Home brewing kits ....

Glaucus said:
Sugar and water,
1060 pretty much identical as start gravity. Got some more on now. starting point is 1.07
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I've heard sugar and water can be notoriously difficult to brew. You need to add yeast nutrient and citric acid (either in powder or juice of a lemon) because yeast needs nitrates and slightly acid environment to thrive.

That said, if you've put 4kg of sugar in only half the amount of water you thought you had, it might be too concentrated for the yeast to survive. This is why when you want high alcohol you brew it up initially and then feed the yeast more sugar as it brews out.

Skeeter said:
And Jonny69, my Princes apple juice turbo has turned a murky orangey brown :confused:. Should I be worried?
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No, sounds promising. The murky brown is the yeast multiplying and is good news. After a few weeks you'll see a thick sediment forming at the bottom and eventually the cider will start to clear :)
 
Skeeter said:
I thought most demijohns were 1 gallon? :confused:
?
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They are, for some reason I thought they where two gallons. :confused: ah well at least I know now.

Got 1KG sugar to 1 Gallon, 1.07 initial reading. Got nutrients this time, but not citric acid, will try that next time if this fails.

At least it's cheap mistakes. Sugar is in expensive unlike other kits.
 
Don't be surprised if the sugar and water mix needs a lot of aging. Some of the by products of the yeast fermenting just sucrose are pretty potent, so it may taste quite harsh at first. It eventually mellows out pretty nicely though.
 
Glaucus said:
Got 1KG sugar to 1 Gallon, 1.07 initial reading. Got nutrients this time, but not citric acid, will try that next time if this fails.

At least it's cheap mistakes. Sugar is in expensive unlike other kits.
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That quantity should be ok to brew in. 1kg in a gallon will be about 11-12%. If you'd put 2kg in a gallon it might struggle to get going.

I think you ought to stick to one type of yeast though. Get a tub of Young's general purpose wine yeast off eBay. It's reliable and predictable and drops out into a nice solid sediment at the bottom. You can syphon right down to the bottom and hardly suck any of it up :)
 
Yeah it might still be to strong.

Yeast the failed batch I selected a low taste, low ether producing one. This one was just munitions premimum gold beer yeast. So may struggle with that high alcholo.

Will def need to research yeast and get a decent amount. Only done one demijohn this time.

As I want a very soda fizzy finish, do you think I should be using champagne yeast?
 
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Cheers Jonny69. There is already 1cm of sediment at the bottom of the cloudy Lidl turbo.

How long do you recommend storing the turbo in bottles for before drinking?
 
Glaucus said:
As I want a very soda fizzy finish, do you think I should be using champagne yeast?
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I've used Champagne yeast in a cider and it was incredibly fizzy, but it took a very long time to clear. Reading up on Champagne making, it seems to be deliberately bred to do this so you set the bottle upside down, twist it from time to time to work the yeast into a slug underneath the cork, flash-freeze the neck of the bottle and pop it out. The process is called riddling and disgorging.

"It involves tilting each bottle towards the neck and rotating it often to collect the yeast just under the cork. The tip of the neck is then flash frozen and the cork popped. The yeast is removed, along with a small portion of the wine."

Skeeter said:
Cheers Jonny69. There is already 1cm of sediment at the bottom of the cloudy Lidl turbo.

How long do you recommend storing the turbo in bottles for before drinking?
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In the summer mine has been ready to drink pretty much 4-5 weeks after I started brewing. That's 3 weeks of brewing until the airlock stopped moving, a week to sit there before I racked it off (and shook the fizz out, added campden and sorbate), then left it for a few days and it was ready to drink :)
 
Just put a new brew on. We had a dodgy watermelon - cut it open and it literally started oozing litres of liquid. Overnight it had filled the container we put it in and the flesh had basically emptied most of its liquid out. It tasted fine so I decided to make a brew of it :D

I used the guidelines for Watermelon-Mustang Grape Wine from here but just adjusted the quantities to suit the gallon demijohn.

I cut all the flesh out the melon and gave it a good mash with the potato masher:

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I then passed all that through the muslin you see in the funnel on the left. Don't do this if you have a squeamish veggie girlfriend because it looks like badly minced up murder scene once you've squeezed the juice out of it:

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It's a lovely pink colour and I got 2.2 litres. Shame we lost about a litre last night...

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I've added a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, a teaspoon of pectolase to make it clear, 850g of white sugar, a teaspoon of Young's wine yeast and it's topped up with red grape juice. I might add a mug of tea as usual, since it's a red wine:

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:D

I want to get this root beer sorted/perfected first, can see it taking many many batches.
Maybe later in the year when I'm not spending money on holidays. I'll buy a load more equipment. Then I can do loads at same t,e.
 
Glaucus said:
Nice work, doent "wine" type stuff have to age for 6months? That's what's putting me off trying mead.
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Apparently blackberry wine needs at least 6 months and more like a year before it's drinkable, but mine was pretty nice as soon as it was clear. I've drunk most of it already (it was finished by November), but I've been well behaved and I'm holding back a few bottles :D

WOW doesn't need aging and can be drunk immediately, but I didn't like the taste of it.
 
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