Mulberry Soda gone to Mead?

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jpofsiny

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Hi All,
I made the following brew of mulberry 'soda' but when I taste it is has a strong alcoholic taste to it. This is maybe the second time I have made it.

The recipe and directions I almost followed were this:
3 C Mulberries, destemmed
3 C Water
6 TBSP Sucanat
¼ TSP Bread Yeast

Directions:
Rinse mulberries and press thru a sieve to remove stems. Add mulberries, water and sucanat to a stockpot and simmer for 30 minutes.
Let cool, and then add the yeast.
Use a funnel to pour the soda into bottles.
Leave 1 to 2 inches of empty space at the top of the bottle and attach the bottle caps.
Write the date on the bottles and store them in a warm, draft-free place, ideally at room temperature, for an additional 24 hours. Then refrigerate.
For best results, let the soda sit an additional day or two in the refrigerator before drinking.

The reason I wrote almost followed is this:
When I checked the bottle after the 24 hours at room temp...it looked like what was originally 1L in volume of soda had reduced a considerable amount...if I had to guess - maybe 10% or so. The bottle also looked stressed (the cap was bulging quite a bit). So, I attempted to let some of the carbonation out, which left a couple of shirts mulberry splattered while the carbonation was slowly 'leaked' by me. There was considerable gas buildup in the bottle.

After letting the cap off, I sampled some, which tasted like mulberries with a bit (or more) of alcohol and yeast.

I stuck the cap back on the bottle, fridged it overnight, and tasted it again just now. Very little carbonation seems to be left and there is still about the same amount of an alcoholic taste.

Any advice or any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Hiya,
just writing to follow-up to see if anyone have any input on what happened?

thanks!
 
Bread yeast tends to give off more CO2 than brewing yeast. It sounds like a nice recipe for bottle bombs. Where did you get the idea for this in the first place?
 
It's mulberry season where I live and had the thought that it would be tastey to make a soda, considering their sweetness. I found a recipe for a homemade grape soda and substituted the mulberries for the grapes in the recipe. I scaled it down, proportionally to what I had on hand and used bread yeast instead of champagne/ale yeast. The recipe is here:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/2004-12-01/Brew-Soda-at-Home.aspx?page=5

Any input is greatly appreciated.
 
Bread yeast will make alcohol. The directions I've normally seen for naturally carbonated soda have been to use the yeast, wait for the bottles to be hard, and then immediately put in the 'fridge. This will produce a small amount of alcohol as well.

Not sure why you lost volume; that sounds a bit odd.
 
thanks so much for the help!

the volume loss may have been from the bottle fizzing all over the place as it seeped mulberry all over the kitchen.

is there a ratio for replacing the bread yeast with champagne or ale yeast?
does bread yeast always produce alcohol?
 
All cooking yeast that I'm aware of produce alcohol while fermentating; bread yeast does it, you just don't notice since it evaporates during cooking.

Not sure about the ratio; I've never looked at that.

The recipe I have at hand for naturally carbonated soda uses only 1/8th tsp ale yeast. It would get tough to measure smaller volumes of brewer's yeast.

When I did soda I just used about 1/8th tsp bread yeast without issue, making sure to cool it when the bottles were hard, but YMMV.
 
Thanks again for the prompt reply. Would you be able to recommend an online resource for champagne and ale yeast? Do you recommend one or the other for meads or sodas or wines?
 
thanks so much for all the help. y'all have been very kind and generous with your wisdom.
 

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