Pith
Well-Known Member
Hi, all. This is where I'll be talking about the reason I signed up to this forum in the first place.
I only decided to get into brewing after having made an awful-tasting cordial from a bunch of grapefruit peels covered with water and boiled for a couple of hours then strained and mixed with an equal volume of white sugar. I thought fermenting it might make it better. Time will tell. To increase the volume, I did the same with lemons.
I boiled it all together (1. grapefruit peel cordial, 2. lemon peel cordial, 3. the small remainder of the delicious grapefruit JUICE cordial I had also made, [all three of which were about 50 percent white sugar] and 4. around a litre of water, approximately 3 litres altogether) in a saucepan to kill anything that might've been floating around in there. I then let it cool to room temp.
Apparently baker's yeast is okay in citrus wines, so I bought some Tandaco Dry Yeast (98 percent baker's yeast, emulsifiers, vegetable gum, ascorbic acid) and mixed a 7 gram sachet with nearly a cup of warm water, let all the yeast get wet without stirring too early, then added a couple of tbsp of white sugar, left it for 30 minutes or so until there was around nearly inch of foam on top, then divided it between three bottles (2 x 1.25L, 1 x 750mL). Had poured a bit of cordial into the 750mL with yeast already in it before remembering it was a smaller bottle, so poured a bit of the mixture into each of the 2 larger bottles. Divided most of the rest of the cordial into the three bottles (filled a new bottle and am storing it in the fridge) and put clingwrap around the tops and left them in the corner of the kitchen. A small amount of foam appeared a few hours after mixing, in the shape of the five wells at the bottom of the 1.25L bottle; I guess that's where the yeast had settled. The foam disappeared soon after.
It's about 7 hours since, and I've just had a bit of a listen and there's a very exciting
fizzling
sound coming from each of the bottles that I can't stop going back over there to listen to, but only a few visible bubbles around the edges. I was worried that there might not be enough yeast (only 7/3 grams each; that's nearly half a tsp), but it seems to be working. Will update at breakfast (about 9 hours from now).
I've been getting a good deal of my info from these places:
http://www.crfg.org/tidbits/makewine.html
http://www.warpbreach.com/6/6.html
...but I don't have any yeast nutrient. I used the nutrient-barren "white sugar" for yeast food. Would the contents of my citrus peel steeping contain anything the yeast can use, or will I have to go and find/make some nutrient before the poor buggers die on me?
Also, since my mixture is so sugary (probably around about 25-30 percent white sugar), do you think there will be sugar left behind after the yeast has reached its whaddya-call-it... attenuation level? Will I have to go and buy a more resilient yeast to ferment it further?
Thanks for reading.
Pith
BONUS question:
Do you think the citrus peel would have leeched those complex sugars that "wild yeast" like? Yesterday (29/9) I left 1 jar with a bit of lemon peel cordial in it and 1 jar with a combination of juiced/strained apple and honey in it, each with Chux and a rubber band over the top sitting outside, as per the information gleaned from various places in the wild yeast section. They said to use cheesecloth, but Chux keeps wildlife out just as well. Hopefully I'll catch something white in one of them, and hopefully it will be of use to me. Chances are slim due to cutting corners and having no experience or intuition. Again, time will tell.
I only decided to get into brewing after having made an awful-tasting cordial from a bunch of grapefruit peels covered with water and boiled for a couple of hours then strained and mixed with an equal volume of white sugar. I thought fermenting it might make it better. Time will tell. To increase the volume, I did the same with lemons.
I boiled it all together (1. grapefruit peel cordial, 2. lemon peel cordial, 3. the small remainder of the delicious grapefruit JUICE cordial I had also made, [all three of which were about 50 percent white sugar] and 4. around a litre of water, approximately 3 litres altogether) in a saucepan to kill anything that might've been floating around in there. I then let it cool to room temp.
Apparently baker's yeast is okay in citrus wines, so I bought some Tandaco Dry Yeast (98 percent baker's yeast, emulsifiers, vegetable gum, ascorbic acid) and mixed a 7 gram sachet with nearly a cup of warm water, let all the yeast get wet without stirring too early, then added a couple of tbsp of white sugar, left it for 30 minutes or so until there was around nearly inch of foam on top, then divided it between three bottles (2 x 1.25L, 1 x 750mL). Had poured a bit of cordial into the 750mL with yeast already in it before remembering it was a smaller bottle, so poured a bit of the mixture into each of the 2 larger bottles. Divided most of the rest of the cordial into the three bottles (filled a new bottle and am storing it in the fridge) and put clingwrap around the tops and left them in the corner of the kitchen. A small amount of foam appeared a few hours after mixing, in the shape of the five wells at the bottom of the 1.25L bottle; I guess that's where the yeast had settled. The foam disappeared soon after.
It's about 7 hours since, and I've just had a bit of a listen and there's a very exciting
fizzling
sound coming from each of the bottles that I can't stop going back over there to listen to, but only a few visible bubbles around the edges. I was worried that there might not be enough yeast (only 7/3 grams each; that's nearly half a tsp), but it seems to be working. Will update at breakfast (about 9 hours from now).
I've been getting a good deal of my info from these places:
http://www.crfg.org/tidbits/makewine.html
http://www.warpbreach.com/6/6.html
...but I don't have any yeast nutrient. I used the nutrient-barren "white sugar" for yeast food. Would the contents of my citrus peel steeping contain anything the yeast can use, or will I have to go and find/make some nutrient before the poor buggers die on me?
Also, since my mixture is so sugary (probably around about 25-30 percent white sugar), do you think there will be sugar left behind after the yeast has reached its whaddya-call-it... attenuation level? Will I have to go and buy a more resilient yeast to ferment it further?
Thanks for reading.
Pith
BONUS question:
Do you think the citrus peel would have leeched those complex sugars that "wild yeast" like? Yesterday (29/9) I left 1 jar with a bit of lemon peel cordial in it and 1 jar with a combination of juiced/strained apple and honey in it, each with Chux and a rubber band over the top sitting outside, as per the information gleaned from various places in the wild yeast section. They said to use cheesecloth, but Chux keeps wildlife out just as well. Hopefully I'll catch something white in one of them, and hopefully it will be of use to me. Chances are slim due to cutting corners and having no experience or intuition. Again, time will tell.
