Extra Sugar ?

There's a little debate around over the pro's & con's of adding extra sugar to a fruit mash. The traditional approach is that it ain't on - that all you're doing is making extra alcohol without getting extra flavour, hence getting a lower quality product (see Ups's comments below re Brandy - that you want the multiple distillations from a low % to concentrate the flavour).

Gert Strand however, at http://www.turboyeast.com/, however suggests that the extra alcohol (and CO2 produced) extra MORE flavours from the fruit. See his site for excellent instructions on various techniques & recipes when using his Turbo yeasts.

As Rob explains ..

The trick is, you can distill a fruit schnapps out of say 18% mash in one distillation; if your mash is only 6 or 8% you'll have to distill twice, which causes loss of flavour. Also, when you distill only once, the resulting distillate is lower in alcohol than after double distillation, so you add less water to dilute to drinking strength; this way you also dilute the flavour less. Of course single distillation requires good separation of the middle cut; stop well before the heavier stuff starts coming out.

So the choice is yours. Both ways probably have their own merits and pitfalls.

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