Must or mixer?

[Blacksmith1]

Picked up a Guava nectar in 32 ounce boxes. It says it's 35% fruit content and has 592g of sugar per gallon. That's 139g more than a pound of sugar.

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Not sure what that equals for OG But I also picked up some frozen Guava pulp to try to enhance the flavor/color.

I got 5 of them and a 14oz pulp. total cost was just under 8 bucks for enhancement and having a bit extra for the lees so I'll finish with a gallon or more. ​

Do you guys think I can make something drinkable with this or should I just pour some spiced rum in it and call it a day?
If I can, what ball park amount of sugar to aim at 12-14% ABV? I know a few of you seem to like doing the math. I will be using a hydrometer so I can hit the OG closely.

 

[Blacksmith1]

Might have hit a snag before I start.
carboxymethylcellulose. apparently used to stabilize wines, is one of the ingredients. will this make fermentation a non-starter?
The package says no add preservatives, but I don't know what this stuff is or what it will do to my wine.

 

[Blacksmith1]

After a bit of research I found this is added to some sparkling bottle carbed wines at bottling, so what I need to know is will it cause issues in the primary such as methanol? apparently there is a yeast that converts this stuff to glucose then ethanol.
For the science nuts on here:
https://academic.oup.com/femsle/article/301/1/130/615270
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...source-by-recombinant-strain-S_fig3_268873757

 

[Blacksmith1]

A little further into my research I discover that what I need to find is cellulase. an enzyme that does for cellulose what pectinase does for pectin.
https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=879300
And based on the above I might should have posted this in the cider forum. Gotta find this stuff.

 

[Blacksmith1]

And with an evenings effort I have found that I can probably ferment this as is but if I add THIS I could get much better results. don't really want to wait so I think I'll fire this experiment up tomorrow with just the pectinase and see what I get.
I firmly believe that this would be a great thing for fresh pressed ciders, though after reading up on it I would blend/puree the apples, then add both pectinase and cellulase....If I lived in apple country that is.

 

[Blacksmith1]

went ahead and threw it all in a 2 gallon fermenter. added the pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient. I'll let it sit till tomorrow, then pitch. I skipped the campden tab since everything was sealed or frozen and it seems counter productive to add an anti oxidant to the must when you need to oxygenate it for the yeast. Maybe I'm not understanding this properly but I don't figure it can hurt much.
And for anyone wondering... it makes a piss poor mixer with spiced rum. too sweet, and just off somehow.

 

[Blacksmith1]

Checked the SG. it was 1060. added some sugar to bring it up to 1092. will pitch with k1-v1116, and we'll see what we get.

 

[Blacksmith1]

Pitched 1/18/2019 at about noon/1pm. By 9pm it was starting to bubble, good activity this morning so the yeast obviously doesn't care about the CMC. I'm hoping the pectinase will thin the nectar as this stuff was too thick for the wife to enjoy it. It feels a bit thinner while stirring, but that is too subjective to mean anything.

 

[Blacksmith1]

1 week in and it's slowed considerably. the pulp is already sinking into the bucket. I'll give it a little more time and then rack it to a one gallon carboy.

 

[Blacksmith1]

with a little experimenting I worked out a filtration method that sorta works. these pictures are not in the order they were taken.View media item 69998View media item 70001View media item 69999View media item 70000View media item 70002View media item 70003basically tried to run it through cheesecloth but there was too much particulate, so I poured it into the strainer which caught the big stuff, then through the cloth raking it with a spoon to clear a path for the juice then squeezing out as much juice as I could. Had to dump the cloth several times and keeping the pulp in the cloth is a bit tricky as it wants to squirt out.
need to find a couple different sizes of filter media to catch big medium small and tiny. hopefully I can find some that will let me do this without having to stand over it

 

[Blacksmith1]

Clearing nicely. Far better than I expected.

 

[Blacksmith1]

A little bitter. Definitely not too sweet now. Still has a guava-ish flavor. Now to let it age a bit and see what I can do on the backend. Might add a little simple syrup and try for semi dry.

 

[Blacksmith1]

So this is coming out very nicely. I didn't know if it was going to clear this much or not. Guava came to the front, but it's odd tasting bitter (acidic?) guava. Every one I have ever eaten was almost sickly sweet. If you don't know how they are supposed to be, get a guava pastry at a local hispanic place. They are very close to the fresh fruit.

 

[Blacksmith1]

Cracked open a bottle today. 5 months after pitching. It was bottled on 4/17/19, I forgot to record the additions if any. I think I used a few TBSP of sugar and a capfull of lemon juice. This is a bit acidic, not quite dry, a touch astringint, still seems a touch bitter. But it's not bad. Guava flavor stayed but not quite as strong as I would like, close tho.
Next will be one from Guava paste to see if that's any better.(and because I have several cans of paste) and possibly one from puree.

 

[Shawn Cassidy]

Nice write up... thank you.