Hard Wassail - New recipe help

[frogbuttocks]

I am new to the homebrewing world and started EdWort's Apfelwein 2 weeks ago. That is my experience level today. My SO has a family recipe for wassail and she asked if we could make a hard wassail. It would greatly help the buy-in of the brewery space takeover if I could. I've seen other threads that focus on apple cider only but is this recipe with its multiple fruit juices doable? What about a yeast recommendation? Thank you for your ideas.

3/4 c brown sugar
6 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
4 c unsweetened pineapple juice
1 c apricot nectar
2 c apple cider
1 c orange juice

Put sugar and spice in percolator basket. Mix juices and put in
percolator. Allow to perk.​

Increased to 5 gallons it would look like this though I think that is too much sugar and spice.

7 1/2 c brown sugar
60 whole cloves
30 cinnamon sticks
2.5 gal unsweetened pineapple juice
2.5 qt apricot nectar
1.25 gal apple cider
2.5 qt orange juice​

It is a great warmed holiday drink. I included the whole recipe in case someone wanted to try it for the holidays (I know it's a homebrew forum however whiskey or rum are great additives). Thanks!

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Interesting idea. I'm guessing you're wanting to scale up from 1 gallon to 5. Well, 1st off, I'd cut that spice amount by at least 1/2, maybe as much as 3/4. A little clove goes a long way & can easily overpower everything else. I'm guessing that the original recipe has all the ingredients simmering for a while & served hot?

I wouldn't heat the juice prior to fermentation, this could set pectins & give you a cloudy drink; could also give a "cooked" type of flavour. Now there are some who have successfully fermented orange juice, but I'm not one of them. I've had problems with PH & even when it did ferment ok, it tasted terrible. You might have better luck than I did.

Use whole or cracked spices, contain them in a hop sack, weigh it down with a couple of sanitized marbles if you feel the need. You might want to tie a length of fishing line to the hop sack & let the bung hold it in place; the line will allow you to easily retrieve the hop sack when your desired spice flavour profile has been reached. You might want to save those spices for secondary.

You'll have to taste test it every couple of weeks to see how the spice profile is progressing. How dry do you want this to go? Are you planning on serving it hot? If so you could just make it dry & then add some sugar before serving. You could also ferment to a higher finished gravity; either way, you'll need to choose a yeast. Ale yeast might have some difficulty with such a low PH, wine yeast would handle low PH better, but will take the fermentation drier.

I'd say try a 1 gallon batch as an experiment/trial run. This will allow you to try the recipe & tweak it if needed, without spending the money on a full 5 gallon batch. You may need to age it a bit too, time can make a lot of things better. I say try the 1 gallon batch, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I once fermented prune juice, just to see what happened. BTW, the prune juice thing was a complete failure, but at least now I know & so do others since I posted it here.

Give it a shot & keep us posted, I'm curious to see how it turns out.
Regards, GF.

 

[Maylar]

That does look tasty, but I think I'd pass on trying to ferment it. Flavors can change drastically in fermentation and there's no way to predict the outcome. And yeasts don't like an acid environment.

Rum sounds like the way to go. Thanks for the recipe.

 

[phug]

If you do make this, it should ferment, though I can't vouch for the taste, but I would say steal a page from the skeeter pee recipe and pitch the yeast cake from your edwort's apfelwein.

High acidity juices take extra effort to ferment but if you can ferment lemon juice them you can ferment pineapple and orange.


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[_BullDog_]

Here is my 2 cents and a disclaimer of only doing 3 brews and 1 cider.

Make a tea with the spices and hot water - similar to specialty grains in beer. Then let that cool and combine with all the juices except the OJ and maybe pineapple. Use the OJ and pineapple to back sweeten before serving.

 

[_BullDog_]

I may do this as my next gallon brew.... Sounds good

 

[frogbuttocks]

Good advice and good questions. I wasn't really thinking about the high acidity; thank you for pointing that out. My concern was this tasting more like prison hooch though now I know I don't want it to return results like fermented prune juice (what an interesting experiment). Gallon batches are a great idea too.

I am OK with it being dry but reserve the right to back sweeten if too dry. My thought was to serve it cold; I don't think heating it for serving would be good.

Based on what I've seen here I think I am going to get a couple more gallon fermenters to conduct some side by side testing. If nothing else, this is a great way to try more complex techniques. I might try an ale yeast on number 1 to try something different but keep the wine yeast for 2 and 3 though I'd lose the control element so who knows. Maybe that's phase 2.

1. Apfelwein fermented with steeped, cracked spices and the apricot nectar using the brown sugar instead of corn sugar. I'll back-sweeten with orange and pineapple. Create starter from current apfelwein yeast cake.
2. Same as above fermented with orange juice. Back-sweeten with pineapple.
3. Last one with all juices using the skeeter pee yeast additives.

I really appreciate the feedback and ideas. I chuckle at the thought of trying to entice someone to come try a cold glass of frogbuttocks' skeeter pee.

 

[_BullDog_]

Habe you made this yet? If so how is it going?

 

[JoeLowPro]

Here's how I did something similar https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=505697


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[MarkKF]

Make a simple hard cider,
Jack it to get 20% applejack,
Substitute that for the cider in your recipe.