ultra-sour iced tea?

[fredstock99]

i am pretty new to home brewing, only 6 batches of beer done. i was messing around with some random stuff i have lying around...
i took the better part of a one-gallon family sized arizona iced tea and added to it, a couple oz's corn syrup, about 3/4 punds of honey, a couple oz's of leftover wheat dry malt extract, and some apricots in apricot juice from trader joes. the OG was 1.2, thats about 16% potential alcohol. i sprinkled in a 5g package of red star cuvee sparkling wine yeast. i let it ferment in the same arizona container it came in (all my good containers have beer in them). Its plastic, slightly opaque, and i set it on top of a bookshelf, around 60-70 degrees depending on time of day, and pretty open to light.

after 2 weeks, i used coffee filters to take out the apricot bits, and got rid of a bunch of trub. the specific gravity came out to be 1.042, and potential OH 4%. it was the most sour thing i have ever tasted. after letting it settle out for another week, i siphoned it to another plastic arizona container and topped it off with 0.3 gallons of water with about 0.5lbs lactose.

here is my question: will the sourness go away with time? and any ideas on how it got there to begin with? was it the fruit? contamination? yeast?

cheers.

 

[MikeRLynch]

Wow.

Okay, well let's begin at the beginning... I'm pretty sure that the arizona iced tea is loaded with all kinds of lovely preservatives. This will cause a stuck ferment, and all kinds of wonderful off-flavors. The malt and honey additions are almost negligable, seeing as how they were so small, even for a 1 gal batch. Using apricots from the can with the syrup will add pectins to your must, causing it to be forever cloudy, unless you use pectic enzyme and finings. Fermenting in the bottle it came in might not be terrible, but I would go with a glass or higher rated PET bottle for ferments. Regardless, the bottle should be out of the light. Using coffee filters is risky for infection, even if sanitized. 1.042 is a ridiculously high FG, and means it will be syrupy sweet. And of course there's the fact that you tried to ferment TEA, which is so chock full of tannins I'm surprised the puckering you did after tasting wasn't permenant.

The tea is what is causing the sourness, or what is probably more accurately described as astringency. I know there are such things as hard iced teas out there, but I have a funny feeling they are flavored with non-sugar extracts, and not with actual tea. Wine recipies sometimes call for 1 or 2 cups of very black tea to add tannins, but never more than that. Perhaps others can chime in here and I could be completely proven wrong

mike

 

[fredstock99]

thanks for the info... maybe i'll stick to experimenting with beer. i was also wondering though, is there any evidence that yeast nutrient adds flavor? because i tasted that stuff, and it is not pleasant. thanks again, i guess i will just mix this stuff with some crazy amount of sugar, drop some dry ice in it, and serve it as "punch" to some unsuspecting guests. good thing grad students drink anything.

 

[Cheesefood]

good thing grad students drink anything.

The hell we do! Grad students have better taste than undergrad students.

 

[ColoradoXJ13]

The hell we do! Grad students have better taste than undergrad students.

except we are all much poorer than undergrads, mommy and daddy don't pay for our bad habits anymore...

 

[Cheesefood]

except we are all much poorer than undergrads, mommy and daddy don't pay for our bad habits anymore...

Did you make the mistake of going straight from undergrad to grad school?

 

[ColoradoXJ13]

Did you make the mistake of going straight from undergrad to grad school?

yup, well, I worked in a bicycle store for 3 months...I figured it would be nice to finish grad school by the time I was 27...here I am 28.5 and I am not done...

 

[fredstock99]

yes, absolutely, better taste than undergrads. but much less money, and much higher need to imbibe alcoholic beverages to deal with the realities of being a grad student .... http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
hoooray for conferences and disappearing PI's and happy hour.

cheers.

 

[ColoradoXJ13]

yes, absolutely, better taste than undergrads. but much less money, and much higher need to imbibe alcoholic beverages to deal with the realities of being a grad student .... http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
hoooray for conferences and disappearing PI's and happy hour.

cheers.

My PI is in Italy for 2.5 weeks, output is almost negative, which is bad considering that I have to get a paper submitted in the next week or so and have to write my thesis by early august and defend by Aug 24...oh, and we are really