Sherry

[primusbrew]

i get a SG of around 1.18 - 1.20 and somewhere around 28-30% alc maybe more when adding in all those sultanas (assuming you could get it to ferment out)

but i dont think the yeast will cope with that high a % and will stall leaving you with something "sweet"

i have grave concerns with just "washing the spuds" i would have peeled

are you seeing much activity ?

Three days in and there is some activity in the pot. There are little bubbles rising to the surface and little bits foam scattered around the surface. As you can see from the photo below the raisins have soaked up the water and risen to the surface.



One interesting thing that I have noticed is that the piece of bread is still in tact and floating on the surface. Some of the yeast is also still on the toast. It seems that the way the yeast enters the sugar liquid is by seeping through the pores in the bread. I wonder is there is any benefit to this over just stirring the yeast in with the rest of the ingredients.

Maheel, are you talking about wild yeasts/other bugs in regards to peeling the potoatoes? I thought that this might be an issue but that is what the recipe called for.

 

[primusbrew]

So I ended up leaving this in the fermenting pot for four weeks, transferring to a glass carboy to clarify and then bottled it in a few "Grolsch"style bottles.

The FG was 1.150 so there is plenty of sugar left in it. I am not sure on the OG as I wasn't able to measure it but I think that it would have been around 1.280 - 1.300. So that gives me an ABV of around 20% I guess. I wasn't expecting the yeast to have a tolerance this high.

So in terms of taste... it is not that bad. Not great but certainly drinkable. It is very sweet but there is also but there is also some acidity there from the raisins that goes some way to balance it out. To taste it is not 20% abv but it might be in there. My girlfriend says that it smells like sawdust and tastes like apples, sultanas and alcohol.

I'm not sure whether it will all get drunk but I am happy to say that the recipe works. I think that maybe mulling it with some spices would be quite nice.