Question about secondary fermentation and alcohol content...

[bigdawg86]

Hi ya'll just have a quick question. I have 3 batches of kombucha under my belt (3 gal x2, 5 gal x 1) and am finishing up the 4th 5 gallon batch currently. I had my current batch ferment for 3 weeks and got to pH of 3.0, but decided to secondary on about 6 lbs of mango. I transferred to carboy without the scoby, then I processed the fruit myself and ensured to simmer at 170° to sanitize, then added the mango. I noticed that I am getting a secondary fermentation more consistant with beer. Small krausen and 1 bubble a second in terms of airlock activity. This isn't bad per se, but curious if the secondary fermentation is going to create noticeable alcohol content? I know you can't rely on gravity readings with kombucha so seeing a more saccharomyces-esque fermentation makes me wonder how much booze is really in home made booch?

 

[RPh_Guy]

6 lbs isn't much. It'll add maybe 0.5% ABV if my guesses and math are correct.

 

[bigdawg86]

Well I let it secondary for 8 days and just kegged and carbed it... It's a near dumper. The secondary fermentation created a saccharomyces fermentation which killed ALL residual sugars and flavor. It's not even tart like it was before secondary. While I didn't take a pre-gravity, I just out of curiosity used a refractometer which showed approx 1.005 gravity at kegging. I know that there is some alcohol present and won't be 100% but that confirms that there is nearly zero residual sugars.

Did I let it go too long? I have been making a mint lime booch which tastes fantastic and requires no secondary, but now I am afraid of a fruit secondary in bulk as it went from tasting like booch to a chitty beer or a La-Croix water.

Do most commercial boocheries just primary ferment then add juice to taste then bottle? That's what I am going to try to save it.

EDIT: Before dumping, I figured it'd be worth the attempt to back sweeten with juice. All the "organic" mango juices were more like smoothies and had multiple juices, so I didn't want to use that. I bought a 1 gallon of Langers Mango Nectar (no HFCS) and added about 3/4 gallon. I know it's cheating, but it's actually pretty good now. Just gonna let it sit at 30PSI overnight and call it a day I guess.