Crazy Brew

[YoungBrewsky]

I found this on another website.

I always love a good theoretical challenge when talking about wines. I have never made a super high ABV wine (20%+). But I have read a few articles/forums about Brandy and making it from Welch's Concord grape concentrate.

For what I have read up on you do need to take super good care of your yeast to try and keep the fusel oils down and rocket fule tastes. I would probably step feed sugar and concentrate with your turbo yeast to help it get to high levels. Plenty of O2 would be required as well. A recipe may start like:

1 gallon (but brewed in a 2 gallon bucket)

Start off day one

2 cans of Welche's red grape frozen concentrate
1 tbs of black tea (earl grey or another favorite)
1 tsp yeast nutrient (dap)
1/2 tsp yeast energizer (something like fermaid O)
Water to one gallon
Yeast

Day two add:

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/8 tsp yeast energizer

Day 3 add:

1 can of concentrate
1lb of sugar

Day 4 add:

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/8 tsp yeast energizer

Day 5 add:

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/8 tsp yeast energizer

Day 6 add:

1 can of concentrate
1lb of sugar

Day 7 add:

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/8 tsp yeast energizer

Day 8 add:

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/8 tsp yeast energizer

Day 9 add:

1 can of concentrate
1lb of sugar

Day 10 add:

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/8 tsp yeast energizer

Day 11 add:

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
1/8 tsp yeast energizer

Day 12 add:

1 can of concentrate
1lb of sugar

After day 12 let it ride. also check original gravities and record gravities after adding sugars so you can track how many points drop. That should be enough sugars to get it close to 23% - 25% ABV if taken dry. Also 2 - 3 times a day through the 12 day process hit the must with a wine whip or air bubbler for a couple minutes. Should be interesting if you can get it that high. Once you rack to secondary adding 1/2oz of dark toasted ok for a couple weeks should help.

[YoungBrewsky]

I've been reading about water, and I think that I am going to build a stove top still, or buy a chemistry still and distill all my water.

Not during the first few runs, but soon.

And do you guys think it would be possible to breed some distillers yeast with a champagne yeast to create a medium?? Like, I would use established yeast for my main brews, then have mini gallon brews that were not actually meant to drink, but just for the purpose of "farming" yeast. So I could create a good 18-20% yeast maybe... I think that would make for some awesome honey beer :) One bottle and your DONE, but not quite rocket fuel. And SUPER bubbly.

[YoungBrewsky]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw9t65Z21EM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GNM4ZUFEJ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEoeupQFsG4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P7_MNvwFHI

[laripu]

To get a good alcohol estimate, get a hydrometer to measure specific gravity (which measures the density of a liquid, hence for brewing, the dissolved sugar). Alcohol will be (to 1 decimal places), a linear function of the difference between initial and terminal specific gravities.

E.g. if your initial gravity is 1.080 and your terminal gravity is 1.002, the difference is 0.078. The factor is 131.25 giving you an estimated alcohol of 10.2%. That's a very good estimate.