Mango Melonade in the Keg, Pina Colada in the drain

The Mango Melonade turned out great.  The yeast starter kicked it into gear and the FG read at an even 1000.  Since the FG was so low, I had to add 23(!) cups of sugar to bring it back up to 1046.  I Used 13 cups of corn sugar (dextrose), then ran out and switched to powdered sugar, which ran out after 7 cups, then finally threw in 3 cups of regular cane sugar.  I dumped in some potassium metabisulfite, but plan to add in some potassium sorbate as well, just to keep this thing from going active again after all that sugar.

I threw the whole mix into a soda keg, stuffed it into the fridge, and heavily carbonated it.  So far it's great, but it's so high on the alcohol that you can easily taste it.  Maybe a little too strong for a chick beer.  I think next time around I'll definitely avoid adding any sugar before the primary fermentation.  I might also let it sit in a secondary for a while to condition before adding the extra sugar.

Speaking of adding things before fermentation, that I probably shouldn't have...  I had to toss out the pineapple juice.  The coconut milk turned terribly rancid.  It smelled really bad, and looked bad too.    It was only a test batch at just over a gallon, so I don't feel to bad about dumping it.  I think I was only in for $4.50 on ingredients or something close to that.

I think next time around I'll skip the coconut milk and opt for coconut extract.  I'll also need to figure out how to avoid the pineapple pulp.  The pineapple concentrate (at least the Dole brand), has a lot of pineapple pulp that mingles, but not completely settles at the bottom.  It covers up the trub so thoroughly that I can't tell where the pineapple ends, and the trub begins.  It's also about three times the size of the trub, so I'd be wasting a lot of juice if I didn't rack it.  Maybe I just need to pick a different brand of pineapple juice, or filter it before fermenting?