Honeydew juice floating on top of honey.

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The price of honeydew has dropped. Time to execute a cyser that I've been planning. I'm calling this one Camel Spotting after a Monty Python skit.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2 lb. Kirkland clover honey
  • ¼ tsp. Fermaid K
  • ½ tsp. Fermax yeast nutrient
  • ¼ tsp. potassium carbonate
  • 5 lb., 12¼ oz. (weight after skin removed) of honeydew, juiced in a grinding juicer, producing approx. ⅓ gal. juice)
  • 1 packet Lalvin K1V-1116 wine yeast (rehydrated in ½ cup of water at 94℉).
  • Perricone Farms apple juice to just over one gallon (that's nearly, but not quite, the full half-gallon in the juice container)
  • First nutrient addition, 5 April 2017:
  • Second nutrient addition, 10 April 2017:
  • ½ oz. American oak cubes, medium toast, approx. one inch on each side (9 cubes total), added on 5 June 2017.
  • 7 fl. oz. of honeydew melon juice, the result of juicing one medium honeydew using a citrus juicer and without grinding up the fibery bits of the melon, added on 27 June 2017.

Brew date: 2 April 2017.
Original gravity: 1.134 (but later addition of honeydew juice diluted this to an as-if O.G. of 1.129).
Bottling day: 6 August 2017.
Final gravity: 1.005
Estimated ABV: 17.5%

Yield:

  • 5 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 x 22 oz. beer bottle
  • 1 x 500 mL beer bottle
  • hydrometer tube, plus other slop to a total of about 10 fl. oz

Total: Approx. 109 fl. oz., or about 85% of a gallon.

Sanitized everything. Xenia removed the honeydew meat from the rind and juiced the meat. I added the honey and to a one-gallon carboy, then poured in the honeydew juice, then the yeast nutrient and energizer and the K2CO3. Poured in apple juice to the carboy. Agitated extensively to mix and oxygenate, letting the carboy sit for long periods of time between agitations, in order to come up to room temperature (as the apple juice had been stored in the refrigerator). When the must came up to room temperature, rehydrated the yeast and pitched it. Popped in an airlock and filled it, then labeled the carboy.

Observations

  • 2017-04-03T03:21: There's clearly some carbon dioxide already being produced in the carboy.
  • 2017-04-03T13:42: The yeast is beginning to separate the honeydew pulp from suspension in the must: some is falling to the bottom, and some is collecting in largish clots on the side, but much is being pushed to the top of the carboy.
  • 2017-04-03T12:18: The yeast has pushed the pulp that had collected on the inside of the carboy to the top, and, in fact, has pushed much of the pulp into the airlock. Swapped out the airlock for a blowoff hose.
  • 2017-04-03T16:37: There is pulp being pushed into the blowoff hose.
  • 2017-04-05T22:28: All of the pulp that was previously gathered at the top of the carboy had been pushed into the hose and trapped in a downward kink by late last night; the bubbling has receded so that there is now CO2-filled headspace at the top of the jug, and the color of the cyser has lightened a great deal. Swapped the blowoff hose for an airlock, which I filled with Star-San (we are out of cheap vodka at the moment). Measured the gravity: 1.051! Already! (Wow, K1V-1116 is a champ!). Performed the first nutrient addition.
  • 2017-04-10: Measured the gravity: 0.999! (Wow!) Performed the second nutrient addition, though the ideal moment for doing so has probably already passed.
  • 2017-06-05: Tasted; the honeydew has contributed more of a grassy flavor than I'd like. Put in some oak cubes to give it a bit more backbone.
  • 2017-06-27: Juiced a whole medium honeydew, yielding about seven fluid ounces of neon green juice at 1.040, then poured it into the carboy.
  • 2017-08-06: Bottled. Still tastes kind of grassy, but it can age in the bottle, I guess. Total yield was about 85% of a gallon at around 17% ABV.