First tastes of Fruity and Peach&Plum

Fruity is absolutely excellent. Its drinkable now, though a few more days of clarifying will do it good. It has a resemblance to Pinja, with the citrus flavors accentuated by the more sweet oranges used. The mango has not given much in the name of flavor, but instead more texture and sweetness. On the whole it is sweet, this is an excellent summer drink. Very refreshing.

Peach and plum is still way too cloudy to properly enjoy, though hints at the coming are tasteable. It has a very full body, due to the syrup we theorize, and a very strong sweet fruit flavor. It'll take at least a week to clarify to a reasonable level, so we'll have to wait and keep ourselves strong with fruity in the meantime.

The first three batches have all been finished, and were thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Batch# 5 - Fruity Cock-Tail

Two updates and two Kiljus in two days. When having coffee earlier today, an overwhelming urge to make Kilju took over our minds. We are sticking to tropical fruits as the name suggests. We are revisiting our first batch with pineapple but today we also have Mango and Oranges. First we had a Mango and Passion fruit mix in mind but it would have been too expensive, except for special occasions like weddings and bachelor parties. The recipe is as follows:

• Pineapple - 1,415kg
• Oranges - 0,910kg
• Mango - 1,535kg
• Sugar - 2,000kg
• Drinkit Turbo Speed Yeast - 45ml
• Water to bring total volume to 9l
  

Cut, blend, boil, pour - repeat until all fruit is in the fermentation vessel. Then let the mash cool until about 30 degrees Centigrade. After the mash is cool enough just add the yeast and enjoy about two weeks later.

Batch #4 - "Peach and Plum Extravaganza"

Today we are trying out something special. With a mixture of two fruits and dark syrup as a source for sugars we expect this Kilju to be something totally out of the ordinary. We of course have the same basic ingredients that we expect to find in every kilju made out of tropical fruits - white sugar and lemon juice. This batch is a little less than 5l in volume. The complete list of ingredients is as follows:

• 1,005kg peaches
• 0,680kg plums
• 1,000kg dark syrup
• 0,500kg white sugar
• 0,125l lemon juice
• 0,0325l DrinkIt Turbo Speed yeast
  

Of course the making procedure starts with sanitizing as usual and then chopping and blending the fruit. Getting the stones out of the fruits was a bit of a pain but it is a necessity. Afterwards followed the boiling of the mash and into the brewing container it all went.

When pouring the mash we found ourselves short of critical Kilju-making equipment: a big funnel. This rookie like mistake resulted in a loss of mash and some mess. Nevertheless we managed to get the sugar and syrup to mix really well with the mash and the whole batch is looking quite homogenous. Now it just needs to cool for a bit while we taste some of our earlier Kiljus. After it has cooled down to a comfortable temperature, we'll toss in the yeast, give it a final stir, and leave it alone for a week.

Bottling and filtering the first two batches

As lingonberry has finally stopped fermenting, the lab acquired some cheesecloth with which to filter out the berry residue. We poured the kilju through cheesecloth into a 5l canister, while being careful to leave the worst of the yeast behind. Now the kilju canister is sitting in the lab fridge for a few days to let the rest of the yeast settle, before a final siphoning into bottles. The straining through cheese cloth was a rather trivial exercise, so pulping of the fruits will be continued in the future as well.

At the same time, pinja got siphoned into soda bottles. There was 4l worth of final product, which means 1.85€/l for the batch. Not bad at all - comparable to beer by price, but 3-4x the ABV. It is now crystal clear and quite wonderful. In fact, we are enjoying champagne flutes of Pinja on ice at the moment.

The next batch, nectarines and peaches with brown sugar, will probably have to wait until after the midsummers weekend, because of other pursuits.

First tastes of pinja

A few days ago we tasted Pinja for the first time. We began by siphoning the kilju into a new 5l pot to get rid of the yeast. This was a bit of a pain as the pineapple had settled on the bottom, as well as was floating on the top. In the end, we just poured through a sieve, being careful not to disturb the yeast sediment. Next time we'll probably pour through cheesecloth, and then let the yeast settle again before siphoning. Might be that blending the ingredients is not worth it because of the pain in the ass it causes later.

As far as the taste? Not very much of it to speak of. It tasted a bit like 80% vodka mixed with the juice of a can of pineapple chunks. Not a very strong taste, but on the other hand there weren't any unpleasant side tastes either. Techinally this was a good batch, and will make a good mixer if nothing else.

Next project is peaches and nectarines with brown sugar or molasses. Should be good. Lingonberry has just stopped fermenting, took 10 days. Might be that we taste it this weekend, will report back. Kippis!

Batch #2 - "Puolukkapäivät"

After getting the first batch down, we were itching for more, so we immediately set to work on the second set. This time the theme is lingonberry. Even by our standards this is more of a berry wine than a kilju. Then again, in our minds, kilju is more of a laid back homebrew mindset than a strict definition.

The ingredients:

• 2.2l Lingonberries
• 1.5kg Sugar
• Drinkit Turbo Speed yeast
• 6l water

We started by slowly heating the frozen lingonberries in a pot with a few liters of water. They soaked on small power for an hour or so to let them release their juices. Then the blender. The resulting lingonberry smoothie went back into the pots, and got boiled to get rid of any wild yeasts and other bad stuff. We added the sugar to the boiling smoothie.

Finally everything went into the fermentation vessel, this one of 10l capacity. Once again, even after adding the cold water, the result was too warm to introduce the yeast, so we set the pot out on the balcony to cool while we ate dinner. When we judged that the contents were of the right temperature, in went the yeast, and we gave it a final stir before closing everything up.

Batches one and two have been fermenting for about 24 hours now, Pinja about four hours more. Both started bubbling from the trap almost immidiately, and now the laboratory is filled with an intresting cacophony of gurgling fermentation. Despite the warning about foaming on the yeast package, everything looks fine, and the fermentation is looking quite civilized. So far this looks like a good yeast to use.

The lingonberry batch has a lot of potential to be really good, even something to be enjoyed from a wineglass accompanied by food. If it does turn out good, we might well do another batch with a proper wine yeast instead of a turbo yeast.

Batch #1 - "Pinja Kiljunen"

Now its time for us to show the process behind making kilju. This is batch #1, that we ended up naming "Pinja Kiljunen," after the Spanish word for pineapple - piña. Like the name suggests, the theme of this first experiment is pineapple.


The ingredients are quite simple:

• 1 Pineapple (1.66kg)
• 125ml lemon juice (4 lemons equivalent)
  
• 1.5kg sugar
• 4l water
• Drinkit Turbo Speed yeast (dosed according to package instructions)

As with any project like this, a proper hygiene etiquette is essential. With kilju, its not necessary to be anal about cleanliness, but common sense and a bit of effort will pay off. All the little bits of equipment are easy to sterilize by boiling them, and the same water can then be used to swirl the fermentation vessel into microbe-free goodness.

Then the pineapple. First we peeled the pineapple using a potato peeler, and then chopped it into small chunks in preparation for the final pulping with a blender. It's good to get the fruits as small as possible to make their sugars available. Normally when brewing with a standard 30l vessel, we would settle for just chopping up the fruit. It remains to be seen whether blending gives any benefit. A nice trick is to pop the fruit bits into a bag of cheesecloth or somesuch, so they are easy to remove. We didn't bother, this kilju will be with pulp included.

The sugar is best dissolved into boiling water. A smart kilju-brewer will not use too much boiling water at this point though, since in the end we want the mash to be at a temperature suitable for introducing the yeast (usually 25-30'C). Once the sugar is dissolved, everything goes into the fermentation vessel, the sugar water, the pineapple mash, lemon juice, and enough cold water to bring the total liquid up to the four liter mark.

At this point we realized a little mistake. We failed to account for the fact that all the ingredients like sugar and pineapple also add to the volume, and ended up with entirely too much mash. Though the fermentation vessel has a 5l volume, there needs to be an airspace, so the effective capacity is perhaps 4l. If there isn't an adequate airspace, the fermentation will push kilju out of the trap, or even blow the lid off - not good. No problem though, we stuck a trap on top of a 1.5l soda bottle, siphoned some of the mash into it, and divided up the yeast accordingly.

When choosing the yeast, we looked at the time it'll take to finish fermenting according to the package. The selection ranged from one that claimed 24h, some two and three day affairs, and the one we chose. Ours claims to finish in 3 to 7 days. The fastest yeasts generally add unpleasant tastes to the kilju, and ferment aggressively. We figured an aggressive fermentation would just blow the lid off our pot, so we went with a slower choice. Of course, we only noticed the warning on the package about aggressive foaming when we got back to the lab. No big deal here either, we'll just keep a close eye on the vessels and let gas out as necessary.

After the yeast went in, we gave everything a stir, closed the lids, put water into the traps. In a week or so, we should have delicious kilju.

The equipment

To start off our project, we purchased the bare essentials in equipment. As this is a project experimenting in different recipes, we passed on the 30L fermentation vessels, and bought a 5L water can. A hole drilled into the lid allows the mounting of a fermentation trap. The trap will keep unwanted air and microbes away from our potentially fine product, while allowing carbon dioxide produced during fermentation to escape. As the project expands, more than likely additional fermentation setups like this will be added.

In addition, an assortment of pots and a kettle for boiling water are good to have, but these should be standard kitchen equipment for even the poorest student. A length of hose is good to have for siphoning, when bottling and such. Beer, obviously, is necessary while making kilju, or even more ideally of course, some frosty glasses of the previous batch.

The beginning - a mission statement

Kilju is defined by wikipedia to be:

... a Finnish home-made alcoholic beverage made primarily from water, sugar, and yeast. Kilju has a reputation of being a low-quality drink, consumed mainly for the sake of its alcohol content.

Indeed the bare essentials of kilju are sugar, water and yeast. The end result of this is a neutral tasting drink without character, that though drinkable, is more suited as a raw material for distillation. More often in practice, kilju is made with berries or fruits, with sugar added to aid fermentation. The addition of fruits and berries opens up infinite possibilities for experimentation in recipes, that can at the best of times lead to an exquisitely refreshing drink, ranging up to around 15% ABV. This blog is going to follow our adventures in finding the perfect kilju.