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Sweet cherry liquor
I HAVE AN ABUNDENT CROP OF SWEET CHERRIES EACH YEAR. HAS ANYONE FERMENTED THEM? DID YOU ADD A YEAST OR JUST SUGAR, WATER AND WAIT FOR NATURAL FERMENTATION?
I've never made anything from just fruit before, but I can tell you it's probably not a good idea to let wild yeast do the fermenting. You just don't know what you're gonna end up with. It might be drinkable, but most likely not. I'd go with a commercially availabe yeast strain. Just my $.02.
Mortician607 wrote:
I've never made anything from just fruit before, but I can tell you it's probably not a good idea to let wild yeast do the fermenting. You just don't know what you're gonna end up with. It might be drinkable, but most likely not. I'd go with a commercially availabe yeast strain. Just my $.02.
True that...but how do you propose to stop the wild stuff from fermenting even if you spike in a commercial strain???
brewchez wrote:
Mortician607 wrote:
I've never made anything from just fruit before, but I can tell you it's probably not a good idea to let wild yeast do the fermenting. You just don't know what you're gonna end up with. It might be drinkable, but most likely not. I'd go with a commercially availabe yeast strain. Just my $.02.
True that...but how do you propose to stop the wild stuff from fermenting even if you spike in a commercial strain???
As I said earlier, I've never produced anything from just fruit before, but some wine makers do and don't have problems with wild yeast. I believe you have a couple of options. One way to do it would be to pasturize the fruit or give it a brief boil. I know this can cause problems with pectin haze, but you could always use pectic enzyme to help with that. Secondly, I believe wine makers often use campden tablets to kill off any wild yeast. I know that the campden tabs will dissipate on their own over a few hours, but I don't remember exactly how long it takes to do so. I've never made wine before, but I am looking into it and this is something I remember reading somewhere. Obviously these steps should be carried out before pitching any commercial yeast. Again, that's just my $0.02 maybe someone with experience with this can chime in and give better advice.
I've used fresh elderberries before. You'll need to remove the pits from the sweet cherries. Then you put them in a sanitized bucket, and though they are sweet cherries you will still need to add sugar, rule of t humb for wine is about 2-3 pds sugar per gallon of wine. Boil water, add sugar to boiled water, then cover sweet cherries with the boiled wate, You could just boil the water and add sugar directly to bucket with water and cherries also.Stir to dissolve sugar if not already dissolved. Let cool, add campden tablets to sanitize the liquid and cherries. Wait 24 hrs before adding yeast or the campden tablets will kill the yeast, The campden tablets will kill the wild yeast in the cherries.
DC
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