Just cannot drink sweet... but pray tell, what the heck is "unsweetened skeeter pee" ??
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- Thread starter Marius Radu
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Just cannot drink sweet... but pray tell, what the heck is "unsweetened skeeter pee" ??
Freezer Burn Ingredient List:
Who knows? About 5 various kinds of miscellaneous, old, unidentifiable frozen fruits. Some berries, maybe some applesauce even? A lot of sediment has been removed thus far.
Nothing in my books or internet searches so far had told me that high alcohol environment will kill yeasts. All that I'd seen is to BE SURE TO ADD CAMPDEN Tabs when you bottle to kill yeasts, because there may well be yeasts still active. ??
As I explained to a friend, as I'm moving from being a baker to winemaker, I've found that wine making is not a simple, straight-forward business. It is not accomplished like following a recipe: Add 1 c sugar, 2 c flour, 1 tsp baking soda, etc. etc., mix and bake and waalaa! You have cake! or you have wine! Nope. Doesn't work that way.
As I explained to a friend, as I'm moving from being a baker to winemaker, I've found that wine making is not a simple, straight-forward business. It is not accomplished like following a recipe: Add 1 c sugar, 2 c flour, 1 tsp baking soda, etc. etc., mix and bake and waalaa! You have cake! or you have wine! Nope. Doesn't work that way.
All yeasts have a a published limit, EC-1118 for instance is listed at 18% ABV. Once the yeast has converted enough sugar into alcohol for the ABV to reach 18%, the yeast begins to die off from alcohol toxicity, so it sort of works itself to death. If you look up the yeasts you plan to use, you will find their ABV limits, some are as low as 12%, so we have to select properly in order to have the yeast function to completion.
Wine making can be similar to baking, there are just a few caveats, one being sugar additions. If you can use a hydrometer, you can easily read how much sugar you have and therefore how much alcohol you can produce if it's all converted. If you have enough sugar present to produce 8% ABV, and you want 12% ABV, a simple calculator like Fermcalc ( http://www.fermcalc.com/FermCalcJS.html ) will easily tell you how much sugar to add. Once all the sugar has been fermented out, and the wine is dry and stabilized with sulfite and sorbate, we can add sugar back to the wine to make it sweeter, without fear of fermentation re-starting.
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Skeeter pee is a lemon juice based wine (skeeterpee.com for details on how to make). It has a subtle lemon taste to it, very easy to make. The last few steps are add 6 cups of sugar (and that's a memory number, so don't hold me to it), then bottle. So my thought was make it to a lower than normal abv, like 7-10%, then don't add that last sugar addition and blend it with your high sugar wine, do this to a taste that you like. I don't know if it's the "right" thing to do, but it would give you a low abv, dry wine to balance out some of what you already have.
Thanks to everyone for your patience ... I'm listening and taking notes. You are all pearls in my book! Gosh, this has been emotional and my friends are pretty much avoiding me these days. When they see me coming, they turn a corner.... cuz all I want to talk about is WINE, and YEAST, and SG readings, and flavor, and color, and carboys, and isn't this interesting and oooo isn't that great? and do you like this flavor or prefer that one? Well, everyone loves that last question. Feel like this blog may be my AA meeting. (no I'm not alcoholic) (really)
Very interesting..... thanks for the idea.
I think that blending it with a lower ABV wine is the right choice (for me). My cran-grape ended at 1.010, I intend to blend with a totally dry cran-grape at .990, 1.000 result. I mistakenly bottled 3 gallons of it, but luckily it was in swing top (Grolsh) type bottles. Pop, dump, blend, re-bottle.
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