Final gravity from just sugar?

Beercalculus is giving me 1.011 from 5 lbs of cane sugar no matter what type of yeast I enter and that seems off to me. I'm looking to make hard iced tea and sugar will be most of the base so I'd like to know about where I would end up so I can figure out if I need more or less. A couple of options for yeast are champagne yeast, 1056, US-05 and some kind of wine yeast. I'm just not sure which one I want to go with yet. Thanks in advance.

I just bottled some hard lemonade....used champagne yeast and it finished completely dry........ I will make a suggestion...MAKE 100% sure that you start the yeast slowly over a few days adding a little more must at a time until you are certain it has taken off and can handle the acidity. I pitched yeast three different times before I finally got it to work. The last one I took slow over a couple of days adding just a touch of must at a time. It tastes good but the smell is AWFUL and I am sure it is from the dead yeast.

No software I know of calculates attenuation as a product of yeast type (or the fermentability of various sugar types for that matter).

Bobby_M said:

No software I know of calculates attenuation as a product of yeast type (or the fermentability of various sugar types for that matter).

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I see, so it's one big guessing game.

I'll just go at it and see where I end up then, probably use champagne yeast so it's nice and dry.

Based on my wine making experiences, pounds/gallon ends up as negative Brix. An example, 2.4 pounds/gallon finished at -2.2 Brix, about 0.991.

I've just finished 2 batches of hard limeade whose only ingredients were minute maid frozen limeade, sugar and water, using Lavlin Champagne Yeast 1118. It started at 1080 and went to .998 before I added sorbate to kill the yeast.
So if you use champage yeast I would expect you to get to at least 1.000 depending on how the tea sugars ferment.

Champagne yeast will ferment most fermentable sugars totally dry- to .990 or up to 18% ABV.

So, for an OG of 1.130 or lower should finish at .990-.996ish, depending on yeast health.

That's very good news, gives me a place to start. If it ferments too dry I'll just backsweeten a bit.


On another note, the tea flavor should keep this from tasting like rocket fuel right?

Neonsilver said:

That's very good news, gives me a place to start. If it ferments too dry I'll just backsweeten a bit.


On another note, the tea flavor should keep this from tasting like rocket fuel right?

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Ummm having not dealt specifically with hard tea I'm not sure. Having tasted my limeade I'll tell you that the final mixture was 10.5% abv and tasted like a mix of limeade and vodka at 10.5%.
Also I made it strong because it was flat and so you can carbonate it by mixing it with club soda or sprite which leaves a 6-8% drink.

I'm pretty sure BeerSmith uses the average attenuation of the specific strain of yeast you add to your recipe to calculate the expected FG. At any rate, the expected FG changes if you change yeasts in the program.

Neonsilver said:

That's very good news, gives me a place to start. If it ferments too dry I'll just backsweeten a bit.


On another note, the tea flavor should keep this from tasting like rocket fuel right?

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No. You might get tannic rocket fuel, if you go too high in ABV.

YooperBrew said:

No. You might get tannic rocket fuel, if you go too high in ABV.

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I'm just looking for about 5%, something cold to drink during summer. So it looks like I'll be trying to get an OG of about 1.030. Is there some other way that I can decrease the amount of fusels from this? Maybe use a different type of sugar?

Neonsilver said:

I'm just looking for about 5%, something cold to drink during summer. So it looks like I'll be trying to get an OG of about 1.030. Is there some other way that I can decrease the amount of fusels from this? Maybe use a different type of sugar?

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You shouldn't get fusels or any real "hot" flavor from a 5% ABV drink. I'm not sure what the tea will taste like once it's fermented. I add tea to wines that need more tannin, so it may be tannic tasting once it's fermented out. The other thing to keep in mind is that fermented ice tea probably will need to be sweetened to be palatable. I'd use champagne yeast, which is neutral tasting.

YooperBrew said:

You shouldn't get fusels or any real "hot" flavor from a 5% ABV drink. I'm not sure what the tea will taste like once it's fermented. I add tea to wines that need more tannin, so it may be tannic tasting once it's fermented out. The other thing to keep in mind is that fermented ice tea probably will need to be sweetened to be palatable. I'd use champagne yeast, which is neutral tasting.

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I'll probably sweeten to taste once it's all finished. I'm going to "dry hop" with a bunch of tea bags to bring back as much flavor as possible without fermentation scrubbing it off so hopefully this works out well. Champagne yeast it is though and I'll let everyone know how it turns outs.