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 Carrefoure, 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.

While enjoying my Coopers IPA I got the itch to brew something, again. I was already stocked up on beer so I thought I'd make some more Weisswine, and experiment a bit more this time.

Sue and I made a trip to Costco and I bought 14 liters of juice to ferment into alcohol-filled-tasty-goodness; 8 liters of Treetop apple juice and about 7 liters of Kirkland apple peach passionfruit. I grabbed the apple because I'd wanted to make something hard-apple since I saw a recipe for Apfelwein floating around on a few forums. Once I saw the APPF juice Sue said that it sounded tasty as well, so I bought both.

The recipe:

Hard Apple

4 liters of Treetop apple juice
2 cups white table sugar
1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
1/2 sachet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

APPF

2.87 liters of apple peach passionfruit juice
700 ml of Treetop apple juice
1 cup boiled raisin nutrients
the other 1/2 of a sachet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

I went with different juices for these because the BIOES juice I used last time was ok, but not that great, and these are sold in bulk. I also wanted to make something that actually tasted good. I added a bunch of sugar to each one to up my ABV, but I varied the amount slightly to see how it affects the taste. More importantly, this time I had proper yeast! Bread yeast did the trick just fine last time but a lot of the off flavors and dryness were probably primarily due to that as well as the high fermentation temperature. Bread yeast is not made for making booze.