Novice Guide to a Fruit Like Brandy

[Odin]

So you are pretty new to this hobby and want to make a Fruit Brandy? But you don't want to go through the hassle of picking, pressing, and fermenting fruits? Here is an easy way to make an good Fruit Brandy. And find out what you like before you (maybe) dive in deeper.

Make a neutral wash (BW for instance). Distill it to concentrate the alcohol (strip run). Then distill it again and make cuts, so you will end up with a clean hearts fraction.

Buy fruit concentrate or fruite syrup. You know, the stuff that your kids drink. They pour a finger in a glass and fill it up with water. You don't need to do that. Just buy the fruit concentrate or syrup. Make sure it isn't that cheap stuff, loaded with taste & smell essences. What you need is at least 75% based on real fruit concentrate. A 100% is better.

Here is a recipe for 5 liters. It is scalable as you like it:

Dilute your neutral likker to 25% using water.
Take 4.25 liters of it.
Add 750 mls of syrup/concentrate (just choose a taste you like: pear, apple, cranberries, orange ...).
Stir in the syrup/concentrate.
Distill in a pot still.

Collect about 1/3rd as your final result (depending on your pot still). You will end up with around 1.6 liters of 60% Fruit Brandy.

You don't have to make cuts (did that on the neutral already) and you can run your rig pretty fast. Somewhere between a strip run and a spirit run.

1. Dilute to 40/45% drinking strength and let it sit in a glass jar for 5 weeks. You now have a great Fruit Brandy "Novice Style".
2. Don't dilute just yet. Ad around 10 grams of light to medium toasted oak sticks per liter (in this example around 15 grams would be enough) while your Fruit Brandy is still 60%. Put everything in a glass jar for up to two months, then take the wood out, dilute to drinking strength, and let it rest for another month or so.

Easy, tasty, and you can experiment into any direction you want!

Okay, who picks this up? Who takes this further?

Odin.

[bentstick]

Nice Odin,thanx! Will be putting this in the recipe binder for a try later this winter.

[rtalbigr]

A few years back I did something rather similar. Instead of fruit concentrate I macerated black cherries in a corn based alcohol @ 40% for several months and then ran it through my pot. It made a very nice black cherry brandy.

Big R

[DHS]

Ferment Apple mash and make cuts.
Keep hearts and place in ageing vessel with oak.
Save feints
Repeat above process until feints jar is full.
Add apple concentrate to feints jar
redistll and add higher alcohol to aging jar to achieve 65%
Save lower % cuts to slowly Add to ageing vessel

[DHS]

Odin was using a neutral. I started out with a apple mash. if you like a schnaps like likker this is a good process. if you prefer a lighter brandy then add 3 oz of frozen apple concentrate per quart in your feints jar.