Last fermenter is about to be empty. This one is my blue razz jolly rancher. Smells amazing. Tastes terrible (without back sweetening) Came out at 11.8% abv. Back sweetening with simple syrup down to 8.5% seems to be the winning combo, if I were drinking it as a wine: smells much stronger than it tastes of the delicious artificial blue razz flavor. Over all a fun YOLO project. Guess we’ll see how it tastes as a spirit in the next few hours + 24 hours for the angels to have their share. Now to determine what to make next… I’m thinking of trying pressure fermenting in the keg for my beer, a wine for my girlfriend, and the third fermenter for whatever meme spirit I feel like whipping up next, which I haven’t the slightest clue of what I’m in the mood for yet.
I’ve only every made beers, but when backsweetening, I assume your yeast won’t ferment straight sugar because it’s poisoned out by the alcohol level? Normally if you backsweeten a beer or cider, you need to use lactose that doesn’t work for fermentation.
with wines, you generally use sorbate (prevent the yeast from being able to reproduce) and sulfite (kills yeast) to prevent refermentation when you back sweeten and then you wait a week or so to make sure it doesn’t start fermenting again before bottling.