My Strawberry Concoction

Information about fruit/vegetable type washes.

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apdb
Swill Maker
Posts: 329
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2013 10:09 pm
Location: big ole'island on the West Coast Canada, soon to be underwater when the big one hits

My Strawberry Concoction

Post by apdb »

A couple years back, before changing careers, I was a cook. I worked in a very high volume cafeteria. The breakfast shift had me using strawberry as a topping for the waffles and pancakes. When the customers went through the buffet line they would scoop the berries out of the insert with a slotted spoon leaving behind the remaining syrup. Common practise was to replenish the berries and the syrup went down the sink. We would serve around 300 to 600 people at breakfast everyday.
The strawberries came into the loading dock in 20l pails with the label describing the ingredients as 4 to 1 strawberries to sugar. That's it.
I watched this go on for quite some time and decided it was time for me to rescue the tasty sweet juice. I started filling 1l water bottles (after drinking) with the syrup and bringing it home a little bit each day and throwing it in the freezer. I managed to collect quite a bit before running out of space.
Jump forward to yesterday. The SOH wants her deep freeze back. Its been far too long saying I'm gonna do something with this stuff so here I go.

Another thing to add is I've also been collecting bananas as well. In my house if a banana gets even the slightest bit of brown on it then that's the end of it. Bunch of banana snobs around here. I started saving them in the freezer, thinking I'll bake bread with them but they just collect too fast. So I got about 40 bananas in their peels too.

The plan:
I've pulled everything out and begun thawing them. I'm typing this on a break at work so it's not all in front of me but i'll put the numbers up here after I get home and count everything. Off the top of my head I think I have about 30L of this stuff (before watering it down)
In my head I'm thinking of watering down the syrup with room temperature tap water to about SG 1.040 to 1.050 (7.5%-9.0%ABV)
Squishin up the bananas and throwing them in after measuring gravity.
Add in some pectic enzyme? (probably not needed because there's not much fruit pieces left)
Check and adjust pH to .... hmm not sure?
Adding some kind of nutrient for yeasties. Maybe a bit of tomato paste because it all I have. Or possibly some 20-20-20?
Hitting it with a bomb of EC1118
Divide it into a bunch carboy's with bubble valves or cling wrap with holes.
Potstill with my concentric dual reducer on 15.5Gal, 5500w Camco

Pics as things happen.

Feel free to comment or even redirect if you have some ideas on how to proceed.

Aaron

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