SimplyRyan
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First, I need to preface this by saying that I know that its not technically cider, because it does not have any apple in it. Nor is it beer, because (other than the 2 cups or so of wort i used in the yeast starter) it has no barley.
That being said, I can't precisely call what I'm making the only other choice here, being "watermelon wine"
I realize I'm probably a little late to the party, but on the way home from work yesterday I had the idea to make a cider-like beverage using watermelon and a little cucumber for good measure. So without further adieu, here is the recipe and process I've devised on the fly for my "watermelon cider"
Ingredients:
2 large watermelons
2 cucumbers
1 cup of granulated sugar
1 cup of orange juice
WLP300
remove the rind from the watermelon. It's not an exact science, just try to cut off as much of the white part as you can while leaving behind as much of the red flesh as possible.
Peel the skin off of the cucumbers. This may or may not be necessary, but I'd assume that the dark green waxy rind of cucumbers would probably contribute to pectin haze as well as create an off-brown color in the wort? must? I guess, it would probably be considered "must". Is it necessary? maybe not, but I did.
Juice the cucumbers. Made about a pint and a half of juice.
My wife and I are vegan and have been known to do the occasional juice cleanse... so we have a very nice juicer, but I'm sure you could approximate the same results by blending the watermelon and straining it, or by boiling the fruit down like marinara sauce and then straining out the solids.
Me personally: I juiced the watermelons in my juicer. Made about 2+ gallons
at this point, I combined the juices in my brew kettle which gave me almost 2 1/2 gallons of must. I attempted to take a hydrometer reading at this time but there was still a considerable amount of fruit sediment in suspension and my readings seemed unrealistically low (1.018ish)
Just to be on the safe side, I added some fermentables in the form of regular ol' granulated sugar. I added one cup. did not see a perceptible change in SG.
Now here is where I can't seem to figure out if I've made a terrible error, or I'm just doing things a little differently than most people. Most of the recipes for watermelon wine, or beer infused with watermelon, etc. tend to require campden tablets to sterilize the must. Haven't seen any that call for boiling the juice. But since I'm trying to make a cider like drink, I decide that an SG of 1.018 simply will not do, so I boil the must for 1 hour. I lost about a half gallon of must. After doing a search for 'boiling watermelon juice', it seems that certain cultures use boiled watermelon juice as an aphrodisiac, so I may have inadvertently just brewed up a big batch of boozy viagra... I guess we'll see. Didn't find anything about using it for brewing though.
I'd read several recipes for watermelon wine that called for additives to increase the pH, so I figured why not add a little more fermentables while I'm at it? I added a cup of orange juice (Simply Orange, in case you're wondering)
I tried taking another gravity reading after cooling the must and prior to pitching the yeast. inconsistent readings between 1.040 and 1.050. I tasted the must, and it tasted almost sickeningly sweet, borderline syrupy, so I'm assuming that it will ferment out to a fairly dry "cider" without a whole lot of sweetness and maybe some understated watermelon flavor.
When devising the recipe, I was trying to decided what kind of yeast to use; Safale lager? California Ale Yeast? WLP300 Hefe yeast? I was leaning towards Cali Ale, but I've seen more than one fruit infused wit/hefe which might lend themselves well to the banana notes, (and I happened to have a vial of WLP300 on hand) so the hefeweizen yeast it is.
So I cooled the must/wort?! (I'm going to call it "murt") down to about 75 and pitched the yeast and called it a night.
When I got up for work this morning, there was a good bit of activity in the air lock, and a thin frothy pink krausen (this was after about 6 hours)
The tentative plan is to treat it like a hefe. give it about 10-12 days primary fermentation, prime with some more sugar and then rack into bottles for about two weeks. We'll see how this goes. with any luck, the sediment will settle enough that I can at least get an accurate FG and some kind of ballpark figure for %ABV
That being said, I can't precisely call what I'm making the only other choice here, being "watermelon wine"
I realize I'm probably a little late to the party, but on the way home from work yesterday I had the idea to make a cider-like beverage using watermelon and a little cucumber for good measure. So without further adieu, here is the recipe and process I've devised on the fly for my "watermelon cider"
Ingredients:
2 large watermelons
2 cucumbers
1 cup of granulated sugar
1 cup of orange juice
WLP300
remove the rind from the watermelon. It's not an exact science, just try to cut off as much of the white part as you can while leaving behind as much of the red flesh as possible.
Peel the skin off of the cucumbers. This may or may not be necessary, but I'd assume that the dark green waxy rind of cucumbers would probably contribute to pectin haze as well as create an off-brown color in the wort? must? I guess, it would probably be considered "must". Is it necessary? maybe not, but I did.
Juice the cucumbers. Made about a pint and a half of juice.
My wife and I are vegan and have been known to do the occasional juice cleanse... so we have a very nice juicer, but I'm sure you could approximate the same results by blending the watermelon and straining it, or by boiling the fruit down like marinara sauce and then straining out the solids.
Me personally: I juiced the watermelons in my juicer. Made about 2+ gallons
at this point, I combined the juices in my brew kettle which gave me almost 2 1/2 gallons of must. I attempted to take a hydrometer reading at this time but there was still a considerable amount of fruit sediment in suspension and my readings seemed unrealistically low (1.018ish)
Just to be on the safe side, I added some fermentables in the form of regular ol' granulated sugar. I added one cup. did not see a perceptible change in SG.
Now here is where I can't seem to figure out if I've made a terrible error, or I'm just doing things a little differently than most people. Most of the recipes for watermelon wine, or beer infused with watermelon, etc. tend to require campden tablets to sterilize the must. Haven't seen any that call for boiling the juice. But since I'm trying to make a cider like drink, I decide that an SG of 1.018 simply will not do, so I boil the must for 1 hour. I lost about a half gallon of must. After doing a search for 'boiling watermelon juice', it seems that certain cultures use boiled watermelon juice as an aphrodisiac, so I may have inadvertently just brewed up a big batch of boozy viagra... I guess we'll see. Didn't find anything about using it for brewing though.
I'd read several recipes for watermelon wine that called for additives to increase the pH, so I figured why not add a little more fermentables while I'm at it? I added a cup of orange juice (Simply Orange, in case you're wondering)
I tried taking another gravity reading after cooling the must and prior to pitching the yeast. inconsistent readings between 1.040 and 1.050. I tasted the must, and it tasted almost sickeningly sweet, borderline syrupy, so I'm assuming that it will ferment out to a fairly dry "cider" without a whole lot of sweetness and maybe some understated watermelon flavor.
When devising the recipe, I was trying to decided what kind of yeast to use; Safale lager? California Ale Yeast? WLP300 Hefe yeast? I was leaning towards Cali Ale, but I've seen more than one fruit infused wit/hefe which might lend themselves well to the banana notes, (and I happened to have a vial of WLP300 on hand) so the hefeweizen yeast it is.
So I cooled the must/wort?! (I'm going to call it "murt") down to about 75 and pitched the yeast and called it a night.
When I got up for work this morning, there was a good bit of activity in the air lock, and a thin frothy pink krausen (this was after about 6 hours)
The tentative plan is to treat it like a hefe. give it about 10-12 days primary fermentation, prime with some more sugar and then rack into bottles for about two weeks. We'll see how this goes. with any luck, the sediment will settle enough that I can at least get an accurate FG and some kind of ballpark figure for %ABV
