Rocket candy?

[brewinski]

I have made a terrible mistake, that I am just letting go through ... I commented elsewhere about not using my reading glasses and running with what I thought was 11kg's of sugar in a 20L ginger beer ...

.. so after only being able to guess that it had an OG of 1180 - 1200 ?? (there was no scale left on the hydrometer, it poked out that far) and not knowing how far the yeast would really get ... if it was at all able to attenuate it down to the 1010 - 1020 range ... what the hell would it be ... I know highly alcoholic is one way of describing it, est 18%

I kept 5L of it and struck it with the Brewers Yeast (??, it came in a coopers kit) and the remnants of some US-05 ... somewhat believing that it needed all the yeast it could get. It has been fermenting away steadily for almost a week, I will get game and do another FG sample later this weekend.

I didn't use the Coopers GB kit, just the yeast from a surplus beer kit ... it was all my own lemons, ginger, maple syrup, Brown and Raw sugar

It looks almost black in the demijohn, with a thick dark brown Kreisen, and a light brown foam on the top, and after 6 days it is still bubbling CO2 out the blow off, once every 5 - 6 sec's.

I now have my glasses planted next to all brewing gear

So my questions are ...

1. is it at all possibly that it will finish up into anything?? ... it's basically 40 - 50% sugar, pre fermentation.
2. should I have abandoned long ago??, or is there an outside chance this will be relatively ok ?

cheers

B

 

[Matt Browne]

I'm not sure how it will turn out but it would probably fire up your lawn mower!!

 

[brewinski]

with the hint of rain this weekend, that may be an unwanted side effect ... but maybe I can use it to fire the burner for this weekends brewing ??

 

[MHB]

Just for fun
if you dissolve 11Kg of sugar in 20L of water, you have a total of 31Kg of which 11Kg is sugar, giving you a oP of (11/30)*100 = 36.666
convert to SG = (36.666*4)/1000 + 1 = 1.1466666, that's about your OG, might be a bit higher if you added other bits to the solution.
the problem you will run into is that the yeast you have used even under ideal conditions wont get to much over 10% ABV
from %ABV = (change in gravity)/7.5 tells us that to get to 10% alcohol the change in gravity would be 10 = CG/7.5 or 10*7.5 = CG = 75 Points or 1.075 from your OG of 1.1467 leaving your FG at about 1.072, which is pretty sweet, when you think that most soft drinks are around 1.040.

I think I would throw in a couple of packets of Champagne yeast (EC1118 or like) and a bit of yeast nutrient; it will push the alcohol up to 17-18%
give it plenty of time to finish, bottle in PET bottles and try it in the middle of winter next year, could be a good little winter warmer.
Anything that strong is going to take time to settle down and there is no point in adding priming sugar to the bottles, yeast doesn't turn off like a light switch, even when you think its finished it will keep on chipping away at the odd sugar and making a bit of fizz in the bottles. Over time it should carbonate reasonably and just keep an eye on it make sure it doesn't get too carbed

Mark

 

[brewinski]

Thanks Mark, I think that's the go ... I purchased another Demi today, so I can put it in the back of the shed and forget about it for a while.

Saving it for winter, and if it's not drinkable, by then I can probably lower the heating/lighting bill by setting fire to a rag in the neck of the Demi

cheers

B