Skeeter Pee

[TBC]

I've made it with lime juice once and it's fine. The lemon is better in my opinion. I just bought the cheapest lime juice I could find and followed the recipe. I'm sure you would like it if you prefer lime juice.

 

[LoneTreeFarms]

how did this end up? I've got 5 gallon of lower octane ready for kegging right now. just need to free up a keg.

Finally kegged mine today. It's lower octane, planning to have it on tap. I added some more lemon juice and invert sugar when I kegged it.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[TKH]

Do you have to use the potassium if you're going to chill and keg it as soon as it is back sweetened? Or is this a bad idea?

 

[homebruguru]

just started this yesterday, really looking forward to it

 

[homebruguru]

2 weeks in the primary, man does it smell gooooood!!!!!:rockin:

 

[meatheadmike]

What kind of Lemon Juice are you guys using for your Skeeter Pee?

All the Lemon Juice I find in the Super Market contains Sodium Benzonate... which is a preservative that inhibits fermentation. I used some anyway for a small 1 gallon test batch, and didn't see any signs of fermentation for about 4 days. Then to my surprise it actually did start fermenting but the bubbles were coming up very slowly.

Its been going like that for several weeks now, and I feel like the batch may not turn out so well because the fermentation is stressed from the Sodium Benzonate.

Does the lemon juice you guys use contain sodium Benzonate?

 

[CrownedBee]

What kind of Lemon Juice are you guys using for your Skeeter Pee?

We just used a generic ReaLemon for our 6 gallon SP (we did the Dragon's Blood variant, photo below), which I believe contains a little sodium benzoate. Ours started fermenting with EC-1118 right away, and our final SG was below 1.000.

Could it be an environment issue? Maybe it's too cold for your yeast...? Or maybe because we had a fruit pack in there, our yeast was able to overcome any inhibition caused by the benzoate. We've yet to make the traditional SP...

 

[LoneTreeFarms]

i use he generic version of realemon, I believe it has some benzoate in it, but I use a stir stick and whip it for a good 3-4 minutes and usually have active fermentation within a day.

 

[johns]

What happens if its boiling for 30 minutes?

 

[James0816]

Here's a question. Has anyone left this in the primary for an extended period of time? I've been aging (unintentionally mind you) for about six months.

 

[Blacksmith1]

If it didn't stop early it will have fermented dry by now. Depending on the OG you may have lemon wine. It should be fine, might neds a bit of sweetening.

 

[Michael L Collins]

I made a mistake that just seems like it wants to work. I tried to make a lemon wine (Skeeter Pee) (on 5/24/2020) using a basic recipe I found online. I did it just as it said, adding bentonite to help it clear out. After I finished making it, I saw I would have some of the lemon juice left, so I went to see if it had a recipe for lemonade. That was when I realized it was loaded with preservatives. Now I added less lemon, more sugar, and an entire pack of yeast (I know). Against all the odds, this thing is fermenting. Does anyone have an idea of what I should expect? It smells like lemonade, and it had a heck of a blowout in the beginning. I started at 1.100, and I’ll post an update in a few days.

• 14 oz Lemon Juice of the 20 oz (with the unknown preservatives)
• 5 cups of sugar (to take it to 1.100)
• ¼ tsp tannin
• 1 packet Lavin ec1118
• Yeast Nutrient
• Bentonite
• Water Enough to fill out the carboy

 

[Michael L Collins]

I made a mistake that just seems like it wants to work. I tried to make a lemon wine (Skeeter Pee) (on 5/24/2020) using a basic recipe I found online. I did it just as it said, adding bentonite to help it clear out. After I finished making it, I saw I would have some of the lemon juice left, so I went to see if it had a recipe for lemonade. That was when I realized it was loaded with preservatives. Now I added less lemon, more sugar, and an entire pack of yeast (I know). Against all the odds, this thing is fermenting. Does anyone have an idea of what I should expect? It smells like lemonade, and it had a heck of a blowout in the beginning. I started at 1.100, and I’ll post an update in a few days.

• 14 oz Lemon Juice of the 20 oz (with the unknown preservatives)
• 5 cups of sugar (to take it to 1.100)
• ¼ tsp tannin
• 1 packet Lavin ec1118
• Yeast Nutrient
• Bentonite
• Water Enough to fill out the carboy

Four days later it's at 1.022 about 12.86 (The OG was actually 1.120)

 

[Erik the Awful]

I, too, was inspired by this recipe last week. I started on the 28th, but as usual, I can't leave well enough alone and I went pretty sideways. I don't like the idea of using bottled lemon juice so I bought twenty lemons and put them in the blender, whole, with a box of reconstituted raisins. I quickly realized that wasn't enough for a 5-gallon batch and topped it off with 3 potatos and 6 jalapenos. I'm calling it Murderhornet. It's about halfway through primary fermentation and smells freaking amazing. After I stir it I sip the spoon, and it tastes as good as it smells, improving every day. I know I'll have to add more sugar when it goes into secondary later this week. My method of winemaking usually includes letting the wine sit two months between rackings, but if it's clear I might have to bottle it on the 3rd of July.

Murderhornet Wine (Lemon Jalapeno)
Started 20200528

20 lemons
3 potatoes
6 jalapenos, seeded (use 3 if whole)
22oz box of raisins reconstituted in ½ gallon water a day earlier

20200528
Blended ingredients with additional 1½ gallons water
Added 8 cups sugar
Simmered 1 hour, stirring frequently
Cooled and screened into primary fermentation
Added 3 campden tablets
Rested 24 hours

20200529
Very liquid, minimal particlulate
Added Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

 

[Blacksmith1]

Gotta try me some of this... I did a tepache with jalapeno that turned out pretty good.
Why the potatoes?

 

[Erik the Awful]

Because I needed filler and they were handy, but also the potatoes help mitigate the high citric acid content of the lemons. Also, for some reason a lot of my best wines have had potatoes.

Edit: Friday now and I racked it to secondary. I screened the bottom few inches, lost about a gallon. I boiled a gallon of water with 4 cups of sugar, cooled it, and added before putting the airlock and setting it in the garage.

 

[Erik the Awful]

I just bottled it. It smells a bit like Pine-Sol, which I'm not happy about, but tastes pretty decent. The one thing I dislike about jalapenos is how inconsistent they are. This is less "murderhornet" and more "yellowjacket". Next time I think I'll work with 30 lemons, a dozen jalapenos, and no potatoes.

Here's the rest of my notes:
20200605
Racked to secondary – would have preferred to keep in primary one more day, but busy weekend ahead
Screened the bottom few inches to secondary. Tossed out last inch.
Added 1 gallon water with 4 cups sugar

20200704
Racked
Separating well, 1” of sediment in the bottom
Very dry
Added 1 quart water with 4 cups sugar

20200911
Racked, thin sediment on bottom, but cloudy
Lemony flavor, mildly spicy
Added 3 campden tablets

20201106
Racked, almost no sediment, but cloudy
Lemony flavor, almost no spiciness
Added 2 tsp pectic enzyme

20201220
Racked, nearly clear
Smells like Pine-Sol, didn’t taste
Added 3 campden tablets

20210120
Looked like it might be trying to spoil – a faint layer of cloudy stuff on top. Skimmed it.
Added 1 tbsp Sparkolloid in 8 oz water
Added 3 campden tablets to kill anything and to finalize it.
Tastes tart and sweet, with just a hint of heat.

20210130
Clarified nicely! Will use Sparkolloid in the future, also vegan friendly.
Still had faint layer of cloudiness on top.
Still smells a bit like Pine-Sol, but tastes pretty good.
Not spicy enough. Less like murderhornet, more like yellowjacket.

 

[Garfield43]

I am a newb and am dumb.
Is yeast slurry the little bit of whatever you brewed and the yeast that is at the bottom of whatever container you fermented in?

I have just been throwing that away.
I have been making cider.
If I poured fresh apple juice over the left over slurry from the previous batch would it ferment?
Likewise could I use apple cider slurry to start off a batch of this stuff?

As a side note the original web page is gone and archive.org doesn't have it.
Thanks to the OP for preserving it here.

 

[marc1]

I am a newb and am dumb.
Is yeast slurry the little bit of whatever you brewed and the yeast that is at the bottom of whatever container you fermented in? Yes

I have just been throwing that away.
I have been making cider.
If I poured fresh apple juice over the left over slurry from the previous batch would it ferment? Yes, but you don't want to do it too many times in a row without removing some yeast so that it has room to grow and be happy. Doing it once will get you a ton of yeast to kickstart a fermentation
Likewise could I use apple cider slurry to start off a batch of this stuff? Typically it used wine yeast. If the cider yeast can tolerate the ABV of what you are making, then it would probably work for this.

As a side note the original web page is gone and archive.org doesn't have it.
Thanks to the OP for preserving it here.

I've made Skeeter Pee before, but I've also made a variant that I liked better that also was easier. I saw it on a winemaking forum (can't remember where right now).
Basically it makes a lemon/other juice wine combo. You go to the grocery store and find the frozen juice concentrates and pick some that sound good. Make sure they don't have preservatives or artificial sweeteners. A lot of them have grape juice as a base, which is covered up by other flavors - this is good because grape juice has lots of goodies for the yeast.
Start the wine with the juice concentrate, water, sugar, nutrients, etc. and ferment it out. When it's all done, add your lemon/lime juices. This way you don't have to overcome the crazy acidity from fermenting lemon juice. There isn't much in lemon juice to ferment anyway, the ABV was coming from the sugar.
Then rack, stabilize, fine, etc. as normal.

 

[Garfield43]

Thanks!
I usually use champagne yeast in the cider so it would probably be ok.

One of the YouTube channels that got me in to homebrewing, City Steading, tried to reuse yeast and did not have any luck with it.
I guess I will have to try it on my own and see what happens.