Costco Honey Citron ginger tea

[Patrick Markovics]

So I bought the tea in question and tried it. Due to it having the texture of orange juice with pulp in it, which I hate, and instead of throwing the whole thing out, I put it into a little big mouth bubbler as an experiment. I did end up adding 1/2 cup of honey to bring up the hydrometer reading to 1.090, but looking back at it now I think this was a mistake as I did not think about the sugar in the candied citrus peels. I have no idea how much ferment-able sugar there really is in the mix. The fermentation has been weird, but then again I'm new to this. It stratified into three layers pretty quickly, but the two bottom layers are getting thinner and thinner as the fermentation continues. Has anyone else done this? And If you did how did it turn out?

 

[Lampy]

No, but I've thought about it! Hope it ends up nice.

 

[Patrick Markovics]

No, but I've thought about it! Hope it ends up nice.

Just a note, that if you do decide to do it, it took all 4.4 lbs and a 1/2 cup honey to get to 1.090 with a full gallon of water. I'm going to ignore the sugar from the candied citron, lol.

 

[p_billingsley]

What type of yeast would you advise for this?

 

[Lampy]

I have only used a very few yeasts (somewhat of a newbie!). But I would guess anything that works for mead or white wine would be fine.

 

[Patrick Markovics]

What type of yeast would you advise for this?

I used Red star Classique, but that's what I had. Lalvin d47, 71b, 1118 would all probably be good. You could also use a mead yeast from Mangrove jacks or a Belgian ale yeast. It all depends on what your flavor profile is, what your target abv is, how sweet you want it without having to back sweeten, etc. My advice is to sit and talk to your local homebrew shop and see if they can guide you to something that you might like. An alternative would be to google mead yeast and start reading and figuring out what you might like.

 

[Patrick Markovics]

So I started it on 10/29/23 and it looks like half of it is turning into lees. I added 1 tsp of pectic enzyme, wondering if it's too late to add more.