Skeeter Pee

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its very good and easy... reuse a yeast cake from a wine batch as new yeast has a difficult time getting going in lemon juice.
fruit additions are nice. i added 3 lbs of frozen raspberries once to mine.
it is especially good carbonated with co2, on draft or even easier, just bottle in 2 liter soda bottles and use a carbonator cap to carbonate as needed.
backsweetening is necessary, i just dose with benzoate first so it wont referment.

very inexpensive to make. the giant bottles of real lemon can be had at BJs for cheap, and cane sugar. thats all you need.

be sure to cook the sugar/water mixture well enough to convert the sugars.
 
Could you use honey or corn sugar to bypass having to convert the table sugar?

May have to give this a try this weekend.
 
I have a cranberry wine going right now that should be ready for it's first racking soon. I think I will use the yeast from that. How does a cranberry lemon skeeter pee sound?
Could I just leave about half a gallon of the cranberry wine in the primary and add the skeeter pee ingredients right to it?
 
that should work nicely. cran/lemon sounds good.
just follow the recipe instructions on the site, don't add all the lemon concentrate at one time, it has benzoate in it which can stunt the yeasties and lemon is difficult to ferment to begin with, so use the process described in the recipe to make smaller timed additions.
 
This may be the cheapest 5 gallon batch I have ever made. Going to start it next week. I will keep you posted as it moves along.
 
I wonder how this will age and keep? I wanna make it but the weather is starting to change so it would probably be stuck away till next summer?
 
I figure if it turns out good then I can be ready to start more for the summer. I drink beer all year round with no complaints.
 
I figure if it turns out good then I can be ready to start more for the summer. I drink beer all year round with no complaints.

true, but some things just seem to lend themselves to a hot sweltering day of yard work..... looks like my crabapple lees is gonna have a job to do!
 
So I started my cranberry skeeter pee and it is bubbling along nicely. My question is the recipe says to add more nutrient when the gravity reaches 1.05. Any idea how long this should take? I don't want to check this daily and risk something funky getting in if I don't need to.
 
So I started my cranberry skeeter pee and it is bubbling along nicely. My question is the recipe says to add more nutrient when the gravity reaches 1.05. Any idea how long this should take? I don't want to check this daily and risk something funky getting in if I don't need to.

wine is not as picky as beer with regard to checking and is not as succeptible as beer to infection. higher alcohol content and acidity works against the bad stuff. many wines are open fermented with no airlock, just cheesecloth over the top... i personally wouldn't worry about it.

as to how long it will take, depends on alot of things... temp, yeast health, etc.. i would just check daily and add when you get to the right stage.
 
What do you guys/gals think about doing some skeeter pee with the lees from some of ed worts apfelwein?

does that recipe use a wine yeast? never made skeeter pee with a beer yeast, not sure what flavors beer yeast might impart... also be sure the yeast being used will tolerate your target ABV...
 
I don't make wine but this sounds like something the SWMBO might like. Could I use a champagne yeast? It should handle the high alcohol, right? If not what would you suggest in lieu of a wine slurry?
 
I used a cranberry wine slurry from EC-1118. Thats kinda my all around yeast choice for wine.
 
EC-1118 is an excellent choice - since lemon can be hard to ferment, other wine yeasts not so vigorous can have trouble. EC-1118 will go up to 18% ABV i believe (not that skeeter pee goes that high typically - more like 9-11% depending on your SG)

EC-1118 originates from champagne i believe - the term champagne yeast however, is like saying beer yeast - can i use beer yeast for my beer. there are lots of champagne yeasts, and beer yeasts. EC-1118 is good. Red Star Premier Cuvee is another option, a strong fermenter killer strain mostly adverse to stuck fermentations.
 
I want to make this I have a couple of questions:

I believe I can find yeast nutrient and yeast energizer at my LHBS?

But where do I find - Potassium metabisulfite (Kmeta), Potassium sorbate (sorbate), and Sparkolloid????

There is talk about adding other fruit flavors like rasberry or cranberry, what, where, and how do you do it?

Also I plan on kegging mine and carbing with CO2 anything special I need to do?

And how long does it take to make this stuff from start to finish?
 
I am definitely thinking about this one. Thinking about using some Montrachet from a batch of Apfelwein. Should be great. I can see SWMBO and her friends murdering this during the summer (they love Apefelwein).
 
I want to make this I have a couple of questions:

I believe I can find yeast nutrient and yeast energizer at my LHBS?

But where do I find - Potassium metabisulfite (Kmeta), Potassium sorbate (sorbate), and Sparkolloid????

And how long does it take to make this stuff from start to finish?

You should be able to find those other things at your LHBS also, they are very common ingredients. kmeta is an anti-oxidant, potassium sorbate is a stabilizer so you can back-sweeten without renewed fermentation, and sparkolloid is a fining agent. You don't have to use sparkolloid, my LHBS carries something called Super Clear II that is two small film canisters, one with liquid gelatin and one with liquid kielosol. You add the first and then stir, then add the second and stir, and the yeast starts to precipitate out of solution rather quickly (usually).

I'd say it takes 3 or 4 weeks from start to drunk for the skeeter pee. I made one batch so far but I scaled it up to 6 gallons...it's a bit strong on the lemon flavor but it's good on ice and great mixed with diet cranberry pop or diet sprite. Next time I'll try a 5 gallon batch as per the recipe and see how it turns out.
 
I'm looking at about 4 weeks total time for my cranberry/lemon. Should be ready for the bottle in another week or 2 at the most.
 
Good call on the apfelwein, I will probably do a 1 gallon batch of that just to get the slurry for a batch of this.
 
Bottled the cranberry skeeter pee last night and it turned out amazing. This is going to be something I have around all the time.
 
Ok for the Skeeter Pee my LHBS didn't have either yeast Energizer, or Sparkolloid.

So what can I do to replce the yeast energizer?

They did have isinglass and another kind of clarifying agent which is what I think Sparkolloid is. Is it ok to replace the Sparkolloid with either of them?
 
I didn't use any clearing agent and mine turned out just fine. I will post a pic later tonight
 
Sorry but Im not getting a recipe with that link for the skeeter pee just a cool pic! Could somebody give me the recipe please.
 
I would think you may be able to the main thing I would be concerned with is that the yeast may be strained from the conditions of the first batch and may give some off flavors.
 
You could make this like apfelwein if you wanted. Just boil the sugar in some water first, use sanitized (boiled and cooled or store bought) water, don't open the bottles until you are ready to go and dump it all in a sanitized carboy. Skip the other additions, that's all fruit wine stuff.

The alcohol mostly comes from the sugar. If you want it to be lower (this stuff is about 10%), all you have to do is reduce the sugar. I'm sure it would still be good, flavor-wise.
 
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?
 
You could make this like apfelwein if you wanted. Just boil the sugar in some water first, use sanitized (boiled and cooled or store bought) water, don't open the bottles until you are ready to go and dump it all in a sanitized carboy. Skip the other additions, that's all fruit wine stuff.

The alcohol mostly comes from the sugar. If you want it to be lower (this stuff is about 10%), all you have to do is reduce the sugar. I'm sure it would still be good, flavor-wise.

You know I was thinking that you could probably just ferment out sugar water...stabilize it and add in the lemon juice and back sweeten. Make it a LOT easier to do but would it taste as good? I have my second batch going and third gonna be started tomorrow.
 
Doubtful, Apfelwein takes apple juice and makes a dry white wine out of it. Skeeter Pee is supposed to be sweet and taste like lemon. I am sure if we did it like Apfelwein it would be more dry white winish. Also I guess citrus is supposed to be notorious for being hard to get fermenting which is why I think some of these other steps are involved.

You could make this like apfelwein if you wanted. Just boil the sugar in some water first, use sanitized (boiled and cooled or store bought) water, don't open the bottles until you are ready to go and dump it all in a sanitized carboy. Skip the other additions, that's all fruit wine stuff.

The alcohol mostly comes from the sugar. If you want it to be lower (this stuff is about 10%), all you have to do is reduce the sugar. I'm sure it would still be good, flavor-wise.
 
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