I bought more of the cherry juice, but it got diverted to making another batch of Tymbark Apple & Cherry TC (incidentally, its only £1 for 2l in Asda at the moment for those interested in following my recipie in the TC thread)
The plan is to make a Cherry initially and later on, A Creme De Banane liqueur, both naturally fermented to ~20% abv without distillation required. After some careful research, I decided on the following:
1) I'll be using will be a Gervin GV4 Dessert yeast, capable of 21% with nutrient support
2) To give the yeast a little hand, I'll be using dextrose rather than the usual granulated sugar the kits use. With the cost of granulated sugar pushing over the £1 mark locally, using Dex that my LHBS can supply to me for £1.49 a kilo seems a lot more attractive
3) I found this on ebay - looks very promising for both the liqueurs as they can supply a normal and a cream liqueur base (which should go very nicely with the banana so I'll try making a sample of each)
To accheive a final ABV of 20%, I calculated the OG needed to be 1.150 @ 21%. Given the juice contained a fair amount of sugar, I took an SG of the straight juice and worked out the latent sugar content using THIS table - I then subtracted the value from the value shown to give an SG of 1.150 to give me the quantity of sugar I needed to add. (Turned out to be quite accurate too on testing)
So... recipies....
Lidl Cherry Liqueur
5l Lidl Sour Cherry Juice (would say a sour liqueur, but with this much sugar... i doubt it will be
1 Sachet Gervin GV4 Yeast
1.5 Tsp Youngs Yeast Nutrient
1350g Brewing Sugar (Dextrose) - Calculate this ! yours may be different.....
Method.
Pour 2l of cherry juice into fermenter ( I went with a 6l Demi, but on reflection I'll be using a 10l Fermenting bucket in future) and take OG reading, calculate sugar content and subtract from the desired OG (giving you your required sugar quantity). Bring 1l of juice slowly to the boil in a large saucepan and dissolve the sugar. Leave this sugar juice solution to cool (preferrably crash cool to RT as you're dealing with small liquid quantities and you'll have pitching temp problems later!) and whilst waiting, prepare the GV4 (instructed to make a starter- pitch sachet into 50ml of 25-30 deg water with 1/2tsp of sugar in and leave for 30 minutes to work...and boy does it WORK !)
Added cooled sugar solution to the juice and checked temp - then pitched the yeast (plus 1.5tsp of nutrient dissoved in a little lukewarm water). Seal fermeter with lid+airlock and placed in warm (22-24 deg) place.
Just a couple of things to note. Firstly... it isnt easy to dissolve 1.35kg of sugar in a sugar rich juice ! expect to heat quite strongly and stir constantly to get it in...and it'll be thick, almost golden syrup consistancy when cold. The other thing I found out about 8 hours later when I came to check on progress and found the cherry equivilent of a ditch's stout ! the Krausen had erupted through the 'lock and was about 7 inches deep in the DJ ! Thats why I reccomend a 10l bucket as it should have enough spew space to save you lots of cleaning up....
Currently, im at pitch+3days - krausen dropped about 12 hours ago and i added the remaining 2l of cherry juice to bring to full volume. Its settled into a nice, fast fement with the classic fizzy cola sound and a glug once every 2-4 seconds. I fully expect this one to take 14 days to complete just due to the sugar content.
My next job is to get on with the the banana base. Im thinking this one will have more issues tho as the juice appears to have a very high pulp content
Could be a much lower liquid content with this one so I'll be making a 7.5l batch.I've also ordered the liqueur bases and I'll put some info up once they arrive
In addition, i'll also be stabilising these brews as I think there will be a potential sugar surplus - off the HBS for some Sorbate and more campden tabs....
- Click 