Tag Archive: WLP775

I was tempted to make a click-bait headline of “He throws a watermelon in a blender. You won’t believe what happens next!”

I ended up with a watermelon large enough to feed a small army, which is about 60% more than my family (of FIVE) will eat.  I cut half of it into chunks small enough for my kids (9, 4, and 3 years old) and was left with a dilemma of what to do with half a watermelon.  Throwing it away would seem pretty wasteful.  And my fridge is too full for half a watermelon of this size, so keeping it was generally out.

So like any ubergeek, I searched the Internet for things to do with a watermelon.  Not long into the barrage of pages was a page about juicing it.

So watermelons have a bit of sugar and a lot of water, and yeast eats sugar and makes alcohol…

The first thing I did was prepare the must (watermelon juice).  Getting from watermelon to watermelon juice was done with the blender.

Will it blend?

After blending, I strained out the large seeds with a colander…

Colander Strainer

Next I heated the must to 170ºF (actually, it made it up to 195ºF, good thing it doesn’t have a lot of pectin in it, apparently) and cooled it to 75ºF.

Oh look, a pot of must.

Once the must was cooled, I racked it to a 1-gallon carboy, shook it, and added a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and some White Labs WLP775 English Cider Yeast.  I pulled a little off the side and checked gravity, which was 1.030 – 1.040 (we’ll go with 1.035).  The must was a little thick so it was hard to get a proper reading.

Off to the races!

Cheers!