fermentation experiment.

Not sure what the appropriate thread would be for this.
Anyway.
I made this recipe with my wife.
We took 1lb 6oz of each flavor skittles.
Total of 8lbs 2oz.
I soaked them in 2gal of water for 24 hours then boiled it out for 15 min.
I chilled and added 1 packet of high gravity yeast, let ferment for 1 week.
I then racked to secondary with 1 package of a red wine yeast..
It seems to be doing OK.
Just is staying really thick and gravity isn't changing much... So far.
Do you think it is going to workout?
Has anybody tried anything like this?
Also when it is done, I'm going to try freeze concentration with it..
I'll let you know how it works out.

Wow! Strange stuff! Good on ya for trying something weird.

Any preservatives in the skittles that would inhibit the yeast? What kind of OG did you have?

So wait, did you do a batch of each flavor, or one batch total (2 gallons to 8+ pounds of Skittles?)

Did you strain out the skittles before or after the boil?

And have fun tasting the rainbow-wine. Or, since you are freeze concentrating, the rainbow-jack, I guess.

I"m curious as to why you used two yeasts? Not sure what this will end up as using 2 different yeasts and combining all of those flavors. I probably would have tried to melt the skittles down with water instead of soaking them. Let us know how it turns out.

SittingDuck said:

So wait, did you do a batch of each flavor, or one batch total (2 gallons to 8+ pounds of Skittles?)

Did you strain out the skittles before or after the boil?

And have fun tasting the rainbow-wine. Or, since you are freeze concentrating, the rainbow-jack, I guess.

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I did one batch with all flavors combined.
After the soak a layer of gum layer itself on top.. I scooped it off and then boiled.

I hope it still has some rainbow flavor..

Trokair said:

I"m curious as to why you used two yeasts? Not sure what this will end up as using 2 different yeasts and combining all of those flavors. I probably would have tried to melt the skittles down with water instead of soaking them. Let us know how it turns out.

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I used a second yeast because the first one didn't seem to take to the solution. Not sure why.. The second one seems to be quite happy though.

I soaked them 1st to remove outer shell and gum that's in there.. Then I boiled it, which brought out the wax and dissolved the sugars into solution.
It was way to thick to get a proper hydrometer reading.. It has thinned a bit.
Part of the problem may have been that I 1st started fermentation in a mr. Beer fermenter.
It is now in a 1 gal glass carboy..
It still smells like a bag of Skittles..
And is very very sweet... I'll post updates here.

MalFet said:

Wow! Strange stuff! Good on ya for trying something weird.

Any preservatives in the skittles that would inhibit the yeast? What kind of OG did you have?

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Preservatives, no.. But a lot of unwanted stuff like wax, gum base... It all came out during boil, and I'm thinking the rest should come out during freeze concentration..
I'm just hoping it doesn't turn out too sweet..
O. G.. Was too high, ill repost my brew sheet with specifics later tonight.
With full ingredients, additions, gravity and cook/rest times..

I would bet that this is just going to equate to adding any other simple sugar to the mix - higher ABV and higher attenuation % (dryer beer). I doubt the flavor sticks.

http://thesmilingman.hubpages.com/hub/WhatsInMyFoodSkittlesIngredientsExplained

Any chance you measured the pH of the original wort? With the #4 ingredient being citric acid, there's a chance your yeast was a bit inhibited, though I would think the doubling up would help a bit.

Of course ingredients #5 & 6 are Dextrins and Starch, so not sure how much of that would have been precipitated out in boil, but that could very well be the root cause of your stickiness.

Anyway bud, good luck, eager to hear how it turned out

I currently have 1.5lbs of table sugar that I boiled and made into a 1 gallon batch or so. I added some baker's yeast and it is still currently fermenting. The OG was around 1.08 and the gravity is currently around 1.02 or so (it still has a little bit to go). This past weekend I added some jolly ranchers to the fermenter to give it some flavor (and maybe a little color).

I took a sample and it smells weird (active yeast always does IMO) but it tastes not too bad. Pretty much like alcoholic sugar water (which, I suppose, is really what it is). I intend on letting it finish fermenting and then adding some flavoring to it. I don't expect it to be any good but I thought it would be a fun experiment.

Tried to take a gravity reading this week to check fermentation.. But still unreadable. So I added yeast nutrient and some water and pitched a fresh batch of champagne yeast.
It still seems stuck though.. No activity through airlock.

Any ideas?.. I really want this to all not be a waste.

RobbyBeer said:

Tried to take a gravity reading this week to check fermentation.. But still unreadable. So I added yeast nutrient and some water and pitched a fresh batch of champagne yeast.
It still seems stuck though.. No activity through airlock.

Any ideas?.. I really want this to all not be a waste.

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What do you mean by "unreadable"?

Yeah...hydrometers are always readable...assuming you can read numbers, that is.

I mean that there is so much sugar in thus stuff that it floats above all numbers..

?

RobbyBeer said:

?

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There could be so many things wrong here it's hard to guess. You could have preservatives of some sort, you could have too much sugar, you could have too low a pH...

I didn't check the ingredients of skittles, just online info on the sugar content 43.33g/2oz. This gives the OP a sugar load of about 6.19 - or about 276 points in 2 gallons is a calculated OG of 1.138 About a 16% if FG is 1.000?

As for the hydrometer floating there is other 'crap' besides the sugar and the water, that could make for a denser liquid - although I notice that skittles are like 51g of 'carbs' but only 43.33 are sugars so the others are perhaps some form of starch or other complex carb that will add grav points without adding much sweetness or fermentables?

Anyhow looking over what he put in, was there any yeast nutrient? The PH with no nutrient would make for a hard ferment.

Yes, I added nutrient 3 times so far.
1 tbs each time I racked off yeast, to repitch new yeast.

I've never used either, but maybe beano or amalayse enzyme will help break the sugars down to something the yeast can ferment. Hopefully someone with some experience with that can either back that up or tell me to shut it

Most of the sugar (43.33 g/2oz or about 1.5oz of the 2 oz) is table sugar or corn syrup - no need for a break down. There is some corn starch and other products in it, which gets you the rest of the way to 51.xx g/2oz of carbs or about .25oz of carbs that need to be accounted for.

Quick update...
This 1 gal is still fermenting, very very slowly.. I've never seen something go so slow.
A bubble still pops out of the air lock once a day or so.
It has been about 3 months now.
Do you think the experiment is over, and I should just dump it?

RobbyBeer said:

Quick update...
This 1 gal is still fermenting, very very slowly.. I've never seen something go so slow.
A bubble still pops out of the air lock once a day or so.
It has been about 3 months now.
Do you think the experiment is over, and I should just dump it?

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What makes you think that there's still fermentation going on? One bubble per day sounds a lot more like off-gassing than actual fermentation.

If you don't need to use the fermenter for anything else and you can verify through a hydrometer reading that it is actually fermenting I would personally see it through just out of morbid curiosity.

With all simple sugar and that high of a potential alcohol, the beer yeast was probably not necessary (no maltose or maltotriose to ferment). Wine yeast is the best choice and a strain that can tolerate high alcohol, most peak at about 16%.

how much acid is in those Skittles? I would think there is at least citric and maybe phosphoric so you may have a tough pH environment, most wine yeast works fine in the pH 3-4 range. The wine yeast would also have killed off the beer yeast, almost all wine yeast has a positive competitive factor so that it kills off any wild strains present, including beer yeast.

I degased it last night and added a tsp of gypsum, and one tsp of yeast nutrient.. The airlock bubbled for about 5 hours..
Tonight I'm going to freeze concentrate it.. It's one gallon now.
I expect to get about 12oz out of it. It smells like skittles and vodka now.
It tastes really sweet and burns like a bourbon..
I don't know what this is technically, but it's going to be strong.. I'll have to age it for a while..
Do you think I should add something to kill of the yeast, and or a clarifying agent?
Or just let the freezer do it?