Run some Wine??

Information about fruit/vegetable type washes.

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Roll D Bud
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Run some Wine??

Post by Roll D Bud »

I have about 24 Ltrs of last years Apple/Pear Wine thats a little "dirty" from poor filtering. Was wondering if I could run it through the Still? Using a Pot Still...
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MDH
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by MDH »

Did you add sulfites to it?
The still is not a liar. Mash and ferment quality is 99.9% of your performance.
Roll D Bud
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Roll D Bud »

Yes, at the beginning.
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by MDH »

You will have problems then. What you can do is warm the wine up, leave it open to the air while stirring occasionally. Most of the SO2 should disappear. But if distilled, it will react with the spirit and produce some extremely difficult to remove off-flavors in the final spirit.
The still is not a liar. Mash and ferment quality is 99.9% of your performance.
Roll D Bud
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Roll D Bud »

Sounds good, Ill give it a shot...
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Danespirit
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Danespirit »

As MDH has pointed out, sulfides are a problem. That relates to any kind of wine one wants to make a brandy out of.
Besides giving a nasty off taste, they will also tarnish any copper in the product path very badly
My approach to it would be to ferment some apple juice (cloudy one is fine) and aim for an apple brandy that is pot distilled.
Run it twice, throwing foreshots every time and make the cuts on the last run. Be aware of any fruit ferment is notorious for a lot of heads.
Then filter your wine and use it to cut your apple brandy down to 40% ABV.
I've done that once and it gave me some very fine and smooth brandy-like spirit.
Roll D Bud
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Roll D Bud »

If I had not added sulfides, I could do this a lot easier and gotten a Brandy or Grappa like product?
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The Baker
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by The Baker »

Hi,
Danespirit said, " sulfides are a problem. That relates to any kind of wine one wants to make a brandy out of."

If you have a winery you can send unsatisfactory wines to a distiller, who will send back to you very high proof alcohol.
Commonly used to fortify wine.
So, I wonder how the distiller approaches this situation??

I am interested because I have maybe 30 litres of wine that I want to make into brandy; and I have a lot of apple brandy that has not much flavour (left from 3 years ago when I was last distilling) ....
Thanks all,
Geoff
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Danespirit
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Danespirit »

Roll D Bud wrote:If I had not added sulfides, I could do this a lot easier and gotten a Brandy or Grappa like product?
Yep, that's right.
You would get a brandy if it's distilled out of any kind of fruit, that includes grapes. It may only be called Cognac if it comes from the specified district in France and is fermented out of certain sorts of grapes.
Grappa, is basically all the junk that's left over when the grapes are pressed out (shells,seeds,pulp,stems).
Back in time, it was labeled as "poor man's brandy". However, one can get very tasty and delicious Grappa that is far from inferior.
When I started distilling, I didn't know about the sulfides and distilled some brandy out of white wine.
Let me tell you, the result was far from what I consider to be enjoyable, even after it was on wood for a couple of weeks.

I use a good apple wine found locally here that is 14% ABV, to cut my apple brandy down to 40% ABV.
It adds a beautiful sweet note to the product, without beeing overwhelming.
What distillers do with that inferior wine, I don't know...maybe someone will chime in and enlighten us?
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by The Baker »

That's interesting, Danespirit.
Thanks.
I will look for apple wine but I am not too hopeful.
Geoff
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6426yy
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by 6426yy »

Would a yeast nutrient have suflides in it?
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Danespirit
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Danespirit »

6426yy wrote:Would a yeast nutrient have suflides in it?
No.
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) is added as a preservative to prevent the wine from getting a brownish color.
Wine barrels are also often disinfected with a little lump of Sulfur that is set on fire and left inside until it goes out when the Oxygen is depleted.
This process kills bacteria that may be present inside the new or empty barrel before it's refilled again.
udiraz
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by udiraz »

I have to tell, only from my own personal experience, that to the first batch I ever done (grapes), I added quite a lot of bisulphite.
I figured out that it may be a problem, so I aerated it for a night, and then distilled. Maybe because my still is all copper, there wasn't any bad smell, bad taste or anything like that. it made a pretty good brandy.
But that's only my experience.
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Pikey »

Yes udiraz metabisulphites generate SO2 for sterilisation purposes and MDH (post 2) asked if the OP had added "Sulphites" - SO2 seems to disappear with airing from another recent thread too.

The other posts seem to relate to "Sulphides" - which I don't think are the same thing are they ?
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by udiraz »

Pikey wrote:Yes udiraz metabisulphites generate SO2 for sterilisation purposes and MDH (post 2) asked if the OP had added "Sulphites" - SO2 seems to disappear with airing from another recent thread too.

The other posts seem to relate to "Sulphides" - which I don't think are the same thing are they ?
Do you mean that sulphites, sulphides are not the same ? I really don't know... but,what other sulphites do you add to wine ?
I am not sure I understand.
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Re: Run some Wine??

Post by Pikey »

udiraz wrote:
Pikey wrote:Yes udiraz metabisulphites generate SO2 for sterilisation purposes and MDH (post 2) asked if the OP had added "Sulphites" - SO2 seems to disappear with airing from another recent thread too.

The other posts seem to relate to "Sulphides" - which I don't think are the same thing are they ?
Do you mean that sulphites, sulphides are not the same ? I really don't know... but,what other sulphites do you add to wine ?
I am not sure I understand.
Sorry if I came across in any way critical udiraz - the only sulphites I know of re; wine etc are used for generating SO2 for sterilizing, which is the context you used them in. As did poster #2.

The other posts refer to "sulphides" and seem to have gone off track a little. :?

[Edit - the most commonly referred to sulphide I know of is Hydrgen Suphide or "swamp gas" .]
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