How do I juice a watermelon?

[h4mmy86]

Think I'm going to add the fresh juice right into the keg (unless you know of a reason I should do otherwise). How would you juice a watermelon to be added straight into the keg?

 

[tmwaits]

I would simply peel the watermelon chop it up and then throw the chunks into a blender. You can then pour through a strainer/colander to remove the fiber.

 

[jekeane]

 

[h4mmy86]

Think a couple Camden tablets are in order?

 

[SlickTX]

Look underneath for the teats. Put a bucket under it then pull/squeeze on the teats.

 

[h4mmy86]

Every time I go to give the teat a good squeeze she kicks and bucks. I've been running into this problem since high school

 

[h4mmy86]

I juiced my melon yesterday, and if anyone is curious, all I did was slice the melon in half, scrape the guts out with a large spoon, put the guts into a blender, mixed on low/med speed until there are no chunks left, and put that through a BIAB paint strainer style bag. Once I had the strained liquid I added 1 Campden tablet into 1 gallon of juice, and sat it in the fridge. It's been there over night and I have noticed some sediment settling out. Probably leave it in another day then put it in the bottom of the keg. I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

[IslandLizard]

The hot break-like fluffy sediment may contain a lot of flavor and definitely has a lot of color. I just added all the strained juice to the fermentor, no Campden. And it settled out again when done.

The pulp from the strainer bag also tasted pretty good, I may just toss the whole blender content in next time.

 

[h4mmy86]

I tasted the pink sludge too. I thought about racking something onto it in a one gallon fermenter but decided against it (for now at least). I only stained the juice because it's going right into the keg and I figured all of the goop would fall out of suspension and get pushed out in the first yeasty pints anyway. If I were going into fermenter I probably would have just tossed the un-blended guts right in.

 

[zeekage]

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljc-WnZ-hLI[/ame]

 

[JohnSand]

I was going to suggest the Ronco Melon-ator.
But the "milk the melon" procedure clearly took the prize.

 

[h4mmy86]

Well, this brew is very slow carbonating and I think the watermelon juice is souring. Smells terrible, tastes ...meh. Could potentially turn into something decent but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[eric19312]

Hammy could you describe your procedure in more detail? Especially what you did after adding watermelon juice to the keg? I'd have thought the campden would help avoid souring.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[h4mmy86]

This batch had a few uncommon variables for me. I've never used this juice for cider before and I've never juiced a melon before. Hell, I've never used any fresh pressed fruit juice before other than apples for pure cider.

The base cider was fermented from store bought 100% unfiltered apple juice with about 2 lbs of dark brown sugar and fermented using my "house" strain of nottingham cider yeast (probably about 3 or 4 generations in). It was left in the fermenter for probably 2 months and the result was a very dry, tart, thin, and extremely cloudy cider that absolutely refuses to clear. Mind that I used no clearing agents and the juice was just as cloudy at it's point of purchase so I didn't think much about the haze.

At kegging I poured one gallon of watermelon juice (with one crushed campden tablet added (had been refrigerated for probably 2 days and still tasted and smelled great)) into a sanitized keg through a sanitized funnel (maybe I should have siphoned it in more gently) and then racked the cider onto the juice.

I did fill the keg awfully full so that plus cider's tendency to take longer to force carb than beer probably explains why it's so reluctant to carbonate (right?).

The remainder of cider I kept still in the fridge is great. Still cloudy as muck but tastes fine.

 

[h4mmy86]

Update; still smells a tad funky but it is tasting better every day. Still super cloudy. A bit too sweet imo, next time I juice a melon I'm going to scrape more green from the rind for bitterness.