I spent a day a few weeks ago home sick with a cold and after spending pretty much the entire day in front of the computer, in bed, or on the couch, I wanted to do something. I'd taken a packet of my champagne yeast out of the fridge a few days before, so I thought I'd use it.
My last two batches of wine had been relatively common juices, apple and an apple-peach-passionfruit blend, and I was always on the hunt for something new. Hence, why I was walking through the juice aisle at Carrefour, again, and I happened to see BIOES 100% Mango Juice. Carrying enough back to make a batch wouldn't be easy as I have no storage space on my motorcycle, but then I'd never seen mango before and I thought I should get it in case it disappeared.
I probably stood in that aisle for a full five minutes debating on whether I should buy it or not. In the end, my curiosity won out and I grabbed four 1 liter boxes of the stuff and jammed them in my bag.
The recipe:
- 3.5 liters BIOES 100% Mango Juice (blended with fresh apple juice)
- 2 cups white table sugar
- 1 cup boiled raisin slurry
- 1/2 packet of Lalvin EC 1118
I love mangos and I always look forward to mango season, so in due course I was stoked to make some mango booze. There is a mango beer you can buy that is made by Taiwan Beer but...blech. Fruit can be sliced and dropped into a nice cold summer beer, but usually making a fruit-infused beer is a waste of time. At least, I think so.
(Go go gadget Reinheitsgebot!)
Anyway, once I got all of my gear out of the closet and sanitized I started pouring the juice. And then stopped pouring and shook the container a little. Then poured some more.
Holy shit this stuff is thick. Is this actually juice?
I checked the box to make sure I hadn't made any errors, and both the English and the Chinese assured me that it was 100% mango juice (with a little apple blended in). That elicted a shrug and the rest of the juice went into the bottle along with the sugar and raisin slurry. I gave it a good shake to get some oxygen knocked into the mixture and to try and dissolve the sugar before pouring off a slug for a gravity reading and pitching my yeast.
I fought the stopper for 10 minutes on this batch and finally got the fucker taped down and strapped in tighter than Hannibal Lecter on a dolly; but with fewer creepy noises.
Then I got my beer journal out and recorded all my bits of info and went to take my gravity reading.
I got the juice poured into the graduated cylinder I slid the hydrometer in. Normally at this point I'd be watching it float and then I'd knock the bubbles off the bottom before taking a reading. But I couldn't do that with this batch because at whatever height I left the hydrometer it simply stayed put with no hint of movement. I guess it was pretty hard to float in something that more of a consistency of a fruit smoothy than actual juice.
Weird, eh? Obviously the big difference between this stuff and my other batches was the viscosity; this stuff was thick. There was no way I could record an original gravity and I was already thinking of what kinds of magic spells the yeast was going to cast inside that bottle.
I'd see soon enough.
Once the airlock got bubbling it spent about 5 days in a bubbling frenzy. All kinds of stuff was flying around inside the juice, tumbing from the top down and back again. Wild stuff. Pretty much right from the start a thick goopy layer of fruit-stuff formed at the top and stayed put throughout fermenation. Now the goopy bits have collected at the surface with another layer on the bottom. I'm hoping that the more liquidy stuff in the middle is a few liters of viable wine; this batch is up for bottling this week
The liquid part of the mango-stuff looks alright but is still opaque. I'm planning on straining off the goopy parts to get as much fluid as I can into a secondary vessel. I'll leave it there for another two weeks or so to see if I can get it to clear out a little, then I'll bottle.
Until then, I need a beer. Happy brewing.
And if you're in the states, go vote!
Also my girlfriend, Sue, is awesome.