Passion Nectar Experiment

[skeptic13]

My wife also loves the Passion Fruit, so after reading some threads on it, I am doing a 1 gallon experiment.

Passion Nectar

10-29-04

1 Gallon

3 lbs Clover Honey (Costco)
Container warmed in water on stove to get the honey liquid
Handful chopped No-SO2 Raisins
½ tsp Pectic Enzyme
½ tsp Baking Soda
Some warm RO water to get every last morsel of honey out of container
74 oz Passion Fruit Nectar (Trader Jo’s)
Lavlin 71B-1122
O.G. 1.142 (11:00 p.m.)

(7:00 a.m.) Foamed out of the airlock all over the place
Has continued to foam a lot, very thick foam from the passion fruit nectar. Smells great!

Added 8oz of water on day 2

11-15-04
Slowing down and starting to flocculate

 

[Talon]

Doesn't it look nasty, though? lol. My poor wife about got sick looking at it.

Talon.

 

[skeptic13]

It looks ok but the foam is so thick I am having problems keeping it out of the airlock. If it turns out well I will have to use a blow off tube next time I think, or maybe dilute it a bit.

 

[Aggie4You]

The recipe sounds awesome... My next batch will be another gallon of the Balckberry/WhiteGrape/Mango/PassionFruit mead (so I can hopefully finally get an OG reading), but I'll give you three guesses as to what my next one will be.

 

[Jmattioli]

It looks ok but the foam is so thick I am having problems keeping it out of the airlock. If it turns out well I will have to use a blow off tube next time I think, or maybe dilute it a bit.

I leave about 4 inches until it is done foaming and then add water to bring it up. It won't dilute it since all you are doing is leaving some water out and putting it in later. That way an ailock will work fine.
Joe

 

[Aggie4You]

I leave about 4 inches until it is done foaming and then add water to bring it up. It won't dilute it since all you are doing is leaving some water out and putting it in later. That way an ailock will work fine.
Joe

Won't that effect your OG? Would it be a better idea to make up your must and then hold some of it back (before pitching the yeast)? That way, you can measure your OG and adding the must later won't change anything (since it should have the same starting SG.

 

[skeptic13]

That sounds like it would probably give you some better numbers but I just left about 4 inches of headspace. I added 10 oz of water last night to top it up.

 

[Aggie4You]

Assuming that the water added has an SG of 1, then wouldn't that make an adjusted OG of about 1.131?

Here's my logic:

Specific gravity is (for our purposes) a measure of how much sugar is in the mixture. It appears to be fairly linear in the ranges we are interested in.

If you added 10 ounces of water to make a gallon, you started with around 118 ounces.

118 oz @ 1.142
10 oz @ 1

Which means that you have 118 parts at 1.142 and 10 parts at 1.

118*1.142 = 134.756
10*1=10
134.756+10=144.756
144.756/128 ~ 1.131

Would that be incorrect? That seems like a pretty significant change to me.

 

[skeptic13]

That is significant and exactly where I was hoping it would turn out. I was afraid it would turn out sickly sweet at 1.142. At the 1.13 range the yeast should cut out at 14% and still leave it with an acceptable sweetness. At least I hope it does.

 

[Aggie4You]

well then, I guess things worked out well for you.

Assuming of course that my logic was correct.

 

[skeptic13]

Hopefully, it will all depend on the final product or back to the drawing board. But then again, this is what 1 gallon experimental batches are all about!

 

[Aggie4You]

But then again, this is what 1 gallon experimental batches are all about!

Figure out what you like, then figure out what you like better.

 

[Jmattioli]

Aggie wrote:

Won't that effect your OG? Would it be a better idea to make up your must and then hold some of it back (before pitching the yeast)? That way, you can measure your OG and adding the must later won't change anything (since it should have the same starting SG.

Not at all. The must could spoil or get contaminated in a few days. At this point in meadmaking, I rarely take an OG reading. I know how much honey I want and the amount I'm making. All the hydrometer will do is confirm what I already know. I just hold back on the water for a couple days and the effective OG is always the same. The added water is always fresh. Most of my meads are planned at no more than 12-14% alcohol so the OG will usually be between 1.100 and 1.120 to reach my desired level of sweetness. Anymore than that and the balance usually suffers. If I want to drink to get drunk I'll pull out a bottle of Scotch.
Joe

 

[skeptic13]

I was really unsure how much the Passion Fruit Nectar was going to add to the O.G., so I took a reading to have a starting point. That juice is really thick!

 

[Jmattioli]

What would be interesting is to take a reading on just the passion fruit. One could then translate that to gravity points when added even though fruit throws off a reading some. Personally, I would use 2 lbs of honey + the fruit and stop it at a BRIX of 3 for semisweet or at about 1.020 for sweet. Fermenting about 100 gravity points is usually not a strain on the yeasts and they don't seem to labor hard or produce off flavors that require longer aging times. Everybodys taste is different so you have to find what you like. I believe your mead will stop at 14% and be most definitely sweet to very sweet as you are looking for. Whether or not that is what you really wanted you will know after you taste it. When using 71B your mead will not take a long time to age, especially with fruit. It is known for being quite good in a relatively short period of time.
Joe