What the wildest thing you tried to ferment (GF with a yeast infection doesn't count)

A couple weeks ago after my first brew and cider I looked at everything- gatorade, tazo brambleberry tea, pink lemonade. I still haven't ruled out the tea but I think I might use it in a keg after killing the yeast on a run of apfelwein. That tea is GOOD!

How do you ferement tea? Does it have starch or sugar?

Bottled tea- it's about as sweet as a soft drink.
The Brammbleberry has quite a bit of fruit juice(s) in it and I didn't see any preservatives

I suppose you could measure the gravity to see what the potential sugar is.

I've thought of what fermenting orange juice would give as an end result... If that counts.

Someone (Drac0nic, I think) tried fermenting some orange juice once. it was... unpleasant.

I'm going to ferment canned cranberry sauce (I bought it, just haven't done it yet) into a cranberry wine. I've made tomato wine out of garden tomatoes, and abanana wine and lots of dandelion wine. Nothing too weird or exotic, but I bet most people around here haven't done that.

On 1-25-86, I noticed that "Natural Fruit Kraft jelly" advertised no preservatives. Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) was used as a natural preservative.
I bought a 3# jar, (of grape) added water just to dilute it, then brought it to a boil. Then let it cool.
I added 3 tablespoons of real lemon juice to bring the acidity to .4%
I made the volume to 1 gal. I used Pasture Champagne yeast.
Start SG = 1.050 End SG = 1.118 probable alcohol = 4%
My notes say that it had a good taste, with slight tartness. Not sweet, good at room temp.

My nephew, who is the vintner for his beer/winemaking club (2 elections running, so he must be good) dug up somewhere a really old collection of winemaking recipes that were xeroxed and stapled together as a cheap pamphlet at a garage sale and it is full of really odd stuff, including wine from Tomato Juice (urp)

He did an icetea wine from sweetened Ice tea...It was thin and dissapointing, he didn't use the sweetened tea with lemon though (he originally thought it would be too acidic) but in retrospect thought that it would have tasted better with the lemon...

I can't remember all the stuff in the pamphlet but there was some wild wines in it...

My nephew has made some interesting stuff from melting jolly ranchers down into flavored sugar syrup and fermenting that...taste like flavored snapps actually...The cinamon and the sour apple were the best.

Chris Colby from BYO magazine has talked about fermenting mountain dew soda on a podcast....


Here's an interesting Mountain Dew Beer recipe (not colby's) http://***********/recipe/1331.html

Here's an article in BYO called, "The 10 Wildest Recipes"

http://***********/feature/1294.html

I once melted and fermented candy cane wine, it had a real kick and was actually quite drinkable. its the perfect use for all those left over candy canes from xmas that were melting on top of the radiator.

I have not(nor would probably) tried this, but its got to be up there with weirdest fermented beverages of all time:
http://www.armywormwine.com/
It is what it sounds like folks, you won't be disappointed.

Tried to make a pumpkin pie mead. It was way too dense and the fermentation never took off. I gave up too easily.

I'm gonna have to say a vile concoction I attempted in high school that included Brisk Iced Tea, Brown Sugar, gatorade, and a pack of brewer's yeast.

I fermented it, but the smell was too much. My lips never touched the stuff. If I knew then what I know now...

The hootch my brother made in high school. But it did get me thinking. Maybe I should buy a beer kit and make some real alcohol.

He never did get into brewing (and he never did drink more than one taste of that crap), but when he was 18 he had some buddys over while the parents were out of town an I was surfing on the other side of the Island (3.5 hirs away) he decided to get into my box of recently bottled beer.

This beer was a year old and I had just bottled it about 2 weeks before while I was back on a break from college. Lil f'ker and his buddys drank 3/4 of the beer.

I came home to an open front door, a hastily cleaned up broken 40oz of beer on the new tile and emptys everywhere. It was only 2pm. Apparently they started the night before and had just left still drunk.

I was soooo pissed off. I think that was the day I confiscated his surf baord and made it mine.

landhoney said:

I have not(nor would probably) tried this, but its got to be up there with weirdest fermented beverages of all time:
http://www.armywormwine.com/
It is what it sounds like folks, you won't be disappointed.

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That’s got to be the best one by far. Its so strange and bizarre that I want to try it, just to say I have.

I was going to make hard tea but I was not going to ferment the tea, I was going to brew a couple of gallons of sun Tea and add it to my hard Lemonade at bottling time and try it.

Sometime over a year ago I fermented a 2-liter bottle of Coke that I boiled with some hops. The dark cola color completely went away and it went from an og of 1.047 (i think) to 0.98 or something like that... needless to say, it was HORRIBLE. I still have a couple of bottles of it somewhere... I should give them as gifts!

The wife likes her energy drinks....I've been thinking about fermenting out one of her Red Bulls or something just out of curiosity......

landhoney said:

I have not(nor would probably) tried this, but its got to be up there with weirdest fermented beverages of all time:
http://www.armywormwine.com/
It is what it sounds like folks, you won't be disappointed.

Click to expand...

LOL, wt.....f? Interesting, interesting. I'd try it. :fro:

Someone (Drac0nic, I think) tried fermenting some orange juice once. it was... unpleasant.

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Yup, guy right here seems to know all about fermenting orange juice. Must be nasty as hell but looks like it will sure get you hammered! Someone should probably tell him about the much better alternative, apple juice.

Not really fermented, but here is a strange 'alternative addition' to Vodka:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338900,00.html

I primed a stout with hershey's kisses once. It turned out fine.

So how much did you use and what size was the batch?

bluedragoon85 said:

Yup, this guy right here seems to know all about fermenting orange juice. Must be nasty as hell but looks like it will sure get you hammered! Someone should probably tell him about the much better alternative, apple juice.

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Orange wine is sold commercially, don't know how good it would be or the details of how its made though?
http://www.b-21.com/prodinfo.asp?number=/FLORSNVAE
Funny, towards the bottom of the page; "Grape Varietal: Orange"

If I want to get crunk with an orangy taste, I'll get a $3 bottle of orange Mad Dog.

I tried concentrated cranberry juice with bread yeast once when I was too young to buy the good stuff. Same with grape juice, but neither were even remotely drinkable. I think 120proof 'shine goes down better. :cross:

now I have a grape and orange mead going. For both I used concentrated juice cans. I can already tell the orange one is going to get tossed, 16& abv and smells horrid, now the grape one is getting lighter and lighter in color, 12%abv now and already tastes wonderful. These were both test batches just to see how fermentable concentrated juice was and how it turned out.

Well this thread kinda inspoired me.

I had a pound of Juniper berries that I harvested last fall in the freezer. I also had a pound of Blueberries in the freezer. I also had 5 pounds of clover honey.


So..........

I have 1 gallon of Blueberry Juniper Mead (Melomel) fermenting right now. And it actually smells pretty damn good. I'll let you know how it turns out. I was saving the juniper berries for a Juniper Pale Ale (i.e. Rogue) that I was going to brew, but I'll just get some more. They grow all over my mother in laws property.

zoebisch01 said:

Not really fermented, but here is a strange 'alternative addition' to Vodka:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338900,00.html

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I've seen several bottles of Sake with rattlesnake in them. Creepy.

When I was a kid I made some hooch with a gallon of apple juice, a packet of bread yeast, and a balloon for an airlock. Every so often, I'd let the CO2 out of the balloon.

It tasted like crap, but in hindsight that was to be expected after one week of warm fermentation. With a cooler ferment, and a 1-2-3 fermentation, it probably would have been palatable. Not good, but tolerable. I may have to revisit this one with a dash of homebrewer know how.

talleymonster said:

I have 1 gallon of Blueberry Juniper Mead (Melomel) fermenting right now.

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I think your making some Gin mead.

mrfocus said:

I think your making some Gin mead.

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What is Gin Mead?

zoebisch01 said:

Not really fermented, but here is a strange 'alternative addition' to Vodka:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338900,00.html

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And I thought my blackberry infused vodka didn't go down smooth!

talleymonster said:

What is Gin Mead?

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Well, Gin is basically a neutral grain alcohol (think of the better brands of vodka (cheapest stuff is made with potatoes) made with juniper berries.

So, mead with juniper berries = gin mead, or mead gin.

mrfocus said:

Well, Gin is basically a neutral grain alcohol (think of the better brands of vodka (cheapest stuff is made with potatoes) made with juniper berries.

So, mead with juniper berries = gin mead, or mead gin.

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I like that.

Holy Crap! Army Worms! I grew up in south Texas and those things would literally COVER tree trunks. That's gotta win...

Banana Beer - Made with 5 lbs of bananas. Pretty Tasty!!!



:rockin:

I was eating sunflower seeds the other day and began to wonder what a sunflower seed mash would taste like..

You would probably end up with a layer of sunflower oil on top or some kind of greasy oil emulsion.