This has been on our To-Brew list for some time now, and we've finally gotten around to trying our hand at making a hard seltzer. Here's a quick run down on how it went.
We started off with 20L of spring water - we went for 2 x 10L boxes of Pureau branded water. Tap water isn't really well suited for making seltzers because of it's relatively high mineral content, and other contaminants like chlorine or chloramine which can make it difficult to get that crystal clear final product and avoid any potential off-flavours.
As you can see from the water analysis on the side of the box, there are 0mg/L of all elements in the water making it similar in composition to distilled or reverse osmosis water - an ideal 'blank canvas' making a hard seltzer.
Since we knew each box had 10L in it, it was a good opportunity to check the accuracy of the graduation markings on our BrewZilla. Was pretty accurate at the 10L mark which is good to know!
We heated the water to 80°C as warmer water will dissolve dextrose more easily than cold water. Whilst waiting for the water to heat up we measured and weighed out our 2.2kg of dextrose - 2 x 1kg bags plus a separate bowl of 200g.
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| 203g - close enough |
When boiling temperature was reached, we added our immersion chiller to the BrewZilla in order to sanitize it in the boiling water.
We're only boiling for a short period of 10 minutes, essentially to sanitize the water solution - there's no hops required for a seltzer like there is when brewing beer so no isomerization of alpha acids need to take place.
After the 10 minute boil is finished it's time to add our Omega Yeast Propper Seltzer Nutrient
There's alot of information out there about what nutrients are required to make a good seltzer, since there is next to no nutritional content for yeast within the dextrose/water solution. We figured the easiest solution to (hopefully) get a good result would be to use this nutrient which has been formulated especially for making seltzers.
As you can see from the instructions on the rear of the pack, you simply add the nutrient at the completion of the boil during the whirlpool period.
After opening the pack, we can see whatever is inside it is mostly yellow in colour - interesting.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this ended up causing our water to turn a green-yellow colour after adding the nutrient. It also made some interesting fizzing and popping noises when adding it in.
After whirlpooling for 5 minutes or so, we proceeded to chill the solution down to around 30°C at which point we transferred it to our Apollo Titan stainless conical fermenter and pitched our Omega Lutra Kveik yeast.
We also used the opportunity to take a gravity reading, which gave us 1.038 - close enough to the 1.040 we were aiming for
We set our RAPT Temperature Controller to maintain a steady 30°C in our fermenting fridge (along with a heat mat to help maintain the temperature). According to our RAPT Pill, fermentation appeared to be underway within just a few hours of pitching the yeast!
We're curious to see how this one turns out, particularly the colour after starting off with a yellow-tinged solution! We'll update this post once the final results are in.
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