Rapid lemon wine/cider gone wrong

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Danieljhb

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Hey all...
First post so don't knock the newby too much ... But if I'm being a absolute Muppet shout...

Thanks for all the great advise I've read over the last two years..


So did an experiment last week on making a lemon lime cider/wine...

10l water to 10l lemon lime concentrate premixed juice (preservative free 30,%sugar) added an extra 4kgs sugar and 500ml juiced fresh ginger..

Pitched it with still spirits vodka yeast full packet and 20grams( unknown brand south African champagne yeast)

Muppet error number one didn't take an initial og
After 3 days sg was .970 (flavour very dry and boost)

Pitched in another 2kgs of sugar to 4l juice mix .
New og of 1000



It's now 3 days past
It's boozy and yeasty all the flavour has been striped out it seems ..


Any tips on trying to save it... Or is it a wasted brew.....?
Current sg this morning .950.


Regards
Daniel
Jhb south africa
 
Hi Daniel - and welcome.
A couple of quickish observations:
If my translations are reasonable , looks like you are making a wine using about 13 lbs of sugar (in total) in about 5 gallons of water. (Not sure if I understand the 10 L of lemon-lime correctly - so that you have 20 L of must with about 3000 grams ?? of sugar in the mix - )
Anyway, 13 lbs of sugar in 5 gallons of must = 2.6 lbs per gallon which converts to an SG of 1.104 which in turn has a potential ABV of about 14% and which your final SG (.950) suggests you have reached the 14%.
Fourteen percent ABV is not your average cider. Unless you know what you are doing this could be jam packed with fusels (hot alcohols) that can take years (if ever) to mellow out...
The thing about yeast is that wine (or cider, beer or mead) makers choose their yeast for the characteristics the yeast imparts or inhibits. Selecting a yeast (or yeasts) without much thought about things like mouthfeel, its affinity for the fruits being fermented, its ability to ferment at higher or lower temperatures, its need for nitrogen or other specified minerals and its ability to play nicely with other yeasts you pitch (add).. may result in all kinds of issues - such as flavorless wines.
The key element of all "wines" (and I include ciders, beers and meads) is balance. And balance includes how the amount of alcohol weighs against the residual sweetness of the wine; the acidity of the wine; the bitterness (the amount of tannin in the wine); and the richness of flavor. A wine that is very alcoholic but which is not flavor rich may be out of balance. A wine that is very alcoholic but which is very dry (not sweet) may be out of balance. A wine that is very alcoholic but which is "flat" and not sharp (because lacking in acidity or in tannin) may be out of balance.
Yeast flavors in a wine suggest what is called under-pitching of yeast. The larger the cell count of viable yeast in the must the less likely there will be a yeasty aroma or flavor - and while you may have nominally pitched enough yeast powder or liquid, pitching using poor rehydration protocol (temperature differences, lack of nutrition, among other criteria) can result in significant proportions of the cells being less than viable..
What to do? For this batch you might do two very different things. A) you might set it aside and forget about it for 12 -18 months. Time works in your favor - as long as the container you are storing the wine in is filled to the brim so that there is no "headroom" to allow for air to oxidize this wine. And B), You might draw off a few samples and add sugar or honey or another sweetener and see if the added sweetness brings forward the flavors of the lime and lemon. To add sugar to the whole batch you need to first stabilize it and you do that by making sure that there is no more sugar in the batch to ferment. Gravity will be rock solid stable over several weeks and several (three readings). You then add per instructions, enough K-meta and K-sorbate to prevent the remaining yeast cells from refermenting any added sugar, and then you can add however much sugar you have determined the wine needs (or you want) from the test you did by drawing those samples... (if each sample is say 25 CCs and you dissolve a known amount of sugar to each sample and you determine which amount you prefer then you multiply that amount by the total volume of your wine divided by 25 .. (simple arithmetic)...
For other wines - the best tip is to read a lot and experiment with IMO, small batches (4-5 L batches)... and when I say "read a lot".. I mean a lot of material published by trade publishers and not self published videos and books about which .. oh, I don't know.. roughly 95% is pure crap.

Good luck!
 
Thanks
Just rechecked the sums it's about 10.2kg of sugar to 25l of water ...

I'm going to try leave say 10l to age in wood if I can get the yeast to Settle... It's currently a cloudy gingerbeer look with zero taste just a boozy kick ....

I'll definitely read more ...
My view never translate a Dutch rapid cider recipe ....
 
SO that is close to 19.5% ABV. That is almost a spirit...
The cloudiness will settle as gravity will pull on the particles of yeast and fruit but at the moment unless you have degassed (removed all the CO2 absorbed by the liquid - and yeast will produce half the weight of the fermented sugar as CO2) this gas will prevent the particles from dropping out of suspension.
You can simply bide your time and wait. Over time the CO2 will be expelled /released without any work on your part. Or you can whip the gas out of suspension (you don't want to whip air INTO the wine - that will tend to oxidize it and make it taste like sherry). You can do this with a stirring rod you have sanitized or you can attach a paint stirrer to an electric drill and CAREFULLY whip the CO2 out. A third possibility is to pull a vacuum (needs to be about 22 inches) through the wine and that will remove all the CO2.
All of the above assumes that the cause of cloudiness is CO2 supporting particulates of yeast and fruit, but another possible cause could be pectins from the fruit. Many wine makers will add pectic enzymes to the fruit BEFORE they pitch the yeast. Those enzymes break down the pectins and so prevent them from acting as a net or gel clouding your wine. Pectic enzymes tend to be denatured by alcohol but you can still add them even now - this is the enzyme to break down the pectins and not pectins that would set if you were making jam..
Another possible approach is to treat the particles as if they are electrically charged and so you might add fining agents - Bentonite is one (negatively charged) Sparkalloid is another (positively charged) and these latch on to the oppositely charged particles and their combined weight forces the particles out of suspension. The downside is that fining agents (and these are just two examples- there are many others) sometimes remove color, flavor and the like but they don't add any off flavors..
 
A couple of things to remember for your next batch:
1. Sugar = alcohol, not sweetness nor flavor. In fact, more sugar can reduce the flavor.
2. High alcohol tolerant yeast usually tend to ferment faster and will often blow the flavors fight out of the airlock. Both vodka yeast and champagne yeast are very aggressive yeast. Back that down to a wine yeast or and ale yeast and you will have better flavor.
3. High ABV doesn't get anybody drunk if you cant drink it because it tastes like ass. Back it down to a sane level of 6-14% abv until you have the skills to handle the uber high gravity. Think of it like learning to drive a car. You don't just jump into a F1 car and start hot lapping...
 
Thanks taking the advice to heart....
Learnt my lesson with a tank of wierd grog...

Playing the game of hard knocks and attempting to get these brews right..(summer is only a few months away)
Thinking of pitching a new cider just using safcider yeast, commercial pasturaised preservative free apple juice, going to try run it around 15'c before it gets too hot
On 20l of juice thinking of using palm sugar? Just don't want to go as far with the plane sugar..

Thanks for the advice guys

On a aside my 2 years in wood sweet stout was tapped today .. amazing flavour.... Just need to bottel and enjoy.
 
Hi and welcome!

Playing the game of hard knocks and attempting to get these brews right..(summer is only a few months away)
Thinking of pitching a new cider just using safcider yeast, commercial pasturaised preservative free apple juice, going to try run it around 15'c before it gets too hot
On 20l of juice thinking of using palm sugar? Just don't want to go as far with the plane sugar..

Thanks for the advice guys

On a aside my 2 years in wood sweet stout was tapped today .. amazing flavour.... Just need to bottel and enjoy.

2 pounds of sugar (dextrose) to 5 gallons of apple juice is considered by some a reasonable amount. Palm sugar could have a different ratio but it won't differ more than 10%, is my guess.

You want the yeast go out gracefully, because the sugar it thrives on has gone.
Not because it totally stressed itself out and either poisoned itself in its own alcohol or choked because of lack of nutrition. Fun experiments, yes, but don't expect anything nice.

Right now I'm doing some yeast testing. Different Lalvins in same situations, how they perform and how they taste in a month and by December. I haven't measured OG because I'm simply not interested in the alcohol. I'm interested in the taste, fermentation behaviour and FG :tank:

20170810_120056_HDR.jpg
 
But cider ain't wine. Juiced apples generally in these parts (New England area of the USA ) have a gravity of between 1.040 and 1.050 - and that translates into potential ABVs of between 5.25 % and 6.55%. There really is no good reason to add sugar to up the ABV unless you really don't want to make cider (drunk by the pint?) but make an apple wine (to be sipped by the glass). And remember - all the sugar from the apples will provide you with apple notes unless you blow off those aromatics and flavor molecules. Palm sugar won't have any apple notes...so that is like creating a band to highlight your guitar playing but then you drown out the guitars with an orchestra made up of brass instruments... Your call, of course... but why do it? Of course, what you COULD do if you insist on upping the ABV is freeze the apple juice (the sweet cider) and catch the first runnings as it slowly thaws. The first 1/3 (I think) will contain almost all the total sugar and all the flavor- so you will have boosted the gravity from say 1.045 to 1.090 without adding a drop of adulterating sugar - Of course this method of concentrating flavor and sugar means that for every 3 L you buy you will be able to ferment only 1 L and it's a wine - NOT a cider (at about 12% ABV).
 
Hey all
So here's a report back on this brew..
Got a bit lazy till last wed.

Racked the whole brew into two vessels .
1. About 18L ... In a 20L drum.
Allowing it to age...
Just tasted a sample....
It's obviously an alcoholic wine....
There is a slight flavour but not much?
The rocket fuel taste is starting to mellow so I'm going to trust in time to save it.

Any views on potentially helping add some favour.......

Right now tastes like very watered down gingerbeer with a couple shots of vodka in it.


2. Second 2L batch has just been added to the secondary of a 10L ginger beer brew. .
(2l water 2cups sugar 2tbsp of ginger powder 1tsp of cream of tatar.) Multiplied to make 10L. With safale t 58
Ran very dry .....

Added an extra 1kg of molasses dark brown sugar..


Hopefully going to have the patience to leave it alone for at least two weeks


Regards
Daniel
 
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