Batch 039: Nipples Explode with Delight
Xenia juiced some peaches a month or so ago, and the juice has just been languishing in the freezer. I decided to liberate it. Plus, we have a bunch of apple juice left over from preliminary Thanksgiving prep. And we like honey. We're going to call this Nipples Explode with Delight after the brilliant Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch.
Ingredients in this batch
- 12¾ c. apple juice from our local Sprouts market.
- 1 lb., 5.4 oz. Kirkland clover honey.
- 2⅓ cups home-juiced peaches.
- ½ tsp. of Valley Brewers yeast energizer.
- ¼ tsp. of Valley Brewers wine tannin.
- 1 tsp. of Fermax yeast nutrient.
- 1 packet Lalvin K1V-1116 wine yeast.
- ½ tsp. LD Carlson pectic enzyme, added on 22 November 2016.
- ¼ Whirlfloc tablet, added on 22 November 2016.
- 1 cup. (approx. 12 oz.) Bennett Farms orange blossom honey, added on 26 Jan 2017.
Brew date: 21 November 2016.
Original gravity: 1.093 (but we're calculating the ABV as if the O.G. were 1.119 because of late honey addition).
Bottling day: 26 March 2017
Final gravity: 1.025
Estimated ABV: 13.25%
Yield:
- 5 x 12 oz. beer bottles
- 1 x 500 mL beer bottle
- 1 x 22 oz. beer bottle
- hydrometer tube
Total: Approx. 105 fl. oz., or about 82% of a gallon. (Not bad, considering how much peach flesh made it into the carboy and dropped out during fermentation.)
Brewing directly in the one-gallon apple-juice jug here. The peach puree has been stored uncovered in the freezer for a month, so I scraped off a good chunk of the material on top in hopes of removing any of the puree that may have been contaminated by anything in the freezer, then melted the juice in the microwave. (Man, our freezer is cold. That juice was frozen solid.) Meanwhile, rehydrated the yeast in appropriately warm water and sanitized what could be sanitized and poured the honey through a funnel, then followed it with the juice, the wine tannin, and the yeast nutrient and energizer. This produced a little over a gallon. Agitated for five minutes to oxygenate, then popped in a fermentation lock and filled it to the line with vodka.
Added some orange blossom honey in late January to get additional sweetness and fragrance, and (hopefully) to bump up the ABV a bit more.
Observations
- 2016-11-22T10:53: There's so much fermentation that it's pushing little bits of peach into the airlock. Replaced the airlock with a blowoff hose. Also added a quarter of a Whirlfloc tablet and half a teaspoon of pectic enzyme. (Better late than never.)
- 2017-01-06T22:23: Still tastes pretty young. The peach flavor has mellowed a lot, leaving it mostly noticeable in the mouthfeel.
- 2017-01-26: Still tastes pretty young. It's gotten quite dry: gravity is 1.001. Added another cup of honey, hoping to restart fermentation.
- 2017-01-30T11:55: Still no visible indication that fermentation has restarted. The added honey is just lying at the bottom of the carboy.
- 2017-02-22: The honey has gradually dissolved into the fermenting cyser. There's never been any noticeable further carbon dioxide discharge, though.
- 2017-03-26: Bottled, yielding about 82% of a gallon at about 13.25% ABV.
Lessons Learned
- The gravity of this batch of Sprouts apple juice is 1.059. We measured this for science. FOR SCIENCE!