Limeade (margarita wine)

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Good morning! I am wondering, the skeeter pee site says to add sugar and stir til dissolved. Is it okay to add the sugar by turning it into a simple syrup instead? Or is there a reason that it be granulated? Thanks :)
 
I've done it both ways. With the syrup you can pour it into the new carboy and transfer. No stirring. Either way works though.
 
Hey Apple Jack. :) my wine cleared and I sweetened it. It is absolutely the best stuff ever! My first home brew ready to drink! Anyway, it does taste like margarita mix. I am ready to make more because this wont last. In changing the recipe, have you tried mixing orange in this? By chance? To replicate the orange liquer in a margarita?
 
This was made and ready for consumption in a four day period? Asking as it sounds like something fun for Thanksgiving.
 
This was made and ready for consumption in a four day period? Asking as it sounds like something fun for Thanksgiving.

Mine took 10 days. In total. Only because I had to let the key lime flavor mellow a little. Right now it is perfect to my tongue. I like sour though.
 
I started mine over 5 weeks ago, but I have yet to bottle it. If I'm not travelling this weekend, ill get around to doing it then.

Bottling, for the first time there are two bottles of wine finished on the shelf. Now, what to do with them. You say you have "yet to bottle it". Is bottling a must? The blackberry wine was made in big one gallon glass bottles. Does that qualify as "bottling it" as bottling it is synonymous with being done, in my head? An off point question for you, when bottled, do the bottles go in the fridge or the pantry?
 
castti said:
Bottling, for the first time there are two bottles of wine finished on the shelf. Now, what to do with them. You say you have "yet to bottle it". Is bottling a must? The blackberry wine was made in big one gallon glass bottles. Does that qualify as "bottling it" as bottling it is synonymous with being done, in my head? An off point question for you, when bottled, do the bottles go in the fridge or the pantry?

Seeing how you are using a 1 gallon bottle, I wouldnt bother bottling, but if you start drinking on it, then I would store it in the fridge. When I bottled my skeeter pee, they went straight to the pantry. I prefer them cold however, so I out one in the fridge, then replace it with a warm one when I drink the cold one. When I make 1 gallon batches if cider, I never bottle them...except the last one so I can experiment with carbing and pasteurization.
Technically, wine is "done" before you bottle. Unless you plan on aging in the bottle, I suppose.
 
Started the recipe today. It smells so good. Looking forward to adding the starter tomorrow.
 
I have been watching the starter for about 10 hours now. Truly amazing the show that mason jar has supplied. This would be an interesting science project. Took a video and put it on Facebook. Amazing! So impatiently waiting for 5 pm so I can see what it does in the pail. ????? Is the specific gravity to be done before or after putting the starter in the pail???????
 
castti said:
I have been watching the starter for about 10 hours now. Truly amazing the show that mason jar has supplied. This would be an interesting science project. Took a video and put it on Facebook. Amazing! So impatiently waiting for 5 pm so I can see what it does in the pail. ????? Is the specific gravity to be done before or after putting the starter in the pail???????

Beforehand
 
This is the best stuff I've ever made bar none!!!

The downside is that it's so strong, I can't drink all that much or I get headaches. So, what I do is mix about two fingers with my homebrew beer and oh man!!! There be good times to be had with this combo!!!

I've already started collecting the lime juice in preparation for my next batch!!!!

Thanks AppleJacker!!!!!! :mug::mug::mug::mug::mug:
 
FTG-05 said:
This is the best stuff I've ever made bar none!!!

The downside is that it's so strong, I can't drink all that much or I get headaches. So, what I do is mix about two fingers with my homebrew beer and oh man!!! There be good times to be had with this combo!!!

I've already started collecting the lime juice in preparation for my next batch!!!!

Thanks AppleJacker!!!!!! :mug::mug::mug::mug::mug:

Haha, I'm the one that made this recipe (derived from skeeter pee of course) and I seem to be the only one that hasn't bottled it yet!
 
Well I managed to find some time to check on my margarita wine and on my cyser. Cyser is tasting good but still needs to age some more (it's only 3 months old) and my wine is still stuck at 1.012. I whipped it for a minute if 2 to see if that gets things going again. It is still pretty tart but I like it. I can see me getting heartburn if I drink too much of it though.
 
So you gotta love Canada... Not a single bottle of Key Lime Juice to be found :"(

Would it make a difference if I used regular old lime juice for this recipe??? Any suggestions?

I'd rather not wait until the inlaws come back from florida in april to start this one...
 
Reminds me of the hard limeade I made a little while ago. That batch did come out a little tart. The key lime juice should help mellow that a bit. I'll probably try something like this next time I do a lime batch. Sounds delicious.
 
It wouldnt hurt to try. I'm not sure if regular lime juice is more tart than key lime juice... Maybe use less lime and add lemon instead?

It is, at least the two versions I bought and tried last week. One bottle was the Key Lime juice you recommended (forget the name), the other was a Kroger brand lime juice.

To my taste, the regular lime was more tart than the Key Lime, my wife agreed. Not bad, just more tart.
 
Ok, using a modified AJ's recipe (see below), I pitched about 6 gallons of this limeade last night.

I measured the OG at 1.078 even though I used 7 lbs or brown sugar (my wife buys it 7 lb bags, so that's what I use) and 3 lbs of white sugar, plus ended with a little more water than I should have (6 gallons vs. 5 gallons). The Skeeter Pee recommendation is that the OG should be around 1.070.

Will this screw this batch up?

Thanks,
 
FTG-05 said:
Ok, using a modified AJ's recipe (see below), I pitched about 6 gallons of this limeade last night.

I measured the OG at 1.078 even though I used 7 lbs or brown sugar (my wife buys it 7 lb bags, so that's what I use) and 3 lbs of white sugar, plus ended with a little more water than I should have (6 gallons vs. 5 gallons). The Skeeter Pee recommendation is that the OG should be around 1.070.

Will this screw this batch up?

Thanks,

I doubt that it would.
 
Ok, never mind, I just reread your first post in this thread AJ and saw the OG = 1.080 for your recipe. My bad for looking at the SP recipe instead.

1.078 looks about right for just under 6 gallons vs 5 gallons I would think. It should have plenty of alcohol.

I'm going to go back to not worrying about it! :ban:
 
So last week (Monday, 12/3) I started another batch of SP/Limeade/Blackberry Pee. My recipe was AJ's replacing one pint of lime juice and three lbs of white sugar for 4 cans of blackberry pie filling. MY original OG was around 1.075 or 1.076 or so, since I wasn't sure about how much sugar was in the pie filling.

I added about a lb or so of white sugar boiled in water and got the OG to 1.078.

I let it sit overnight, then pitched my yeast the next day. Since I thought I had killed my original two packs of EC-118 yeast by using too high a temperature of water to rehydrate them, I added two more packs once the water cooled down some. The second pitch worked and they appeared to work very well, so I pitched them and let it go.

I tested this batch last night and the gravity now is less than 1.000 after only one week!

First, is this possible?

Second, is this batch ruined for having fermented so fast? We taste-tested the batch and it was more tart than the SP/AJ recipe I made the week before, which makes sense since the SP/AJ version measured right around 1.020 last night (ie. more sugar, less alcohol).

Comments, suggestions, and/or insults?

Thanks,
 
It is possible, I had a batch of cider do that with a champagne yeast. It fermented a little warm, 78ish most of the time. It hit fg after 5 days. Applejuice is nutrient rich, and I had yeast energizer and nutrient in the batch too. I would suspect the pie filling gave you a huge nutrient influx, hence the faster yeast development. A warmish temp would have helped things along too.

The problem I had with the cider batch was it tasted very "hot" lots of apparent alcohol. It needed a little more time to condition then cider usually does, but other then that it was fine.

EDIT: I misremembered, it was distillers yeast. Here are some of my notes from that batch. It was a little while before I was able to take a gravity reading after the cider appeared to be done. The apparent alcohol didn't alter during that period, though it is possible there was a bit more fermentation taking place.

My Notes said:
08-26-12 1:00 am: Starter created. OG=1.110. Pitch, 1 tbs yeast nutrient. 10 grams distillers yeast. Base is same applejuice as for batch, great value unsweetened 100% juice. Added sugar until gravity reached. Overshot a little. Desired OG=1.100. Volume is just under 2 quarts. Split into 2 bottles to keep it from foaming over. Will be intermittently shaking.

08-26-12 11:40 pm: Batch mixed OG=1.098. Pitched full batch with starter. Boiled 1 tbs cinamon and 1 tsp cloves in tea bag for 10 minutes in some juice. Tea bag sprung a leak. About 1/2 of the spices ended up in the juice. Added to cider anyway. 11 1/2 quarts applejuice brand mentioned above. 4 lbs sugar. With starter comes out about 14 quarts or 3 1/2 gallons total volume. About a total of 1 quart of liquid was removed from the starter and the main juice. So total juice volume used is 13 quarts. The sugar made up the additional volume. 3 1/2 tsp's yeast nutrient as directed on package.

08-27-12 2:00 pm: The wort is going crazy. Airlock is bubbling 7-8 times a second. This should be interesting.

08-31-12 10:30 pm: The cider appears to be done. My hydrometer is broken so I'm not certain it is. It is very dry. No detectable sugar at all. It's actually to dry. It no longer tastes anything like apples. Just the underlying bitterness that you always get in apples, yeast, and alcohol. I can not detect the spices at all. Possibly they are being masked by the yeast flavor as the solution hasn't settle out yet.

09-02-12 2:00 am: Moved to secondary and degassed until shaking no longer increased bottle pressure. removed 2 quarts to smaller bottle in freezer about 4 hours ago. Poured off the accidental apple jack from this bottle. still tastes a lot like yeast. Can't tell alcohol content, to drunk right now.

09-04-12 9:40 pm: Got refractometer. Refrigerated cider shows 9 brix. Cider in secondary is 9 brix. Fermenation is definately done.

09-07-12 10:00 pm: Got new hydrometer today. FG is 0.98 ABV is therefore 16%. Mixture has more or less cleared in secondary. Added pectin enzyme at ratio from package.
The second gravity reading is not an error or missing a digit, I checked it 3 times.
 
using that yeast it is very possible for fermentation to go fast, especially if it fermented at a high temperature. Mine actually bottomed out at 1.012 so I stirred it up again and I've been letting it sit for the last month to see if that got it unstuck. I need to get back into brewing again; the last few months I've been very busy and a lot of my things I've been sitting around not being checked.
 
Ok, good, so it's not out of bounds for it to happen this fast.

I measured again last night, and it was right about .996 so I added the Kmeta, Sparkaloid etc. so it will be ready for the first rack this Friday or so.

The 2nd batch of SP/Limeade was right around 1.020 so I'm going to leave that a couple more days even though it started a week earlier. It's still sitting there burping away as we "speak".

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it!.
 
Update here: still haven't bottled it yet; my laziness has made me let this one bulk age for the past few months. The tartness seems to have mellowed from the last taste test, although if I don't sweeten anymore and leave it as-is, it might make for a better homemade margarita mix than a standalone beverage if you don't like tart drinks. I'll test making a margarita with it in a few minutes and post some taste test results.
 
I'm going to make this with agave nectar and have a true margarita wine!
hmm. That might be interesting. Most of the posts I've seen from people who have fermented agave nectar indicate it's actually horrible after it's been fermented. In case you are thinking that's what tequila is made from, it actually isn't.
 
Tequila is made from blue agave stalks not white agave nectar but I've talked to some who have fermented it and had good results. It's worth a shot anyway cuz I got some given to me
 
Tequila is made from blue agave stalks not white agave nectar but I've talked to some who have fermented it and had good results. It's worth a shot anyway cuz I got some given to me

My motto is if it's cheap and has sugar in it...make wine.
 
Inner10 said:
My motto is if it's cheap and has sugar in it...make wine.

I used 5 lbs of in along with 5lbs of honey in a grape mead and so far it is great but only a few days in so we will see
 
Tequila is made from blue agave stalks not white agave nectar but I've talked to some who have fermented it and had good results. It's worth a shot anyway cuz I got some given to me
I will be interested to know how it comes out.
 
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