My first prickly pear shine

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miss_mash
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My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

So, last week I got inspired to experiment with Prickly Pear and decided to do a small, 2 gallon run. Check out my fast and loose recipe below and feel free to chime in with thoughts/suggestions for improvement. Apologies in advance for a lack of specifics, I realize the more info the better when asking for guidance.

Filled a 2 gallon bucket with ripe prickly pear of different variety (didn't measure weight this time around)
Cut them in half and threw them in a pot. *note* - use tongs or a glove to handle these bad boys, or you'll have a handful of cactus spines and glochids
Pulverized them with a potato masher to get the juices flowing, topped it off with some water (maybe 2 cups), and threw it on the stove
Simmered with the lid on to break down the cactus a bit more, maybe 20 minutes
Cut the heat and let cool
Strained the mash through a pillow case and used my hands to squeeze out all the juicy goodness
The result was pretty. Blood red, syrupy consistency, and quite sweet on it's own
This yielded about 1.5 gallons of prickly pear juice
Added half a gallon of water to stretch it, and maybe 3-4 cups of sugar to get the SG up to 1.070
Pitched some dry white wine yeast I had lying around, put a lid on her, and walked away
3 days later all the sugar had fermented out. No sweetness, but not sour either. SG was around 1.000, so a solid 9% abv
Ran it once through the pot still, low and slow
After cuts and blending I ended up with around 1.5 pints of very nice product. 54% abv

The shine tastes smooth and flavorful. lots of pricky pear coming through. Goes great over ice, accompanied by an orange peel.

Overall I'm very pleased with the turn out, and I'm thinking about scaling up to 5 gallons soon. My main issue was the straining method I used... The pillow case was super effective, but I think I may have PTSD from squeezing all the juice through. My hands were covered in glochids and cactus spines were poking through the fabric. Needless to say, this was annoying and painful... and in hindsight I should have gloved up for this part. Would love suggestions on how I can strain the cactus skin and seeds without a blood sacrifice! Or is this just par for the course when dealing with prickly pear?

Any constructive criticism or questions is welcome as well. Thanks for reading!
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MichiganCornhusker
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Prickly pear is on my bucket list, congrats on your success.
Lol, double kudos for squeezing/straining cactus! Sounds terrifying.

A steam striper would be a quick, safe, and easy way to deal with spiney fruit. No more squeezing.

I like your one-and-done approach with the distillation. I’ve had good luck doing that with cherries, bananas, and maple sap.

One of these days I swear I’m gonna head out west and come back with a ‘65 Bonneville trunk load of prickly pear.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

Thanks :D have you posted anything on maple sap? my interest in peaked

and whoa, just googled steam juicing. this is a slickk solution, thank you sir. It would be interesting to see if the juice would come out less viscous with the steam method, or if the slimy component would still persist. my buddy recommended smashing the prickly pears in a vice hahaha don't know if it would work, but i love the imagery

gotta give thanks to all the experienced distillers who have recommended one-and-done. more flavor, plus less work seems like a win-win to me
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

You probably don’t need to cook them. As a matter if fact that drives off subtle flavors that you probably want in your distillate. Better to freeze and thaw then cut up into bits. Maybe some pectic enzyme to help with extraction of the juice. Freezing and PE help break down the cell wall materials and extract the juice. Sugar and water also dilute the flavor but I understand the desire to stretch it. Ferment everything on the skins and squeeze/press/clear after fermentation.

Just my thoughts!

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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Ha, love the vise idea, but maybe not practical for a truckload of fruit.

Not familiar with steam juicing, but if it looks good go for it.
Steam stripping is a way to distill the fruit without having to strain it.

As for the one and done, you will get different opinions. I think you will get the most flavor but it may be at the expense of yield and clarity. A strip/spirit run will produce a cleaner spirit, but you will lose essence. Trade offs.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

When you ferment and steam strip it all those good flavors are re-condensed and captured. When you boil it or steam juice it they’re lost. +1 on strip/spirit runs.

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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by brat »

This one is on my to-do list. The Mexican markets near my house have them for a good price. I was thinking about an agave/prickly pear brandy. Maybe even cold smoke the tunas/ prickly pears.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by HomerD »

Use a mop wringer to squeeze out the pillow case full of cactus.

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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

jonnys_spirit wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 6:01 pm You probably don’t need to cook them. As a matter if fact that drives off subtle flavors that you probably want in your distillate. Better to freeze and thaw then cut up into bits. Maybe some pectic enzyme to help with extraction of the juice. Freezing and PE help break down the cell wall materials and extract the juice. Sugar and water also dilute the flavor but I understand the desire to stretch it. Ferment everything on the skins and squeeze/press/clear after fermentation.
Ahh, this makes sense. I'll most definitely do it this way next go around... gonna need to get the spare freezer running again. When you add PE to the thawed fruit and smash/juice it up, do you then wait a bit before pitching the yeast?
MichiganCornhusker wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 6:05 pm Steam stripping is a way to distill the fruit without having to strain it.
Is this simply throwing everything into the still without straining? I'm feeling my newbness right now
brat wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 6:22 pm I was thinking about an agave/prickly pear brandy. Maybe even cold smoke the tunas/ prickly pears.
I was considering torching them to add some smokey flavor, but lazyness got the better of me.. However, torching is the best way to get rid of the spines/glochids, so it could be the way moving forward



I feel like I just leveled up
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

Yes in pitching the PE before yeast. Maybe the day before. Alcohol will denature the PE.

Cold smoking sounds good too!

I’ll also tend to try to use something other than water and sugar to stretch it in a flavored brandy type recipe just because sugar and water will dilute the flavor. Maybe grape or apple juice if the flavors compliment your tastes. Maybe honey for something a little more delicate too.

Cheers!
-jonny
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

Excellent, I'm rich in honey atm

Cheers Jonny!
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by Corsaire »

miss_mash wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 7:33 pm
MichiganCornhusker wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 6:05 pm Steam stripping is a way to distill the fruit without having to strain it.
Is this simply throwing everything into the still without straining? I'm feeling my newbness right now
No, it's a particular still setup.
Imagine a still with a large thumper.
In steam stripping you fill the boiler with water and dump the whole ferment, fruit and all, unstrained into the thumper.
Steam from the boiler will heat the fruit wash and extract all the goodness.

You could also make a large ferment, load the clear wash into the boiler and the fruit and murky wash in the thump.

In both cases you don't need to squeeze or strain anything.

Check out the steam build threads for ideas.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

I guess it's time for me to dive into the forum for more research!

Planning to harvest a bunch more tuna today, will post updates on the next run. Thanks for all the guidance, I'm excited to test how some of these tweaks affect the final distillate
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by Beerswimmer »

I made a prickly pear sour beer last fall. It was excellent! I burned the spines off with my propane turkey fryer before handling them. I need to harvest more and make some prickly pear brandy!
20190920_114802.jpg
20191117_191413.jpg
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

Beerswimmer, that's a sexy looking beer. God I miss living in Texas, where Shiner Prickly Pear is readily available. Did you get any smokey flavors from torching the tuna?

Looks like the prickly pear you have is of the small variety. There's two kinds in my area that I pick:

Image Image

Although the left (smaller type) may not be as ripe as the right one (fatty), there's a remarkable difference in the amount of juice and skin. For my next run I plan to keep the two varieties separate and test the initial SG between the two. Hoping I can get a metric to gauge if using the smaller variety is worth it.

I just harvested 27lbs of the small ones, and 42lbs of the fatty's, soo brandy is on the way!
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

miss_mash, Those look like they’ll make some really good brandy! Interested what kind of pH measurements you get too.

Cheers,
Jonny
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by Beerswimmer »

miss_mash wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 3:15 pm Did you get any smokey flavors from torching the tuna?
No, I only held them over the flame long enough to burn off the little hair like needles.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

Right on, thanks for confirming.

jonnys_spirit, I wasn't planning on testing ph (I don't have a meter), but then I got curious myself. I found two articles with prickly pear composition specs (ph, brix, pectin, etc.) and linked below. Looks like ph avgs for cactus fruit is around 6.

I think I'll start round two tomorrow, and will have enough for a 1.5 run. updates to come!

http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-00000-0 ... 008.7&gt=1
150-Article Text-235-1-10-20200620 (1).pdf
(291.39 KiB) Downloaded 57 times
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

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okay, little touch in with developments.

I split the prickly pear into 3 different, 5 gallon ferments. The first one has fermented down from 1.044 to 1.000 in 4 days. fermented on the skins and punched the cap down every day. Got some lacto infection going on. The second one is fermenting down from 1.048, and is at 1.020 on day 3. cap punched down every day, and also experiencing lacto infection. The third batch is defrosting right now, will pitch yeast tomorrow.

I'm guessing that the lacto action is from either high temps or the natural yeast present on the skins.... I think high temps is the culprit though. We had a heat wave roll in, and it's been triple digits for the last 5 days. we hit 110 degrees yesterday!! yikes. Anyhow, fermentation temps have been in the high 80s and breeching into the 90s.. not ideal and difficult for me to control. The must has some "twangy" accents. not the crisp, clean fermentation from my test batch.

Not sure how this will come through in the final distillation. planning to strip all the washes, macerate low wines in more prickly pear, and run through the pot still again.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

Nice! Got any pics of the lacto pellicle? Not sure how it'll do with the prickly pear but I usually encourage it in whiskies. For wines I'll hit the must with a dose of potassium metabisulfate to prevent secondary bacterial infections.

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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

lacto pear.jpg
the pellicle is disturbed from me pushing the skins down this morning.
jonnys_spirit wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 1:41 pm For wines I'll hit the must with a dose of potassium metabisulfate to prevent secondary bacterial infections.
Would this happen after racking?


mm
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

That looks good! A lactic infection isn’t necessarily bad when distilling. The bacteria produce lactic acid which when exposed to alcohol and heat produces esters.

https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/Ester

I’d approach it from an added complexity standpoint.

Do you have cooper in your still? Potassium Metabisulfate is a sulfur compound which copper will remove and it dissipates fairly quickly too. Used often in wine but some folks recommend against its use in spirits.

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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

Potassium Metabisulfate-
https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/index.ph ... abisulfite

Usually added prior to yeast to stun other organisms until yeast take over and after racking to prevent oxidation.

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Re: My first prickly pear shine

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I wouldn't go recommending using Potassium Metabisulfite to newbie distillers without first having a guaranteed method of keeping the stink out of the collection jug that you have successfully used yourself.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

Good point Chris! You don’t want sulfites in your distillate because it tastes like sulfur which would be considered to be a fault. Best to avoid adding to your must.

A lactic infection isn’t necessarily a fault although you might still be looking for options to research and experiment with. Particularly in small batches.

It should be noted that SO2 is a byproduct of yeast activity as well so minimizing or eliminating additional SO2 is significant while at the same time it’s a natural byproduct of fermentation.

If for example you had a bunch of wine that was heavily sulfited or otherwise sulfurous wash and wanted to distill it the tools you might consider employing could include this -
- SO2 Measurement and test run protocol
- Time
- Vigorous Aeration
- Copper in the boiler/vapor/liquid paths
- Hydrogen Peroxide

Cheers!
- Jonny
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

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In my shed, the logic is that if I don't put SO2 in, I don't have to get it out. That's worked every time so far. :D

If I was offered heavily sulphured wine, I'd politely decline the offer.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

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NZChris wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 12:42 am In my shed, the logic is that if I don't put SO2 in, I don't have to get it out. That's worked every time so far.
I like that logic, I'm inclined to keep things simple.

This sentence from the ester wiki link is bringing up some questions for me: "In distilleries infections aren't considered significant unless they occur early and heavy in the fermentation process. The bacteria will compete for sugars with the yeast and will reduce alcohol yield. Once yeast establishes itself it will out compete the bacteria. Once the yeast has used up the simple sugars the bacteria can use the remaining more complex sugars without detriment to yield."

What would be considered an "early infection"? within the first 24 hours of fermentation? or would it be considered early if the infection occurs at all while there is still simple sugars present in the must/wort/wash?

If a bacterial infection is an intended component in the fermentation, how would the home distiller control when the infection occurs and how "heavy" it is?

Just curious if anyone else has experience playing with infections (lacto or otherwise).

I've read that esters present in fors, heads, early hearts, and tails. planning to collect in 200ml increments to give me a fighting chance to make good cuts, and crossing my fingers that there might be treasure buried deep in the tails.
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

Oh yeah, Jonny, I run a 5 gallon copper pot still
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by miss_mash »

Tater wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2006 7:37 am Bacteria can double in number every 20-30 minutes, but yeast takes 3 hours (so guess which one will win the race if an infection gets started and you don't deal to it). Another technique to help with this is to use a lot of yeast - when using Bakers yeast, use at least 150g for a 20L wash. Note that using more yeast wont make the yeast work through to a higher % alcohol, but just enable it to get where its going, faster.
:shock: Found this nugget hidden in the forum. Now I'm wondering if I'll ever have a question that hasn't already been asked and answered... thanks Tater
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Re: My first prickly pear shine

Post by jonnys_spirit »

It's ok. This happens often.

The bacteria are everywhere so it's hard if not impossible to prevent. Beer brewers do boil their wort after mashing as a sterilizing step to kill any bacteria and are then very careful to prevent infections. In distilling we're not that worried about it and many folks don't take those steps to prevent the infection. As a matter of fact it's really a desirable outcome that adds some subtle complexity IMO - you're already keeping other subtle flavor components intact by not boiling your must. The bacteria were probably on the fruit and also in your specific environment. "Infection" sounds like a bad word so think about it more as cultivating a culture. Lactic = Dairy = Smooth Creamy components but it's not going to taste like milk lol.

Do a search here for "show me your dunder pit" (or similar?) and check out some of the infections people actively cultivate and use.

Recommend to let it finish AF then strip as you have planned.

How does it smell?

Cheers!
-jonny
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