Alco Water + cordial

[Capp]

Hey guys, being new to the brewing game i have been reading anything and everything on the forums.

have only done 3 brews so far, a lager, an apple cider and a GB.

My bro in law said that he has makes his batches in 100L lots with a couple of mates. He has suggested that I can get something that tastes pretty decent by using: (this is for the 23 litre vers)
Boosted Turbo Yeast - Samuel Willard's Orig. 24
23 litres of water
8 kilos of sugar (!!)

Once its finished fermenting it works out to be about 20%, He then says to use another fermenter and halve the brew, top up both batches with more water and then throw in some quality cordial , adjust to taste, then bottle, no priming sugars are needed because of the sugars in the cordial.

One lot was raspberry and the other was a lemon. A couple of the razzies exploded but tasted pretty good and the lemon wasnt too bad either (but none of the lemon exploded) His suggestion was that I use the PET bottles and see how I go.

First Stage is Done
Threw all the ingredients in, temp was a bit on the warm side 28c
My Concern is that the temp of the wort rose up to 34c while it was cutting sick on eating up all the sugars, its being stored in an old fridge outside. Have put some frozen cordy bottles next to it in the attempt to cool it down. After 5 days its now at 27c and the bubbling has slowed considerably.

OG = 1130
My Question is, the hot temp that it was for 1.5 days, has this done damage ?

[timmy]

I don't do spirits, but from what I've read those Turbo yeasts also produce a lot of higher alcohols that get removed by the distillation process. Since you're not distilling you might end up with these left in your beverage, and they're not very good for you.

With regard to the higher temps - I think that will mean you'll get more of these nasty alcohols and perhaps some other off flavours.

[Pollux]

I have heard of people having LOTS of issues in terms of adding the cordial pre bottling due to the preservatives killing off the yeast....

Actually thinking of making a carbonated alcoholic base with some sugar and some coopers kit yeast lying around, bottling it and then mixing it with cordial in the glass.........

[Capp]

was thinking that might have to be the go, just mixing the cordial at the end.

Update: still going after 2 weeks, its down to 1060 so should be too long now till i bottle it and store for a week or 2

[drsmurto]

Turbo yeast is designed for people taking teh 20% product and distilling it through a fractionating column giving you a pure white spirit of more than 95% ethanol. Turbo yeast produces a wide range of alcohols, only 1 of which is 'safe' to drink - ethanol. (lets not even start to debate the fact that even ethanol is a poison)

Drinking it undistilled, even watered down is like drinking methylated spirits.... best left for the town drunk.

If you want to do this in a much safer manner then grab a good beer yeast like Nottingham from a good home brew shop (ie not a brewcraft) and 1/2 the sugar giving you the 10% product. It wont produce any of the undesired alcohols if you can keep the temp down below 22C.

I've made 7% GBs using raw sugar and champagne yeast plus a dumpload of fresh ginger.