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The cracked corn I use to buy for my hens are very floury, so I sieve it and use the flour to put in my grain-bill. Otherwise the wind would take it as hens pick up only the bigger shards.

Hello Friends, I tried to search for it but found little information here on the topic how to purify vodka to aquire a smooth drink with a very light taste profile. Please share your thoughts, innovations, or if been a related topic please link it to me. I do not own a column yet, so the method must...

Thank you Randy, my pleasure. Right now I'm cleaning out the resi(n)duals from the tubes of my pot-still with the collected foreshots of the year. All of the seasons' different fruits' tails'n'heads were mixed with some birdwatcher's wash, cooked to a lovely aromatic wine. I poured in some molasses ...

Dear Dan, I think we have a complete agreement on the wild vs. commercial yeast topics. What I try to emphasize is that if one does not have a well-tried wild yeast at his disposal it is risky not to use commercial ones, especially with a big batch of fruit. In fact, best fruit-brandies and pálinka ...

Hi Urbanshiner, I collect my pears in a big plastic tub filled halfway with water, and after washing them I and cut out the core with the seeds. Then I cut the pears by hand to thin slices. A curved knife will do the trick. With this amount pureeing with paintdrill will work too, but remember to dec...

Anything other than white sugar is quite expensive here in Central-Europe, so I guess I stick with making booze from AG if other than fruits, but only from next spring. Not a lot of molasses flavour distilled through from the enchanted whitesugar-wash, however there are multiple fruits recognizable ...

:clap: That would solve my hunger for great rum too easily. Bad thing is that this years' plum is not something I would happily send, it would be an early end of a fresh friendship due to quality of the 2014 plums. Anyway, this spirit I'm distilling now (I will not call it a rum again) is something ...

I try makeing rum from birdwatcher's wash and give molasses* only to the low wines for flavour (as molasses are not easy to aquire here) before distillation, I wondered is the spent wash (sugar+tomato+citric acid+yeast) should work as a dunder too? Also, should one also pour the dead yeast cells tha...

Ok, it started to develop some swirly stuff on top so I cooked it. Very nice output, more ABV than I expected. It smelled great while cooking and lot's of fruitflies gathered around - they know that tomato is indeed a fruit.

Dear MDH, I never used Lallzyme-β, it is mostly used here by those who make a mash but - without having their own distilling equipment - bring it to distilleries for cooking and distilling it later. These poor souls are on a long queue with their already fermented mash on the list of distilleries, s...

Hi Dan, I believe that multiple strains of a fruit type almost all the time leads to a better result than making a fruit brandy from a single strain.* This year our plum (all three variations) was pretty bad and uninteresting, however the blue mirabelle shined out with nice blueberry hues in it's sc...

My sugar wash (birdwatchers recipe) is just about two weeks in fermenting, stil lot of CO2 on top of it, still a lot of sugar in it (in burn-test it's caramellize, and shows 10 Maligan on sugar scale, I have no refractometer yet), and today it started to have some foam islands on the surface of the ...

I think that it will turn out great, no need to worry. A day of aeration will be perfectly enough, and separate distillation in 40L batches is a very good idea, just to be sure. However, that yeast was not an optimal choice though as it is known to produce more hydrogen-sulphide than other strains, ...

If it is really oversulphured the best solution is to dilute with unsulphured fruit juice, if you don't have grapes then apples will do it. Good news is that a lot of copper in a pot like yours will catalyze most of the sulphur, so I should not worry about it. If you want to be sure then aeration (m...

bison grass it was Żubrówka, a Polish spiced rye vodka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBubr%C3%B3wka . It can be homemade, yes, and most of the shops carry it here, although not a very popular drink, as most Hungarians don't like spirits that had to be ice-cold for consumption. We make pálinka fr...

My first malt whiskey's grain bill was 2kg barley grit (from the feedstore), 750g Weyermann 3 EBC Bohemian Pilsner malt (L1.7) and 250g 900 EBC chocolate malt. Malts were grinded in food processor. This was mashed in 15L water and a flat tbsp. of citric acid, with the malts added later when barley r...

I really sorry that you had bad luck with flour, wasn't there some unfermented leftover sugars that caramelized down and created a layer that turned the flour to carbon? I use to put rye-flour in my mashbill, as high as 15%+ in volume and never had this problem, and I only cooked pressed juice once,...

Dear Odin I live just outside from Kecskemét, so it would be a privilege and an honour if we can meet next summer. After I finish the pálinka-season I use to accept contracts from other countries and come back to Hungary only next late spring or early summer when the first cherry starts to ripe. Win...

Dear Palinkagus, thank you for your kind words. I'm happy that you have success with plum, I believe it is one - if not the most - rewarding fruit of all to make brandy from. 2014 was (and still is) a strange year in regards of fruit mashes in Hungary, cherry and sour cherry gave a very nice crop, r...

If I were lucky to have such amount of raisins I would rehydrate them with hot water that has quite a bit of citric acid in it, then puree the swollen raisins in a bucket with a paintmixer, a few handful at a time. Then dilute with water if needed to have a goal of 7-8% alc. in the fermented mash an...

If you visit Hungary and wish to taste really good pálinka, I recommend to find specialist shops that sell only pálinka manufactured by little distilleries who really work hard to stand out from the crowd. In supermarkets you will find only mediocre pálinka, but in cafés and pubs you can find good p...

Moosemilk, Hungary is a very interesting place these days in aspect of fruit brandies. Back in the communist/soviet-influenced era in our history pálinka-cooking was an underground activity with constant fear of getting caught. Children were sent to the end of the village or far to the farm's road j...

There are different methods, all of them works well with only a bit different results that are barely detectable if at all. For instance, the Slovakian Slivovitz, which is a very good and clean tasting plum brandy, is made by pressing all the juices from ripe plums and fermenting only the liquid. Co...

Yes, it is definitely a stirrer. TBH I do not know a lot about these machines, but what I can read about it's advert is that it is a double-walled single-run still that can be used as a double run potstill too. It also has a built-in stirrer and the builders especially recommend it for distilling th...

The stills used for making brandy in that part of the world is different from what we are used to. I'm happy to show some: http://www.palinkafozes.com/hazi-palinkafozok If I would recommend one design it would be the "Duplex Panka", double walled, 95L, $1750. Right now I use the last one in that sa...

IMHO it would may be wise to pasteurise the liquid pressed from the fresh stalks and husks before fermenting, it has to have lots of wild yeasts and mold spores on them. Cornchaça, I love the idea.

Let mother natures yeast deal with the fruit in its natural state. Absolutely spot on. I tasted a few days ago a pot-stilled apricot brandy presented by a friend-of-a-friend. It had a marvellous scent, a fresh taste, and a very long, almost disturbingly long sweet apricot aftertaste. I was pretty m...

Ripe plums already have an epic amount of sugars and beside that lots of food for the yeas. Sugar increases final alc. volume but cuts down on quality real bad. Yeast nutrient is for fruits that lack nutrients, like watermelon. Pectinase is pretty much good for most fruits, but it is very useful to ...

Didn't it get clouded? Strips from fruit use to be cloudy. Not that it would really matter, fi. I diluted my whisky way too fast and after three weeks it is still cloudy, but the taste is ok.

No, you're too kind. I read a vast of experiments and methods here, so I really feel obliged to share some tricks and tips too, so the community (and of course our friends and family) can have happiness with the spirits we make.