this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider
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Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
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Yep! My last one was a watermelon wine I made into a brandy. The key is to only get the red guts and avoid anything slightly white. definitely dont boil the juice either or youll get a carrot flavor. Once it’s done fermenting if it was a good fermentation it’ll taste almost like cucumber, a bit of back sweetening makes the watermelon flavor come back with a vengeance.
Did that
I did heat pasteurize, but not boil. Just 160/180F (I can't remember exactly).
Eh, I'm not getting cucumber. Maybe? It's mostly just SOUR with some watermelon notes.
this is what I'm thinking
Ahh, it may have been the heat pasteurization that did it in. If you care to glance at a scientific paper, here’s an interesting source. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/ra/c9ra01533g I want to say I’ve seen a low temp method of pasteurizing (that you have to hold for a good bit longer) but for mine I avoided heat like the plague and did everything cold with a huge starter to ensure the yeast outcompete anything and fill the fermenter with alcohol to handle any potential unwanted microbes