Dragon Blood/Skeeter pee - beer yeast?

[WI_Wino]

I was cleaning some beer bottles tonight and got thinking about how to do a a bottle carbed DB/skeeter pee. Carbonation should bring out the fruit flavors even earlier. One idea would be to backsweeten with an infermentable sugar, then add priming sugar and bottle.

Another idea I had was what if I used a beer yeast like s-05? That's a basic beer yeast that I think should stop at 1.015 or so. From there add priming sugar and bottle. Voila, sweet, bottle carbed DB/skeeter

There is lots of acid in the standard recipe, maybe a problem for the beer yeast? Thinking of trying this out sometime next week...

 

[dangerdave]

Sounds interesting. Good luck with this one, Wino.

 

[Boatboy24]

Keep us posted, please.

 

[WI_Wino]

Will do. Not going to happen this week, family visiting this weekend and need to prep for that (aka hide all the wine!).

 

[CBell]

The only issue i see with this is that it takes EC 118 quite a lot to get started in these wines d/t the acid content. I haven't worked with beer yeast but I would worry about how it would fare in such a toxic environment and that it would become stressed.

I would recommend whipping up a hearty starter if you do this, and definitely keep us posted, I haven't seen anything on here about anyone trying this yet, it'll be interesting to see what happens, at any rate

 

[WI_Wino]

That's my concern as well. Thus far my plan is:

• get ingredients for 5 gallon batch of DB (bump up fruit an extra pound or so)
• buy two packages of S-05 beer yeast, use 1 to start, try the second one if ferment doesn't start in a day or so
• have some EC1118 on standby in case the whole thing goes south
• hold back most of the lemon juice until ferment is going strong and add in over the span of a couple of days
• ...
• profit

I've been doing some number crunching as well:

S-05 has an apparent attenuation of 81% link

Formula to calculate estimated FG (based on OG and attenuation % as a decimal (75% = .75)):
FG = ((1-Attenuation) * (OG - 1)) + 1

Formula to calculate estimated ABV (based on OG and FG):
ABV = 131 * (OG - FG)

So my calculations show that:

• OG of 1.075 => estimated FG of 1.014, ABV 8%
• OG of 1.080 => estimated FG of 1.015, ABV 8.5%
• OG of 1.085 => estimated FG of 1.016 ABV 9%
• OG of 1.090 => estimated FG of 1.017, ABV 9.5%

I think I'm going to shoot for an OG of 1.080 to start with and see how it plays out.

 

[CBell]

Seems like you've thought it out well, planned for harsh yeast conditions well, etc. Can't wait to see how it all transpires

 

[Arne]

Havn't made d.b. yet, but with the skeeter pee most always start it with one bottle of lemon and add the others as time goes on. Last one usually goes in about 1.025 or so. Usually add some lime juice with mine. It goes in with the last bottle of lemon. Arne.

 

[dangerdave]

Arne! You should try some DB. It's all the craze!

 

[WI_Wino]

Ordered the beer yeast yesterday, should be here tomorrow or so.

Excuse the mini rant but why is basic beer yeast three bucks a package and wine yeast < $1 for just about every kind? Seems fishy to me...

 

[dangerdave]

Looks like the beer makers are being taken! What gives?