User:Saul/brewing

Mead

Ingredients

• 1.3kg (NZ Bush) Honey
• ~5L water
• M02 Cider yeast (~1/2 a packet)
• ~25 raisins

Process

1. Heat honey with some water until dissolved.
2. Pour into 5L jug with raisins and top up with water until it is a couple inches from the top.
3. Pitch yeast and wait 6 weeks.

Notes

The raisins are there to provide nutrient for the yeast - has little effect on taste.

Records

01/11/2024

Specific Gravity: 1.080

Tomato Paste Wash (TPW)

For ~2.5L of ethanol, ~500ml of hearts.

Ingredients

• 5kg sugar
• 80g Bakers Yeast (Active Dried Yeast)
• 1/4tsp citric acid
• 200g Tomato paste
• ~25L Water

Process

1. Pour sugar into fermentation bucket.
2. Dissolve citric acid with tomato paste in a jug and add to bucket.
3. Keep adding hot water until sugar is dissolved.
4. Top up with hot and cold water to 25L trying to end up with a temperature of 30c.
5. Stir wash until it is spinning and pitch yeast - no need to stir it in.
6. Takes 14-21 days to ferment, it takes longer than turbo yeast so I like to leave it 3 weeks for optimal yield.
7. Siphon wash and discard sediment.
8. Add 1tsp (optional) of olive oil when distilling to prevent puking.

Notes

• Citric acid is a slight acidity tweak to help fermentation, could probably omit it. Could also substitute with Lemon.
• I have tried a variety of tomato pastes and had no issues - Wattie's Leggo's & Homebrand (Woolworths/Countdown).
• I have cut the tomato paste down to 166g before and did not have fermentation issues.

Kombucha

Ingredients

• 600g Sugar
• 50g tea (20 tea bags of Bell)
• ~5L water

Process

Once you have a mix going (copied from an existing scoby), you will need to bottle the mix and get the first fermentation running again around every week:

1. Remove scoby and 700ml of liquid and place in separate container.
2. Stir the remaining liquid to ensure consistency.
3. Bottle the stirred liquid adding fruit and/or any other flavors.
4. Clean out the container (that the liquid was in) with white vinegar.
5. Add sugar to container and dissolve in 1L of boiling water.
6. Add tea bags and wait 10 mins to brew (no need to stir).
7. Remove tea bags and add 3.3L cold water and ensure entire mix is cold (not still hot from the boiling water added from an earlier step).
8. Add your scoby and the 700ml of liquid you placed aside earlier.
9. Cover and ferment for around 1 week.

Notes

If don't do this cycle every 5-7 days, you run the risk of the result tasting like vinegar, if this goes too far the scoby will only produce vinegar tasting product and you will need to start from scratch.

Ginger Beer (Non-Alcoholic)

Ingredients

• 1Kg Ginger
• 6 Lemons/Limes
• Ginger beer yeast
• ~600g Sugar
• 5L Water

Process

1. Blend the Ginger and boil (with a portion of the water) alongside the sugar for 30 minutes.
2. Add the lemon while hot and wait for it to cool.
3. Sieve or strain the liquid to remove the ginger.
4. Add the rest of the water and yeast.
5. Pour into bottles with 1/2 tsp of sugar.
6. Pasteurize after 2 days.

Notes

This has ~12% sugar, might want to reduce that to 9% or even 6% - need testing.

Ginger Liquor

Ingredients

• 1Kg Ginger
• 6Kg Sugar
• 6 Lemons (Or 300ml of juice)
• M02 Cider yeast (Or ginger beer yeast, brewers yeast or bakers yeast)

Process

1. Wash ginger (don't peel)
2. Blitz ginger with water to make a paste.
3. Move to a pot for boiling.
4. Add 2Kg of the sugar with ginger paste.
5. Add juice of lemons.
6. Bing mix to boil.
7. Simmer for 40 minutes.
8. Turn off heat and cool.
9. Strain mixture into fermenter. (Can rinse ginger with more water to extract a little more flavor.)
10. Dissolve the remaining 4Kg Sugar.
11. Top up to 23L with water.
12. Pitch yeast
13. Ferment until complete (~2 months)
14. Bottle and leave to age for at least 3 months.
15. Once clear it is good to drink.

Notes

This was really slow to ferment for me, I think this is due to very little nutrient in the mix, maybe add some dead yeast (boil yeast to kill it) or raisins to add more nutrient?

References

• Trev's Life - HOME BREW GINGER BEER