SpacemanSpiff
Well-Known Member
Finally got around to bottling mine this weekend. Looking at my last post I can't believe it's been over 2 months. Anyway, I started with 2 gallons of lemonade-limeade mix and pitched Montrachet. The Montrachet didn't make it, so I diluted with more lemonade-limeade mix giving me 4 gallons at about 1.088. Pitched another pack of Montrachet. It still didn't go so I finally pitched EC1118. It made it, but what a slow fermentation. I checked somewhere about a month in and was only in the 1050's. So I sat it aside and figured I'd just let it go for awhile. It's looked fairly clear for a few weeks now and at last check it was at 1.034.
The sample tasted pretty good. I think with some carbonation it will be even better although I could also see a splash of lemonade or 7-up helping also. We'll see how it goes. It came out to be 6.9% ABV, but doesn't taste like it, so this could be sneaky!
The main lesson here I think is Montrachet is definitely not the best choice unless you take a lot of effort to get it healthy first or you've got a ready-to-go cake of it. EC1118 was slow to work everything down although I didn't do it any favors by just pitching it in. I'm hoping for a light carbonation so I only went with a little less than a 1/2 cup of priming sugar. We'll see how it goes in a couple weeks!
The sample tasted pretty good. I think with some carbonation it will be even better although I could also see a splash of lemonade or 7-up helping also. We'll see how it goes. It came out to be 6.9% ABV, but doesn't taste like it, so this could be sneaky!
The main lesson here I think is Montrachet is definitely not the best choice unless you take a lot of effort to get it healthy first or you've got a ready-to-go cake of it. EC1118 was slow to work everything down although I didn't do it any favors by just pitching it in. I'm hoping for a light carbonation so I only went with a little less than a 1/2 cup of priming sugar. We'll see how it goes in a couple weeks!