Brewing - Useful Recipe for a Sugar Wash (ultra-cheap wine)

[Mammon]

O.K. First of all let me SWIM got this off another forum that he’s not supposed to mention (rules, or something), so he can’t really take the credit for it. However, he has been doing experiments with it and has found it to be extremely useful for these reasons:

Cheap. Lets face it – never a bad thing.

Simple. Very few ingredients.

Multi-use. Sugar wash or restart bottle.


Ingredients per litre of wash: (best to make at least 2L)

Sugar: 180g
Wheat germ 18g
A slice of lemon.
Yeast 1 tsp (SWIM uses general wine yeast)

Optional:
A pinch of citric acid. (Just use more lemon if you don’t have this).
A pinch of yeast nutrient.

Method.

Boil the sugar, wheat germ, lemon and acid for one and a half hours.
Let the liquid cool to 21 degrees C.
Put in a glass jar with an airlock.
Add the nutrient and yeast.
Keep > 14C and < 22C until no more CO2 is produced.


If SWIY is distilling then this is a great way to ferment a sugar wash. It always seems to ferment all the sugar.

If SWIY has a wine that is stuck (stopped fermenting before all the sugar turned to alcohol) then this is great for getting that stuff going again. Leave half the jar empty and when the fermentation is in full swing add your stuck wine at about 300ml – 500ml at a time (depends on how big your jar is).

The taste of the “wine” isn’t great, but if SWIY was desperate he might consider it. When used to restart other wines SWIM has found the taste to not be too bad at all.

Good luck.