#redneck wine

[clatterbane]

I mentioned maybe making that batch with the half a small melon and whatever was left in that old bag of freezer strawberries, and here it comes before the melon goes weird!

Just scooped out like if you were eating a cantaloupe with a spoon, but into a bowl instead of my mouth. Strawberries starting to thaw in the background.

The tentative plan:

Plus yeast, the usual extra nutrients for it, and enough water to top it up to 4L. I am indeed trying making some invert syrup, which the yeast can eat more easily. I did mess up a little and had to boil it a lot longer to evaporate the extra water I put. (Halving the sugar amount, but not the water. Oops.)

I'm also going extra redneck engineering here, and trying out that small fine-ish mesh laundry bag as a brewing bag to hold the fruit pulp so it's easier to get out again. It's nylon too like most of the ones sold for brewing, so why not. Planning to weight it down with that jelly jar, sanitized.

Thinking a white wine yeast might be good for this concoction, I really don't know. Couldn't really make it worse.

[pariahfox]

The next Weird Brewing experiment in line, which I plan to throw together later: some extra-easy wine using this questionable peach-flavored iced tea concentrate. Basically because I saw it with the juices, and got intrigued. I've also seen some other people working with prepared stuff like the Lipton (or Lidl house brand) instant powder shit and jugs of Arizona.

The actual brewed tea wines I have tried have turned out pretty good so far. Kiviks juices and other fruity drinks are also good quality, so maybe this will also be drinkable. I do have a feeling that fermentation could only improve it, at least for someone who is particular about their actual iced tea. "Real" tea wines haven't really been tasting much like tea either.

Not sure if I will just use more sugar, or throw some of the cheap generic honey at it later.

ETA: Thinking about it a little more, the peach is making me want to lean more toward honey, in the direction of a session mead. Probably worth a try, at any rate.

[clatterbane]

Next batch up, either tonight or tomorrow depending on how the spoon supply holds out: Raspberry Wino Fuel!

(Yes, that is a bad play off the Polish on the label. No, I am not sorry.)

Tentative plan is to make a quarter-sized batch (2.5L), roughly going by the package directions as a baseline for what to expect from the mix. Only, using one of those mesh bags as a big teabag to hold the dried fruits, etc.--so I can just pull the solids out later. Also some of that liquid yeast that I accidentally ordered, instead of what they included in the pack. Already have plenty of my own yeast nutrients to go in with it.

Thinking to start out in the bigger jar, and save the 3L green top one for secondary fermentation with less headspace. Worst case, one of the existing plastic jugs of the right size should be free by the time that's ready for secondary.

I am really not sure why they're saying to step feed the sugar in exactly that way. But, may as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Feeding it through a calculator, the amount of sugar they're calling for should give you around 12.5% ABV in the end, which is fine by me.

I got these dry blends with the idea of using them to jazz up some cider and mead concoctions, but yeah may as well try some out as recommended first. Get a better idea of what we're working with before breaking out the apple juice and honey.

[clatterbane]

Redneck Brewing #34 (I think): Banana Tropical Smoothie Wine

Just got another batch of "sounds interesting and pretty cheap to make" grocery store wine going. This time taking advantage of the remaining yeast layer from that batch of Cran-Lingonberry Pineapple stuff. (Which turned out looking and tasting more like pineapple, mixing them half and half.) Didn't seem like the little remnants of that batch should actually have much effect on the taste of this one.

Those labels should be easy enough for English speakers to decipher: a fairly thick smoothie-like juice concoction that's pretty heavy on the banana, mango, and passionfruit pulp in a mostly apple juice base. Plus some generic "no pulp" (because that's what they had) tropical juice blend which has less banana, but also some pineapple and orange in the mix.

The results were better than I expected with that other similar tropical blend juice, and I know a lot of people really like to use banana in wines and meads though I have yet to try it. So, I saw that smoothie thing with the smaller bottles on sale (this 1L was actually full price but still less per volume unit than the sale bottles), and thought I may as well give this mix a try. Worst case, it's a waste of under $4 worth of juice and a little sugar. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I let the juice come up at least to room temperature before mixing this up. But, it can have a little extra warmth from that old trusty kitchen radiator tonight to hopefully help it kick off. (Again, it doesn't get over 25C/77F up there.)

With all that fruit pulp in there, I fully expect it to foam up like crazy, and lose a lot to sediment in the end. But, it should hopefully make for better flavor.

[clatterbane]

Another weird one incoming! We have this carton of probiotic blueberry drink, so I decided to try hooching it.

Will this turn out a little sour like a sour beer from the lactobacteria? Will it turn out drinkable? We just don't know! We'll call it a health drink regardless. (And probably choke it down anyway, because I'm cheap and really don't like wasting things.) It's going to be a small batch, just in case.

The fresh drink itself doesn't taste very sour out of the carton. After a couple of weeks fermenting at room temperature with plenty of sugar, that may change. It does contain some starches, so I may as well throw in a little bit of the koji rice I do have to hopefully help break that down.

Now I am actually tempted to try brewing up a small batch of redneck sake with the blueberry stuff and maybe some Thai black rice for the color. But, I don't really feel like messing around with all of that right now (and I still don't have a fully functioning Instant Pot for cooking the rice easily), so it's a fairly "safe" and easy base of apple juice from concentrate today.

Just going to run with my old standby Coobra cider yeast. It behaves a lot like EC-1118, but it leaves fruit flavors alone better and it's also cheaper here. Gonna try to take this to under 10% ABV and probably bottle carbonate it, though, because I think it might be better that way.

[clatterbane]

Latest Redneck Brewing experiment: Strawberry Hodgepodge Hooch, now underway!

Just bottled up another batch of easy mixed berry flavored cider out of that jug this evening, so I wanted to just go ahead and reuse the yeast dregs. The little bit of cider remnants shouldn't clash with this.

I had that carton of wild strawberry juice drink to try, so thought I might as well throw in what was left in that open bottle of squeezy strawberry jam--which is actually more of a smooth strawberry sauce with a decent fruit content. Better flavor than I expected. The rest of that jar of cheapo honey can go in there too.

I also ended up adding enough plain white sugar to bring the final ABV up to just over 10%, plus some pectic enzyme to take care of whatever was in the squeezy stuff. Another batch where I figured, "how bad could it be?". Now I guess we'll find out. 😅

[clatterbane]

Redneck Brewing #20: Tropical Jubilee Wine

Hard to believe that I am up to small "artisanal" batch #20 by now, honestly. And only two of those have needed to go straight down the sink so far.

But, today's folly is another extra-simple storebought juice approach, following directly in the footsteps of the Sea Dyke which I just bottled up a little while ago!

We got another grocery delivery this evening, which included this carton of what is evidently a 50th anniversary special edition tropical blend. A tropical taste celebration, according to the label! (How does this vary from their usual tropical version? I haven't tried either one yet.)

Ingredients:

I am a little concerned about the orange juice content there, btw, after seeing enough people report less than appealing results from commercial orange juice. But, we'll see.

At any rate, it seemed like a reasonable idea to just leave it out of the fridge, and get it going pretty much straight away in the Sea Dyke bottle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That will be the second time that I have reused that same yeast colony, which will actually be a first here. I'm cutting back some on added yeast nutrients for this batch, under the idea that there are most likely enough of their fallen comrades left in the sludge to keep our friendly cannibalistic microbes reasonably happy already. Just keeping this simple with some added sugar, and a smidge of extra nutrition for insurance.

[clatterbane]

Redneck Brewing #36: Raspberry-Cranberry Apple Wine

Just getting ready to throw together another easy batch, to make decent use of the yeast left in the jug I just bottled another batch of flavored cider out of. No need to clean it up right now either. 😊

This is basically just a variation on the last few easy flavored ciders, only I'm planning to take it to a higher ABV and not carbonate it afterward. This yeast can more than handle it. Considered using honey for the flavor, but didn't particularly feel like dealing with that little extra hassle tonight. We're really going cheap and cheerful!

I was planning to just let those apple peels thaw out some while I brewed the tea and put the rest together, but I may actually stick them in the microwave on defrost for a few minutes so they won't go in the jug so cold and maybe knock the yeast back.

No gradual feeding schedule this time either; we're just chucking everything in there at once. It should be fine. Again, this particularly yeast is a real beast, and doesn't particularly seem to care as long as it does get sugar and some other nutrients.