It fermented. What went wrong?
Natural products have a tendency to turn out different to how you expected. There are a dozen reasons for this. Maybe the bottles weren’t as scrupulously clean as I thought. Maybe the sugar balance wasn’t right. Maybe the naturally ocurring yeasts just got busy again (although I would have expected them to be killed by the heat of the original cooking and the sugar melting).
I think I just plain got it wrong. Yikes! Well, it happens, right?
I didn’t write down my process as well which is, well, frankly stupid! I really ought to know better by now!
My suspicion is that although the bottles were dishwashed, that any residue of rinse aid wouldn’t have been helpful – it can leave them feeling slightly tacky.
My next issue was likely to be that I didn’t heat the bottles before putting the syrup in them – and usually, I would hot soapy water rinse clean bottles rinse the soap off in clean hot water and then dry in the oven at 100oC. Then adding the hot syrup to the hot bottles.
I think I got my calculations wrong too. I think I added 50% weight of sugar to liquid volume eg 50g sugar to 100ml decoction where I would usually do 100g:100ml. And, after some research, it turns out that some syrups need even more sugar than that!
If I had written it down, I would know! I was also trying to film the process for Social Media… another lesson to self. Don’t get distracted when making beautiful medicines!
So, all in all, one big note to self. Nothing like a timely reminder. It’s usually when you think you’ve got it cracked that it goes wrong.
What’s that (pretty unhelpful) expression? Oh yes, pride before a fall…
Hmmmmm!