Ribena wine...bit of an oops! with the slide rule

[MostlyHarmless]

I started off some Ribena wine back in early February. It's still fizzing away - I'm getting a bubble very 10 seconds or so through the airlock - so today I decided to check on it.

Hmmmm....

For all it started off like something out of a sodastream, the hyrdometer is still showing 1.080....maybe time to recheck my calculations.

Hmmm....(again)....I think I might have neglected to take into account the fact that the sugar/250ml figure on the side of the bottle is for when it's diluted 1:4 with water, and I think I only diluted 1:3, or maybe even 1:2.5, based on something I'd read online. I might even have been so stupid as to have added a bit of sugar as well...

Re-doing the calculations, and not accounting for the fact that the yeast will be dead from alcohol poisoning before the end, I'm on target for a theoretical ABV of about 30%.

Ooops...I think I'll be splitting this one into 2 DJs and watering it down before it finishes.

Oh well...the experiment that fails is as important as the experiment that succeeds, and all that...

 

[Moley]

Do you have an OG reading, or can you tell me what went into this so I can run my own maths?

 

[MostlyHarmless]

Thanks for rpelying Moley

No OG reading - if I'd taken one at the start then I would have realised how wildly out I was.

I used 2 litres of Ribena, which is about 25g of sugar per 250ml (when, and this is the important bit that I think I missed, diluted down 4:1) so I reckon that undiluted it's roughly 125g sugar per 250ml, so 500g per litre. That means I had 1 kilo of sugar in the Ribena...and I added another 450g of sugar myself.

 

[Anbhás]

I'm on target for a theoretical ABV of about 30%.

I thought going over 20% was impossible without a distillery. Am I wrong?

 

[MostlyHarmless]

That's why I said "theoretical maximum" - I'm expecting to end up with a gallon of an over-sweet brew of about 20% ABV, full completely sozzled yeast

 

[Anbhás]

Im thinking of doing this but I thought the chemicals in the ribena like pottasium sorbate and the other perservatives would damage the yeast. Has this been a problem at all?

 

[MostlyHarmless]

No preservatives in Ribena to stop the yeast from working (although some other fruit juices do need to spend a bit of time in a pan on the cooker to get rid of the preservatives)

 

[Anbhás]

No preservatives in Ribena to stop the yeast from working (although some other fruit juices do need to spend a bit of time in a pan on the cooker to get rid of the preservatives)

Excellent! I forgot about boling them off in the pan. I'll start 5 litres of it when I get my current stuff bottled.