Oh Carrots!

So the other day I got the idea to buy a massive quantity of carrots, run them through the juicer, and ferment it out in a couple of different ways to observe the results.

I went out and got 30lbs of carrots.. LOL! Yeah, 30lbs of carrots through the juicer 2 or 3 at a time.

I ended up getting 2.75 gallons of juice from the carrots. I strained half of what I added to the carboy to reduce the trub. Often I juice carrots to just drink and not ferment, and there is A LOT of pulp you can see separate if it sits long enough

. I wanted to filter some of that out to start so 2 3/4 gallons of juice with half the particulates was pretty sweet.

It took over an hour to push all these things through the juicer, and while I was doing it I was thinking up some ideas for fermentation. I decided I'd do a carrot wine, which I'm reasonably sure will be delicious, and a carrot beer, which I am completely unsure about. I figured I'd do 4 gallons of wine and 1 gallon of beer, seeing as how the wine is kind of a certain success

and the beer could be a miserable failure.

After adding water my gravity was way low, like 1.030 low. I added dextrose til I hit 1.060 and pulled off a gallon for beer, and then added more dextrose to the 4 gallon batch to hit 1.090 for the wine. For the wine I figured I'd add 1lb of chopped up raisins, 1/4 cup lemon juice, campden tablets, wait 24 hours and pitch Lalvin k1-v1116. I call K1 "Killer K", this stuff is brutal in its strength and resilience and can do just about anything, which is why I chose it for this carrot batch. For the beer I added 1/4oz French Strisslespalt hops, 2oz Malto-Dextrine, and pitched Danstar Munich. I was hoping for some fruity phenols to compliment the carrot flavor.

Update to come after campden dissipates and I pitch yeasts. I'm anxious to see how these things look and smell a few days into a good fermentation. I imagine the krausen on the carrot beer would be pretty hefty, especially considering I'm using a wheat yeast. Stay tuned...