Watermelon

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Watermelon

Postby Chief » Wed Oct 26, 2016 11:42 am

For a while I have been looking for watermelon recipes and instead generally found stigma that fermenting and distilling watermelon was not worth the time.

I figured the water content of the fruit plus any fermentable sugars it would have to pass some reasonable flavour into the wash and carry over in the distillate in a 4” 4 plate bubbler. What I made I split 50% / 50% white and 5g/L French Oak as a brandy. Both have turned out very palatable as a smooth subtle white spirit and a sweet smelling dry lightly oaked brandy.

Since I didn’t manage to find much in the way of recipes I thought I would post what I did.
For a 30L Wash:
~4-6 kg watermelon (seedless are easier if you can get them cheaply)
6 kg whit sugar
1 teaspoon epsom salts
1 vitamin B tablet
½ teaspoon DAP
½ teaspoon citric acid
1 x 5g sashay EC-1118

Deseeded and roughly chopped melon into clean bucket, added 2 L water and pureed with stick blended. Sugar, citric acid and Epsom salts dissolved in ~5 L boiling water. Contents of both buckets added fermenter with ~6 L cold water and let rest for ~20min before filling to 30L and mixing in DAP and Vitamin B tablet. Yeast was rehydrated for app 30 min in ~100 mL ~27°C water then pitched at ~28°C.

Was slow on the kick off and formed a notable cap which I stirred back in once a day for the first three days after which it took off.

I ran it on four plates, slow for the fore’s and early heads then cranking up through the hearts and into the tails. Found the tails to carry a bit of flavour and aroma so did a bit of blending on the portion that oaked. Ended up with 400 mL fores, ~2.6 L of keeps at 95% ABV and roughly 1.2 L feits stripped down to 30% ABV.

Overall think the info I found sold watermelon short as I found the brandy incredibly flavoursome that carried an array of tastes. I aged for 10 months on 5 g/L French oak dominos and will be doing so again (hopefully for longer) once melons are a bit cheaper mid-season.
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Re: Watermelon

Postby aussiebrewer » Wed Oct 26, 2016 12:59 pm

try using 3/4 of the sugar :handgestures-thumbupleft:

will be a better hearts cut and cleaner and have more flavour carry over
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Re: Watermelon

Postby coffe addict » Wed Oct 26, 2016 1:25 pm

Well tickle me pink! Watermelon was 9c per kg last week and couldn't think of what to do with them, now don't I look silly!
Will have a go next time they are cheap
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Re: Watermelon

Postby aussiebrewer » Wed Oct 26, 2016 1:27 pm

got a link to where you get all these cheap fruit coffee? i could do with a few lol
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Re: Watermelon

Postby coffe addict » Wed Oct 26, 2016 1:58 pm

Two main places.
Carina fresh on Stanley st camphill
Chandler mega fresh on old Cleveland Rd.
I think they're owned by the same people but often have different specials.
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Re: Watermelon

Postby aussiebrewer » Wed Oct 26, 2016 3:39 pm

coffe addict wrote:Two main places.
Carina fresh on Stanley st camphill
Chandler mega fresh on old Cleveland Rd.
I think they're owned by the same people but often have different specials.

ahh yes i know the first one, second i can find. cheers ill check them out
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Re: Watermelon

Postby ultrasuede » Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:51 am

My experience with making watermelon wheat beer, is that it has to be fermented cold (19c) otherwise, the watermelon takes on a rotten flavor. It would usually take my wort 2 weeks to ferment on Safale US-04 with a final abv of 7%. The rotten taste is very undesirable, but if fermented cold, has a great taste
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Re: Watermelon

Postby wynnum1 » Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:17 pm

Watermelon doing a google search for sugar content of watermelon it comes up with 6 grams per 100 grams so doing a wash without adding sugar would have a low alcohol content would it be possible to boil off to concentrate the sugars in watermelon juice and would this kill the flavor.
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Re: Watermelon

Postby EziTasting » Sat Mar 18, 2017 9:30 pm

Just been chatting about JUST THIS fruit!

So I've been searching a little and found 2 sites that seem legit making watermelon wine; then distil it:

https://www.clawhammersupply.com/blogs/ ... h-pictures

http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/bl ... nt-page-1/
{step1 winemaking: http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/bl ... art-i-why/}
{step2 winemaking: http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/bl ... t-started/}
step3 winemaking: http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/bl ... g-process/}

... I'm very keen to have a go, and so is my wife ( :D ).
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Re: Watermelon

Postby wynnum1 » Sun Mar 19, 2017 6:39 pm

Sometimes the price of water melons is so low that the farmers just ploughs back into the ground.
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Re: Watermelon

Postby EziTasting » Sun Mar 19, 2017 7:15 pm

Sad but true.

Unfortunately they don't grow it in my neighbourhood... so can never pick them up cheaply!

Learned just recently (ok, I lived a sheltered life!! Sorry) that fruit is picked 'green' and stored in CO2 rooms to colour the peel ... no wonder our Bananas have been hard even though beautifully yellow!

Gonna have a crack at growing them ourselves, rumor has it, it's not very difficult...
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Re: Watermelon

Postby wynnum1 » Mon Mar 20, 2017 9:39 am

How cold does it get there in winter .
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Re: Watermelon

Postby EziTasting » Mon Mar 20, 2017 7:44 pm

wynnum1 wrote:How cold does it get there in winter .


Oh last year it only went down to 21, but we've had it as low as 10 degrees! Dam near froze my nipples off!! :laughing-rolling:
Summer is a bit of a pita! Can get week(s) of 50+ degrees, but not this year! :music-deathmetal:
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Re: Watermelon

Postby wynnum1 » Tue Mar 21, 2017 11:03 am

Should have no trouble growing if have enough water even in winter summer may be too hot.
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