Skeeter Pee

CornyKegs 728
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mines in a carboy ready to get transferred and back sweetened then it will sit in the carboy for a week then bottled
 
The only lemon juice I could find around here contains sulphites, any advice?

I was thinking warming the must up a bit and then giving it a good whisk and then letting it sit a day before pitching the yeast slurry.
 
Wine yeast are tolerant of sulfites. It's sorbate and a couple others you have to watch out for. That being said, if you pitch onto a whole cake you should be able to overcome most preservatives, especially when you dilute them down by adding the water.

Just go with whatever the skeeter-pee guy says, is my opinion. (I haven't made it yet, need to rack off the cake first.)
 
If you read the recipe you are supposed to make the sugar water add 2 bottles of the lemon juice, water and add the tannin, yeast energizer, yeast nutrient whisk it and let it sit for 24 - 48 hrs with a towel over it for this exact reason ;)

oldmate said:
The only lemon juice I could find around here contains sulphites, any advice?

I was thinking warming the must up a bit and then giving it a good whisk and then letting it sit a day before pitching the yeast slurry.
Click to expand...
 
ok, so I just bottled my Apfelwein and I want to make this Skeeter Pee next. Can I just rack on top of my yeast cake? How long is the Yeast Cake viable?

No clue how to do this here...
 
Verio said:
ok, so I just bottled my Apfelwein and I want to make this Skeeter Pee next. Can I just rack on top of my yeast cake? How long is the Yeast Cake viable?

No clue how to do this here...
Click to expand...

You could sanitize a container and then keep your slurry in the fridge for quite a while. Probably months. I have some beer yeast that I washed and have reused it months after and it's been fine.
 
Did you follow the directions? You have to make the skeeter pee and let it sit a couple days then you just pour the yeast slurry in. Read the recipe. You don't make it like apfelwein.
 
The yeast color has a lot to do with how viable it is. The browner it gets, the less likely it is able to be used, IIRC (has to do with glycogen storage).
 
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?
 
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.
 
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"?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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 ;)
 
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?
 
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).
 
akthor said:
I think you need to start over and just follow the directions.
Click to expand...

Some help.

I did a one gallon batch because i only had a yeast slurry from one gallon of wine. And as far as I can tell I did follow the directions. Hence, asking where I went wrong. If you make the same recipe with 1/5th the ingredients you should get the same result with one fifth the quantity. (As far as I can figure) any one actually have any help?
 
Justibone said:
Seriously? Rant incoming.

:off:

RANT ERASED.

Sorry, I had a moment there.

No, you have to use a yeast cake, as far as everyone knows.
Click to expand...

Rant uncalled for but since I got it via email...I'm busy as hell. Had 2 min to check my email and got a notice of new post on this thread. I spend a ton of time on this forum and ALWAYS search for my own answers. Just had a quick question and didn't have time to look.

Last sentence removed :mug:
 
Well........... you did that right? You divided the recipe by 5 and.......... hence my saying you probaly are better off making it by the recipe.

I am sure the problem lies in the making of the sugar water. You have to heat a lot of sugar with not a lot of water. Kind of like candy making. Probably in little batches it's too hard to maintain the temp to avoid scorching.

I am not sure but probably the slurry from a gallon batch would get 5 gallons going since basically its like a starter. You don't need to use the whole yeast cake to get a btach of beer going.

Someone else pointed out somewhere in here how you could make a starter for this if you didn't have a yeast slurry available.

There's been lots of talk about how to change the recipe but all I know is it works as is. If I had more time and funds I would mess around and try to make a batch like we do Apfelwein and compare the results. I don't have the time or money right now. Especially since my last 8 bottles of skeeter pee got gulped down by guests Sat night during the UFC PPV.

59f100292 said:
Some help.

I did a one gallon batch because i only had a yeast slurry from one gallon of wine. And as far as I can tell I did follow the directions. Hence, asking where I went wrong. If you make the same recipe with 1/5th the ingredients you should get the same result with one fifth the quantity. (As far as I can figure) any one actually have any help?
Click to expand...
 
Hey man thanks for the help. I shoulda retried a five gallon batch with the slurry, but I racked it saterday and tossed it. Only active slurry i have now is pumpkin and I don't think that'd make good SP. next time I make a fruit wine ill start over.
 
I am not to sure on how much flavor the skeeter pee takes on from the slurry. I have made two batches from apfelwein slurry. I could detect no hint of apple flavor just pure lemon, and alcohol ;)
 
I have made a 5 gallon batch of SP and added everything in at once.

I used 2 sachet of Red star Montrachet pitched with all of the reccomended doses of Yeast Nutrient and engerzier and aerated the holy hell out of the batch.

Had "krausen" (ring of bubbles) in 8 hours, I re-aerated within 24 hours and pitched a second dose of YN &E, and maintained fermentation for nearly 2 weeks continuous.

Fermentation temp was 75*F.

Heavent tasted it yet.
 
How's it smell? I was a little lax in checking the OG and adding the 3rd bottle of lemon juice and YN ect. I added that a little late I think and I had a slight sulfur smell in the finished product. It didn't really bother anyone but me. But my 2nd batch I was followed the directions to the letter and the sulfur smell was pretty much non exsistent.
 
oldmate said:
This sucks, I really doubt I'm going to be able to find lemon juice here in Aus.. Does anyone have any idea on how many lemons it would take for this?
Click to expand...

The bottle of ReaLemon says "3 Tablespoons of ReaLemon = the juice of 1 medium lemon"

Serving size 1tsp
Servings about 182 (weird cause there are 192 teaspoons in 32 FL OZ)

Each bottle has 21 1/3 lemons based on math ("the juice of 21 lemons" based on the label).

You need 3 bottles for this recipe which means you need 63-64 fresh lemons.

I am making this with ReaLemon for the first batch, and then when we can get some good fresh lemons I will try with the real stuff to see which is better. I'd prefer to not ingest all of those preservatives if it is not necessary.
 
Someone asked earlier - How well does this age?

I was going to make some right after the new year for the summer but wanted to make sure it would be nice by then.
 
I don't think aging does anything, maybe if it's not completely clear it will clear more but once you add the sorbate to kill the yeast at the end I think it is what it is taste wise. The recipe says it needs no aging and is ready to drink when done.
 
akthor said:
I don't think aging does anything, maybe if it's not completely clear it will clear more but once you add the sorbate to kill the yeast at the end I think it is what it is taste wise. The recipe says it needs no aging and is ready to drink when done.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I should rephrase.

Does aging affect Skeeter Pee negatively?

I would like to get a couple of 5 gallon batches going now - but it wont be prime drinking season around here till mid-June. I don't want to get ahead of myself if aging affects them negatively.
 

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