Carbonating after Stabilising?

[Bezza]

Hi All,

I got given a 2 litre demi-john last week and thought i'd have a play to see what i could do.

The only squash we had in was tesco's (sugar free) summer fruits, so I bunged some water, sugar, squash, yeast and nutrient in and left it be, not expecting a lot. Having ignored all advice to boil off the squash i'm happy to say it's fermenting nicely and already at about 4% (OG-1076 SG- 1045) and actually taste's quite nice!

I'll get to the point! I was planning on bunging some stabilizer in to kill off the yeasties and stop it fermenting at about 6-7% to make it more of a cider than a wine and to keep it sweet (around 1025 FG). The yeast I have is a super yeast and I'm pretty sure it will keep going through the sugars until it's all gone and will make for a super dry 10% drink.

If I stabilise, how would I carbonate? I'm used to beer and adding sugar, but if I kill the yeasties then there would be nothing left to react with the sugar.

 

[RobWalker]

hang aboot!

sugar free summer fruits has aspartame in. i think you'll find if you ferment it out, it will still have plenty of residual sweetness. there was a popular topic on it here;

viewtopic.php?f=41&t=36370&hilit=bbq+punch

the good news is, you're probably on for a decent brew depending on what sugar/squash ratio you used!

see how it is once it's fermented totally. if it's not sweet enough, add a little more sweetener to your taste, then carbonate with sugar as usual. this really is the best way, simple and effective.

to answer your question a little more in depth, there's a few options for stabilizing, sweetening AND carbonating, but it's really not very easy. the most accessible is to pasteurize once you reach carbonation in the bottle - which is tedious. you can also use a reverse something something on a corny set up, which is probably a little out of your price range for this, as well as a beer gun.

 

[Bezza]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply and the link! I have spent many hours searching the site for easy recipe's and never seen that one.

I had wanted to stop it early but i do want some carbonation to it. Your right, my budget is £0! I don't want to spend any money on it, i'll keep the money for my beers : . I was only experimenting to see how well a squash went off (although if it tastes any good then I might do another)

I hadn't thought about the artificial sweeteners so I'll let it ferment out and bottle it with a bit of sugar.