lemon wine wash

[blacky]

I hear getting lemon wine (skeeter pee) to ferment can be difficult. Is there a reason why I shouldn't just make a sugar wash and then add lemon juice when done fermenting?

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Blacky - and welcome. For all intents and purposes that is what I did. I fermented honey , though to produce more flavor and when that was all but done I added the lemon juice. Had absolutely no problem fermenting and the final product was quite delicious.

 

[blacky]

Hi Blacky - and welcome. For all intents and purposes that is what I did. I fermented honey , though to produce more flavor and when that was all but done I added the lemon juice. Had absolutely no problem fermenting and the final product was quite delicious.

Thanks for getting back to me so fast.

What my limited research has shown is that highly acidic fermentation takes extra steps to complete. Special yeast food and energizer for rhubarb and lemon wine. Whipping the must and leaving it sitting for a couple of days for the preservatives to evaporate. Then once done adding sugar to taste.

I was wondering if there is a reason to go to all that trouble. Like there was some sort of flavor conversion or something in the rhubarb or lemon juice during fermentation...?

 

[bernardsmith]

High acidity stresses yeast, but whipping air into the must during the first few days (aeration) , using nutrients are standard operating procedures for all wine making. Nothing different here. The one difference with skeeter pee is that lemon juice is both acidic and contains sorbates (but this is concentrated LJ so the water dilutes the sorbate) so you are starting off with a challenging must. This is the reason why the original recipe calls for using slurry from an earlier fermentation - so the yeast has been tempered and is used to higher acid environments, and is presumably used to being somewhat stressed... But apart from the preference in using a yeast slurry there is really no difference with this wine. I used a fresh pack of yeast so I added the lemon juice after the fermentation was all but done. The yeast had more or less done its job so I was not concerned about any stress and with the stress the production of all kinds of compounds whose flavors and smells I did not want to deal with..