrate accordingly.

Campden and sorbate are optional, but read the first 1-2 pages of this thread and you will see it is suggested. As of this writing I have never used it, but I will from now on.

To carb: Along with the lemonade concentrate add 2 cups of sugar for five gallons, 1 cup for three gallons, and bottle.


Don't think I missed anything, will add a picture a little later.