Skeeter Pee specific gravity missed

[milbrosa]

I followed the recipe on skeeterpee.com using 7 pounds of sugar, 8 cups of water, and 1/3rd cup lemon juice to make the invert sugar. I cooled it some, then added it to 3 gallons of water in my fermenter, then added 2 quarts of lemon juice, then added more water to bring the volume up to about 5.5 gallons of water.

I measured my specific gravity. It came to somewhere around 1.060. Lon on skeeterpee.com says he shoots for 1.070. Mine didn't come out anywhere near that so I stirred in another pound of sugar (I didn't invert it). It only raised my SG to 1.064.

So seven pounds of sugar doesn't give you an SG of 1.070 in 5.5 gallons of water and lemon juice. Neither does 8 pounds. Has anyone else noticed this?

I've seen tables that show that 1 lb of sugar (sucrose) in 1 gallon of water has a specific gravity 1.046. If you want to hit 1.070 in 5.5 gallons of water, you need 70*5.5=385 gravity units. Sugar is 46 points per pound per gallon, or 46 gravity units. 386/46 = 8.369. So about 8 and 1/3rd pounds of sugar should get you 1.070 in 5.5 gallons of water.

8 pounds of sugar in 5.5 gallons of water should give me 1.067 but I only got 1.064, so I must have messed up somewhere, or my hydrometer isn't accurate.

 

[milbrosa]

Hmmm. I figured out at least part of it. I had what I thought was a 5 lb bag of sugar, so I put that in the boiler with 2 more pounds that I weighed out on my kitchen scale. I just went and dug the sugar bag out of the trash can, and it was only 4 lb. Who ever heard of a 4 lb bag of sugar?

So I actually had 6 pounds initially instead of 7. Then when I added another pound of granulated sugar, it only brought it up to 7 pounds total instead of 8. 7 lbs of sugar is 322 gravity points. 322/5.5 = 58.5, so about 1.059. Now that was what my initial gravity was before I added that last pound, so it still doesn't work out just right, but at least it explains the much lower than expected initial OG. And just maybe I've got more than 5.5 gallons too.

Ok, I give up. I'm going to just add another 1.4 pounds of sugar, inverted this time, and that should do the trick. That'll be 8.4 pounds of sugar, which should yield 1.070. If not, I'm going to call it good anyway.

 

[Arne]

Skeeter pee is the only wine I do this with. Usually, I have some 10 lb bags of sugar sitting around. I just dump one in, I do invert it first. Ususally get a 6.5 gal batch or so, leaves me with some top off and maybe a gal. that gets done a little quicker than the carboy. The gal. winds up in the testing lab and doesn't get bottled. Don't bother with the specific gravity. It always seems to ferment out for me. Fast, easy and quick to drink. Don't get any better than that. Thanks, Lon, Arne.

 

[Minnesotamaker]

The recipe starts with the sugar a little low because it's always easier to add more than to try and take some back out. When I adjust the initial sugar level after mixing the water, lemon, and invert sugar together, I just use granular sugar. Be sure to mix it well or you might have some granular sugar laying at the bottom of your primary. Think about when you make Kool-aid in a glass pitcher, sometimes it takes a LONG time to get all the sugar to dissolve. The sugar might be hard to see if you're using a white bucket as your primary.

 

[milbrosa]

Pee Meister Lon, thank you for your advice. I may have had some undisolved granular sugar when I added that first pound yesterday. I went ahead and made another 1.4 pounds of invert sugar today and added that and mixed thoroughly with a drill-operated paint stirrer (all properly sanitized, of course) and took a reading. With my additions, the volume comes to right at 5.75 gallons, and I hit 1.071 SG. So I'm calling it good at this point.

All total, I have 8.4 pounds of sugar in it. I'm looking forward to trying it out in a few weeks.