Skeeter Pee - a question

[BernardSmith]

Given the sorbates used to help preserve bottled lemon juice I wonder if it may make any good sense to simply dissolve the sugar in water and add nutrients, and tannin and when at room temperature pitch the yeast. After a week or so, and so you will have a very large (and hopefully, very viable yeast colony, then add the lemon juice, one 32 oz bottle each day for three days. This should prevent the pH from dropping below 3.00 while the yeast is working hard to ferment the sugars and in effect, we are adding the lemon flavors to a nominal "secondary" despite the fact that we would not yet have racked the SP from the primary. Do you see any real downside to adding the lemon juice later rather than sooner? I cannot see that the juice will provide any additional nutrients for the yeast and the acidity of the juice is surely a stressor for the yeast, not to speak of the preservatives that will have been added. Thoughts? Thanks.

 

[cmason1957]

Following the recipe, I have never had an issue getting skeeter pee to ferment quite fine. I mix everything up, add 1 bottles of lemon juice, pitch yeast. Given what I know now, I would make a good yeast starter and pitch it the next morning, after having built a very large colony of yeast, I have a vague memory that I might have normally pitched 2 or 3 packages of yeast. After 3 days or so, add extra nutrient plus 1 bottle of lemon juice, after 3 days add last bottle of lemon juice. Always fermented nicely, always finished just fine below 0.996. If I were to make more again any time soon, I would do the exact same thing, don't mess with what works, the PH isn't that low.

 

[BernardSmith]

Problem for me is not the pH but the sorbates in the juice. I sometimes make SP and this time, as in previous times, I simply begin with 1 32 oz bottle of lemon juice. I pitched EC 1118 and nothing. After 24 hours, I pitched a second pack of yeast that this time I allowed to grow in a jar with some water and sugar... Again... nothing. I guess I could create a new starter and add some of the SP to it and so dilute even more the sorbates... but I am thinking, if we simply add all the preservatives with the lemon juice close to the end of the active fermentation would that not solve the problem at a stroke?

 

[BernardSmith]

Created a new starter and have been adding to it since yesterday afternoon. Looks like this has solved the problem (or the fact that there are at least two packs of yeast in the problem carboy may have added to the solution - giving the sorbate more yeast to latch on to and so unable to latch (as easily) onto the new starter... But as always, uptilting the batch by creating a starter and slowly doubling the volume of the starter from the problem batch, is a slow , slow process. At this time, I have only 32 oz of the lemon juice with the must /wine... The other two bottles will need to wait until the gravity of the batch falls to about 1.010 or 1.005 or thereabouts.

 

[Jovimaple]

When I make it, I make sure to stir up the must quite a bit to make sure it gets lots of oxygen, and gets rid of some of the preservatives, then let it sit 12 to 24 hours. I use the same protocal whenever I add a dose of kmeta to fruit must.

Like Craig, I start with a little lemon (1/3 of my total) up front and add the rest after fermentation is complete. I stir the must together, make a yeast starter, then let both sit at least overnight before pitching the yeast starter.

For my most recent batch (last fall), I used my Tilt hydrometer and the tracking spreadsheet shows the SG drop didn't really kick in for about 36 hours - it started at 1.090 in the morning of 9/26 and didn't hit 1.080 until 11 pm on 9/27. The Tilt also records the must temp and I could see it heating up (from 71° to 80° F) starting at about 4pm on 9/27, so I knew the yeastie beasties were kicking into gear.