Elderflower champagne - sense check pls...

[jack_c]

Got inspired by the recent elderflower thread and made some today, however, I've only made ale before and hoping for a critique of what I've done / few questions...

Roughly based on the river cottage recipe but upscaled.

5kg cane sugar mixed with 3 litres boiling water.
Topped up to 25 litres at 20c.
1 dissolved campden tab added.
Zest and juice from 18 lemons added.
2.5 tea spoons yeast nutrient added.
Flowers from 2 large sprays per litre added.
1x champagne yeast sachet added.
20 min wait, stir yeast and put in cupboard.

Gravity 1.085

Assuming I get a final gravity of 1.00 I should get a 12% ish brew...

A sneaky taste was very promising - lovely balance of Elderflower and Lemon. I can imagine this being fine once the sweetness becomes dryness...

Planning to strain the lemon and flowers in 6 days, then wait for a final gravity of 1.00 before priming and bottling.

Questions:

1) did I add enough Campden tablets, and if not, how many more should I add? To prevent mould / wild yeast..
2) will it go do a final gravity of 1.00? If not, how low will it go?

Have I missed anything or any advice to offer?

Cheers

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

It will go below 1.0 take the usual precautions before bottling and priming

[marcarm]

I made the mistake on a couple of occasions of adding more than one campden, although this was in beer.

The resulting brew ended up tasting like burning matches, that sulphur smell/taste you get in the back of your throat when you strike a match. I didn't realise it was the campden that's why it happened to more than one brew.

Since I stopped adding so much the taste has vanished, so I would never put in more than half a tab now just to be safe.

[jack_c]

cripes - how low will it go below 1.00 ?

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Depends how much sugar you add. The stronger you make it, the lower it will go. You may be able to calculate where it will end up at 100% attenuation.

0.990 is not unreasonable.

[jack_c]

I took a gravity reading today, down to 1.042 from 1.085, so around half way there in 5 days.

Tastes good, still very sweet but promising. Colour of cloudy lemonade.

More surprised that it's not mouldy! Felt odd being sanitary then chucking in a load of flowers but hey ho...

Anyhow, tomorrow I need to separate the lemon peel and flowers from the fv. I'm planning to pour the fv into the bottling bucket through the biab bag as a filter, clean the fv and pour the filtered mix back to continue fermentation.

Any issues with this approach? I could siphon rather than pour to reduce oxidisation?

Do I need to retain some yeast cake and adding this back to the fv as the gravity is still high?

Any guess until it's done? A few weeks?

Thanks for any advice

[JamesF]

I've just this morning severely pruned an elder tree to stop the cats climbing it so they can get into the run to play with the chicks. We have five carrier bags worth of flowers and I've developed a nasty case of blackfly.

Can't do anything with them yet as there's too much other stuff going on for the next week or two, so I'll be putting them into the freezer and attempting some brewing with them towards the end of next month.

James

[jack_c]

Just got to removing the flowers and Lemon rind. It's still not mouldy and now 1.028 (7.48%) from 1.042, 3 days ago...

Tastes and smells amazing. I used the siphon rather than pouring and swirled up the yeast so as not to leave it all behind with the flowers while there's still fermenting to get done.

[jack_c]

Now 1.009, either 9.98% or 10.65%, depending on the equation.

I was a little concerned there's been no airlock activity since removing the flowers - the fv lid is convex with pressure, so was worried it had stuck. However, 19 points drop in 3 days so still working. .

Taste good, got to find 35 odd champagne bottles soon. Friends wedding in 3 weeks and I have dibbs on the empties if I can't find some before then

[JamesF]

If you get stuck, I've used Grolsch bottles before now. They seemed to do the job ok.

James

[jack_c]

Been a bit busy with life and it's just been sitting in the bucket since my last post... Had ale to make so the wine was forgot about.

Just checked the gravity: 0.840. Was expecting 0.990 but hey ho. Super clear and tasty and bottling next weekend.

Anyhow plugging 1.085 to 0.840 into abv calculators comes up with some odd results . Homebrewdad gives 132.56% or -1083.90% abv, depending on the formula. Grapestompers 33.29%.

I'm guessing more like 14% - anyone got a link to a calculator that can handle this input? Not going mad, read the hydrometer correctly etc.


Cheers

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Double check the hydrometer and test it in water. I don't think that 100% alcohol can get down to 0.840. 0.990 sounds much more inline with expectations