Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

[Shine0n]

2016-08-12 22.07.49.jpg (14.59 KiB) Viewed 2462 times

I collected in half pints, Peach Brandy

I got the jug and the small tractor for 40$

[wtfdskin]

[img]http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016081 ... e7e435.jpg[/img]

Finished my summer project #1 finally. 76 yards if mulch under my 33 trees. Drought hurt production this year but encouraged me to finish my drip irrigation project. Dry wont get me next year.

[raketemensch]

Finished my summer project #1 finally. 76 yards if mulch under my 33 trees. Drought hurt production this year but encouraged me to finish my drip irrigation project. Dry wont get me next year.

Nice work, man, I wish I had that much space. I got 3 apples and 1 pear squeezed in, is that 10 trees?

[wtfdskin]

3 rows of 11. Have room for more but that's going to be enough for me to keep up with once they all mature

[cranky]

Shine0n, I collect in half pints too, I try to collect just enough to take a proof measurement then switch jars. This month is the month Ace hardware puts canning jars on sale so I have a tendency to stock up from them so I always have plenty of jars.

wtfdskin, I can't see the picture I wonder why? Someday I hope to get something like that, I have a very tiny yard and have crammed as many trees as I can onto it, I actually have them in half 55 gallon drums in the hopes that I will have the land to move them too before they get too big for the containers. I am planning on winning the lottery any day now so I can make that happen

[Shine0n]

Cranky, after reading your posts is why I collected in half pints now I can make better blends, I won't get the quantity I like but the brandy will be right!!!

[cranky]

Quality is always better than quantity. Before you know it you will accumulate a pretty nice stock. Blending can get real tricky with brandies so it is always best to make the small cuts at least until you get accustomed to doing it.

[Shine0n]

On to the other fruits, the apples are so heavy on the trees the limbs are starting to bend way down and some have even cracked. The wasps are so bad I can't get near the figs anymore, but the pear tree is doing very well and I'm eager to try that brandy and maybe a wine.

[Shine0n]

It's like watching grass grow! The apples are so close but so far. Some of the pears are rotting on the tree and have not seen any on the ground. Do pears fall like apples when ready or should I just taste and see? My son has a refractometer so I should look up some conversion tables so I can get a better grip on this. This is consuming the most of my brain

[cranky]

It's like watching grass grow! The apples are so close but so far. Some of the pears are rotting on the tree and have not seen any on the ground. Do pears fall like apples when ready or should I just taste and see? My son has a refractometer so I should look up some conversion tables so I can get a better grip on this. This is consuming the most of my brain

Actually pears will begin to rot from the inside out on the tree and need to be picked early and allowed to ripen off the tree. There are a few exceptions to this rule but mostly only Asian pears (apple pears) and seckel pears. If the neck begins to get slightly soft they are ripe, in truth there are only 10 minutes in a pears life that they are perfectly ripe. I have a bucket or two of pears that I have been waiting for that 10 minutes, I sort them every day and place the ripe ones in the freezer. I just took a little over a bucket of them out of the freezer, the guy that brought them to me thought his pears were Asian but they are European cooking pears. He was waiting for them to ripen on the tree but by the time they did they were already gone. He brought me a few and to me they were obviously ready to pick so I told him so. He brought me all of them they go from under ripe to over ripe very quickly but I may actually get a pear brandy yet this year.

I guess that was kind of a long way of saying pick them now and begin processing, even slightly under ripe pears are almost entirely juice so you get a lot more juice from them than apples.

[Shine0n]

Thanks for that good bit of info Cranky, I hope to have the tree stripped by weeks end. Since I don't have my chopper ready yet is it possible to freeze whole and chop later or go neanderthal on them?

[Shine0n]

I just reread that and saw that you freeze them 330am I didn't see that well. Sounds like a plan

[wtfdskin]

I freeze mine as I collect then chop and press all in one day. Softens them up nicely for chopping when they thaw

[cranky]

If you have a press a lot of times you don't even have to chop pears, they get very soft especially after freezing. I freeze them because I try to get them at the peak of ripeness and like everything they ripen at different times. A lot of times they will go bad in only a day or two so you really have to keep an eye on them.

[wtfdskin]

Same thinking as me cranky. Everything I use comes on at different times. Tried storing in crates in the cellar once and they spoiled. Now its collect and straight to the walk in freezer

[cranky]

Same thinking as me cranky. Everything I use comes on at different times. Tried storing in crates in the cellar once and they spoiled. Now its collect and straight to the walk in freezer

Wish I had a walk in freezer. I don't have room in my tiny deep freeze for another pear. My freezer in the kitchen is stuffed full too. The other day I took a little over a bucket full out to thaw and today I had to take the rest to make room for the rest of the pears that are now ripe. I will take those out tomorrow and probably press Friday. I hope to get enough to do a proper pear brandy but as it looks now I'm not sure it will be so it will likely get added to the apple unless I decide to bottle it and save it for next year. I do really like what adding a little pear brandy did for the apple brandy last year so I may just go ahead and do that again this year.

[cranky]

This morning I took my wife to breakfast. We like to go out to breakfast on my weekend to a place in Federal Way that serves huge portions and makes a killer chicken fried steak. They also make really good pancakes that my wife loves. The problem is if you don't get there just after they open it gets pretty crowded and loud which we don't like. This morning we slept late and didn't get there until 10 so the place was packed After a little debate I came up with the idea to pick up Burger King and stop to eat it at the Fed Way blueberry park then go to the casino. The wife has been feeling much better lately and was wanting to getting out for a bit so she said OK.

There is an apple tree at the blueberry park that usually has apples right up to the December freeze. I have never picked them but have wanted to for a while. We sat under the tree and ate breakfast and I even spotted another tree with some large bright red apples that has already lost most of them. The late apple tree is already dropping them, which is unusual. Somebody has picked all the low easy to reach apples but it is pretty heavily loaded with ones that could be easily reached with my picker. I'm guessing there is at least 300 LBS on that tree, probably much more but it tends to be rather inconvenient to get the time to run down there and pick and the wife is already complaining about the fruit, she will really be complaining after I start picking the antique tree in a couple weeks. I would have taken a picture but I have a tendency of leaving my phone on my desk in our home office on my weekends, which is a dead zone, so I didn't have it with me.

[Shine0n]

Glad to hear the Mrs is felling better, prayers for good health

My oldest son and I are going fishing tonight for red drum and or speck trout, afterwards we are going to strip the pear tree and if time permits go up the county and check on one of the apple trees. My friend said the apples are turning red now and should be ready soon. We are taking the refractometer and will check a couple of them and see what we got.

[cranky]

Glad to hear the Mrs is felling better, prayers for good health

Thank you, that's much appreciated.

My oldest son and I are going fishing tonight for red drum and or speck trout, afterwards we are going to strip the pear tree and if time permits go up the county and check on one of the apple trees. My friend said the apples are turning red now and should be ready soon. We are taking the refractometer and will check a couple of them and see what we got.

I have taken most of my pears out of the freezer now to thaw and press. I actually used all the press bags I had the last time I pressed apples so those are going into the wash so I can use them on the pears when they thaw, I may actually take them to work with me and press them there like I did last year just because I tend to have a bit of free time there. I need to get a stopper for the new 12 gallon carboy so I can move the plum wine into it to free up some buckets to get the next batch of plums fermenting and get the last of the pears thawed. It's kind of crazy how mushy and juicy they are after freezing and thawing.

[GrassHopper]

1st attempt at Apricot Brandy

Recipe:
50lbs frozen apricots (picked when ripe, own tree)
28lbs sugar
2 tblsp potassium metabisulphite
12.5 gal water
4.5 tblsp acid blend
4.5 tblsp yeast nutrient
7 tsp pectic enzyme


Took frozen apricots and put into 5 gal buckets to thaw. Added 1 gal hot water to each bucket and stirred with large paint mixer. The pits were still suspended due to thickness, so added another gallon of hot water and stirred into a puree. The pits all fell to the bottom of buckets. Put a strainer for a turkey fryer over my 33 gal fermenter and poured the buckets in and the pits stayed on the bottom of the buckets.
Dissolved the 28lbs of sugar into 4 gals of heated water in double boiler and added to apricot puree. Added the remaining 4 1/2 gal of water and added the pottasium metabisulphate, the yeast energizer, and the acid blend. (didn't add the pectic enzyme, didn't have it). Let sit for 12 hrs and then pitched 3 pkg of Lalvin K-1 V1116.

Notes: Tried to get a gravity reading, .08 ? (was pretty thick). Ph was 4 ( a bit low). Debating whether to add crushed oyster shell. Pitch temp 80 F.
I don't know if 3 pkgs of yeast are enough? Wait and see I guess. Plan on letting ferment down and then racking to secondary fermenters later.

Input, comments welcome.

[cranky]

1st attempt at Apricot Brandy

Input, comments welcome.

Apricot trees are on my list of trees to get, but then again pretty much every kind of fruit tree is
If planning on distilling the metabisulphite can cause problems and of course you get more flavor without adding sugar. Oyster shells certainly won't hurt anything and could prevent a PH crash. Now that I have gotten a refractomiter it sure comes in handy for checking SG of a thick wash.

[MichiganCornhusker]

Now that I have gotten a refractomiter it sure comes in handy for checking SG of a thick wash.

+1
One of those things you wonder how you did without once you get one.
I can put any kind of mush slurry in a t-shirt rag, let a couple clear drops fall out onto the refrac and bingo.

I would think for checking fruit juice while still on the tree a refractometer would be indispensable.

[cranky]

Now that I have gotten a refractomiter it sure comes in handy for checking SG of a thick wash.

+1
One of those things you wonder how you did without once you get one.
I can put any kind of mush slurry in a t-shirt rag, let a couple clear drops fall out onto the refrac and bingo.

I would think for checking fruit juice while still on the tree a refractometer would be indispensable.

The refractomiter is definitely a valuable tool, especially as you learn your particular trees. I still like to taste the fruit because that tells me a whole lot, especially when I get to know the trees. Our weather turned hot a while back and I noticed several trees today that shouldn't be dropping apples for at least another month are dropping them. I am going to have to go test some more apples pretty soon.

[GrassHopper]

1st attempt at Apricot Brandy

Input, comments welcome.

Apricot trees are on my list of trees to get, but then again pretty much every kind of fruit tree is
If planning on distilling the metabisulphite can cause problems and of course you get more flavor without adding sugar. Oyster shells certainly won't hurt anything and could prevent a PH crash. Now that I have gotten a refractomiter it sure comes in handy for checking SG of a thick wash.

I will put a refractometer on my want list. Will also add the oyster shells. Is it the sulfur in the metabisulphite that is going to be the problem when distilling? I wonder why there is not much here on HD on others running apricots? Recipes are lacking also. Just thinking outloud.
Thanks for the suggestions Cranky

[cranky]

I'm having apple withdrawals right now. What is it, 5 more days until the end of the month? Damn this month flew past fast but I really need to pick some apples. Today I managed to make it down to the brew shop again and picked up a #12 drilled stopper for the 12 gallon carboy. I just finished moving the Sugarplum Fairy wine to the new 12 gallon carboy.

I had planned on straining out the pulp when I moved it from the buckets to the carboy but it just clogged the strainer so fast I just said the hell with it and poured it all in. Eventually I will get it all out by racking. Of course this caused a little issue, if you look close at that picture you can see the airlock is full of foam and it is overflowing all over the place. The ferment is still very active as well. The last time I did this particular recipe I did the primary ferment for 10 days before straining and moving to the secondary and by then the fermentation had settled down and by straining out the pulp overflow wasn't a problem. I can say it is getting quite high in alcohol and looks just as awful as the first time I did this. It doesn't taste as awful yet but it is well on it's way. If everything goes right it will look and taste absolutely dreadful right up to the 4 month period then suddenly change and be amazing, then after a year in the bottles it will be incredible. I should also have around 45-50 bottles of it to share and to make my wife happy. Now I need to decide if the 5 gallons of plum pulp in the refrigerator and 4 gallons of sliced plums in the freezer is going to be used for brandy or make the wife happy and make her even more plum wine. I know it sounds like I am making a lot of plum wine but if you think about it one single bottle of wine a week comes to 10 gallons of wine a year and because of the amount of sediment and rackings required for plum I lose as much as 30% of the original volume by the time I bottle.

Now all this freed up 3 buckets, one of which I filled with frozen pears, the rest of the frozen pears were crammed into the other buckets with thawed and thawing pears. I'm either going to take them to work and set up the little press tomorrow or Saturday or maybe just load them into the big press Saturday afternoon while I continue to work on the porch. I kind of want to use my free time at work to work on cleaning up truck parts because I finally have a date to take my engine in to the machine shop for overhaul Hopefully in another 3 weeks or so I will have the apple reaper back up and running and ready to do the job it was intended to do

[Bushman]

Cranky when I rack I usually try to refrigerate if possible first to help it settle better. Looks like you should be looking for one of those commercial sized refrigerator for that 12 gallon carboy

[cranky]

1st attempt at Apricot Brandy

Input, comments welcome.

Apricot trees are on my list of trees to get, but then again pretty much every kind of fruit tree is
If planning on distilling the metabisulphite can cause problems and of course you get more flavor without adding sugar. Oyster shells certainly won't hurt anything and could prevent a PH crash. Now that I have gotten a refractomiter it sure comes in handy for checking SG of a thick wash.

I will put a refractometer on my want list. Will also add the oyster shells. Is it the sulfur in the metabisulphite that is going to be the problem when distilling? I wonder why there is not much here on HD on others running apricots? Recipes are lacking also. Just thinking outloud.
Thanks for the suggestions Cranky

Your welcome.
Yes it is the sulfur can cause problems, some people say it dissipates quickly and they have had no problems but others have ruined their distillate with it. I never use it even for wine. I understand one way to get rid of it is to aerate the crap out of it prior to running but have never tried that method so can't say for sure it works.

[cranky]

Cranky when I rack I usually try to refrigerate if possible first to help it settle better. Looks like you should be looking for one of those commercial sized refrigerator for that 12 gallon carboy

That would be awesome! That carboy is so big I can't even move it when it is full much less lift it. A house in my neighborhood that sold recently had a big walk in commercial freezer in the garage but since it had an external padlock I was wondering if it was actually used as a place to keep the next victim

This morning I checked on that plum and found the stopper halfway across the garage and foam everywhere. I guess it is still so active it just built up too much pressure for that little airlock. I knew when I did it I was taking a chance and should have just rubberbanded a dish towel over the opening until it settled down a bit more.

[cranky]

Well crap Yesterday I got home from work and started to press my pears. I first tried to load the pears directly into the bags without chopping but that went slow so I decided to go ahead and run them through the chopper. This basically reduced them to about 3 buckets of baby food. It was an incredibly messy endeavor and I had bits of pear all over me. I then loaded the first round into the press and started pressing. I was trying to get as much pear juice as possible so I left it sitting under pressure and draining while I set about continuing to work on the porch. Every so often I would go back and give the jack a few more pumps. I had about 4 gallons of juice in the catch bucket and more was still flowing so I continued to cut new steps when suddenly the world started to shift and spin as another severe dizzy episode hit me. Not exactly what you want to happen when you are running a saw with no brake and a broken blade guard. I headed into the house leaving everything just as it was and headed for the bedroom to lie down. Fortunately my wife managed to get me a big pot just before the vomiting started. It was a very unpleasant evening and at that point the last thing on my mind was pressing pears...OK to be honest it was actually very on my mind because it was a lot of work to get everything ready to press and I really wanted to do a proper pear brandy but at this point it was obvious that wasn't going to happen, in fact it looked like I was going to lose everything since it was all sitting open and the last time this happened it lasted for 3 days. Fortunately my wife went out and put lids on the juice and one of the buckets of mush so I should be able to salvage the 4 gallons of juice and maybe I will be able to press whats in the bucket that got the lid. Also fortunately it was only one extremely unpleasant night and today I don't feel the rotation of the earth and I can actually open my eyes. Unfortunately I don't think I will have enough pear juice to make pear brandy but I'm sure it will be a nice addition to the apple brandy when I run it.

[drdale]

Is it necessary to press apples and ferment the juice or can you just crush the fruit and use it as it is?