Recipe for apples?

[Actiontrent]

Hi guys,
Love the forum! Such a wealth of knowledge in one place!
Was wondering if someone had a nice apple recipe for my pot still?
I'm after something clean and crisp that isn't too heady.
Appreciate any info you could give?
I'm looking at around 60lt wash.

[goose eye]

squeze em work em run em

so im tole

[Bushman]

We have several recipes for making apple brandy and also recipes that add apple juice to the final neutral to create Apple Pie. Do a search and I am sure you will find both.

[Durace11]

Apples are easy, juice them and add yeast, hell you could probably skip the adding yeast part if they are picked fresh. All fruit wash have a lot of heads so make careful cuts. Also, if you have any rotted fruit or close to rotting then you might want to consider camden before you pitch yeast. Other than that, you are making hard apple cider.

[Actiontrent]

Thanks for the quick input guys!
I've been using a reflux for about 9mths now and
Have just picked up a nice hobby pot to play around with.
Anyone have any ideas for fruit blends?

[Tater]

Try a search .

[Actiontrent]

Thanks tater I have. Just like to hear what people have experienced is all...
I personally love a blend of red and green apples when doing a batch. Our red delicious here in Australia are super sweet and loaded with sugar content.

[Dnderhead]

"are super sweet and loaded with sugar "
you mite want to mix in some others.

[goose eye]

you from over there squeze a barel of pink ladys.



so im tole

[Actiontrent]

"are super sweet and loaded with sugar "
you mite want to mix in some others.

I surely am dnderhead. I like to get a bit out of my runs.

[Actiontrent]

you from over there squeze a barel of pink ladys.



so im tole

I've tried pink lady's but they seem to loose a lot of flavour. The red delicious here produce massive amounts of liquid.

[bcboyz86]

So...you just skin/slice the apples up, throw them in a pot, boil till everything is one big pot of mush, cool it down and pitch yeast? That's it? Seems too easy... is there's a preferred yeast to go with? Like say a champagne over a bakers yeast? Or does do you pick the yeast for what ABV you want in the end? And do ya add sugar on top of what the apples already have in them? I think I'm a little puzzled too over the difference between Apple brandy, and hard Apple cider. They both seem to be made the exact same way... Or am I missing something?

[Dnderhead]

best to juice them,,that's grinding,pressing.you end up with cider .
add yeast or not.

[bcboyz86]

So Apple cider is just what ya have after fermenting, then brandy is what ya have after you run it through the still? And you flavor what you want to keep they way you like it? Or would you do a fast stripping run of the ferment throwing away the heads/fores then dump the rest back into the dunder and drink that? So you would pretty much just be eliminating some of the fores and methanol type nasties, but keeping all the flavor of the drink. Especially if your only shooting for 8-12%...

[Dnderhead]

if you only want 8-12% why you distilling? depending on the apples you can git this by fermenting.
then if you distill you have brandy.i like to make one run saving the the "best" harts,then add the rest to the next run.

[MDH]

You can do this the hardcore way like they do in France and south-central Europe! pick the apples, crush them finely and let the pulp ferment in an airtight container for three months. Supposedly this produces brandy far better than most commercial yeast ever will because it is so complex.

[bcboyz86]

I haven't done any recipie yet, just curious because I haven't seen a clear method to make hard cider. But not taking out the methanol, won't it be pretty nasty hangover stuff? Or since its only 12%, it leant matter? Just don't get super wasted drinking a gallon of it...

[bcboyz86]

...also, what's the safer method for the pits? Does boiling them eliminate the cyanide problem, or does boiling them release the cyanide? I know using the pits will give it a touch of toffee/nutty flavor...but I would like to not poison myself un-intentionally...

[Braz]

Hard apple cider is fermented apple juice - probably around 10-15% alcohol. Apple brandy is distilled hard cider - around 40% alcohol.

[Jimbo]

squeze em work em run em

so im tole

haha, yup. Apples are just that easy. I like a slow single run like others have said below. You dont need nutrients or any complications like that, just squeeze em best way you can and ferment em up with a good yeast. For hard cider, a variety of sweet, tart and crabs will give best flavor, prolly matters less if youre gonna distill it into brandy.

I see some weird numbers below on % alc. (10-15%??) No, apple cider will give you 6-9% typically the low end of that. Some years, and some varietys will go higher. This year I squeezed 1400 lbs that averaged around 16 brix (1.064). thats the highest I ever got, and it was after a hot dry summer. Dont be greedy and add sugar. squeeze em, work em, run em like goose says and enjoy the hell out of a damn fine product.

[kaziel]

I've been making apple brandy for quite some time now(with my two uncles and father in law) and my conclusions are like this:

Mix different type of apples (different specimen, red, yellow, green, brown), much of aromatic substances are in the peel (skin) so it's better to pick smaller ones with better peel/rest ratio (my unfertilized apples are all small). I'm pressing my apples, and for 33L fermenter I'm using 15kg of apples (smallest, whit seed removed) and cover them with juice up to 25L. Most of the years my apples are 12-14 brix (read somewhere that 4 brix in apples juice is un-fermentable), so I'm getting ~6% ABV. I'm using active wine yeast (used to use wild yeast until got vinegar once on small batch) with just a "pint" of complex nutrition. Let it ferment dry, sit for a couple of days, strain the fruits, here this is called paint strainer I've called filtration bag, I'm squishing them so hard that they r almost dry , let it settle a bit siphon the stuff to boiler. Slow single run on a pot still is very good, I've try to run it on my Boka ith only 1 feet packing with reflux rate 1:1 with excellent results. Don't use pectin enzyme - more methanol. My store apples are preserved with something greasy so I don't use them. For few washes I've added sugar to get them to 11%. I was pretty happy with them, I want to add dextrose to see how much difference will that make.
When I'll make my oil/water bath 20L still(got almost every thing needed) I will distill my app-brendy from pulp, but for now this is my year to year way to make brandy.
Can't wait for the winter to end here .

[dragon613]

bcboyz86 mentioned on the first page boiling apple to make cider. just for the record don't do it! heat causes the pectins to set and will never clear so for the rest of the life of the cider it will look like mother of vinegar. no heat to the juice. if you make cider use Camden tabs to sterilize juice and add pectin enzyme while fermenting to breakdown pectins and then cold crash. that will make a really nice apple wine.

oh yeah.............none of that matters if you distill it though just if you are making cider.

but just some info for you, unsweetened apple juice will ferment to 5-6% and every pound of sugar per gallon adds about 6%. but remember that's if you add 1 pound to 1 gallon if you mix 1 pound with liquid to make 1 gallon it adds about 8%. cider apples maintain their flavor best through fermentation and distillation but a good mix of gala ,Fuji, and standard table apples work out better than just red delicious or granny smith. also I don't recommend using green apples if you are going to distill.

[Jimbo]

For the record, you can make some really nice hard cider with just apples, no camdem sulfites, no enyzmes, no sugar. Just be careful, sort through your apples and pitch the rotten ones, wash them and sterilize your equipment and fermenting buckets etc. I do it annually, never had an issue. Never made apple wine tho, no way to get it up to 12 or 13% without sugar.

[bcboyz86]

Trying not to sound dumb, but what method do you use to crush them up? We have a Apple slicer/core'r that spiral cuts the apples and eliminates the core entirely. Would I then take the Apple spiral(peel attached) and throw it in a pot and just start mashing it with a potatoe masher? Or would it be easier to throw all the apple spirals(i will prolly get a crate of apples to start with) in a huge pot and add water just enough to cover the top of the apples and warm them up to make them mushy and then pulp-itize the contents? And after that would you just squeeze the pulp out into the fermenter and add water/sugar and yeast then seal it up and let it go? Would there be enough wild yeast in the peel to do the job or should I throw in a Ec-1118 or kiv-1116....or is this a job for bakers yeast?

[Dnderhead]

if you have a lot of apples to do you mite better build or buy a grinder/press.
you will have a lot of work with out ,1 bushel will make 1-1 1/2 gallon.

[Jimbo]

Trying not to sound dumb, but what method do you use to crush them up?

Thats not a dumb question at all. Grinding and pressing apples is by far the hardest part of the job. I built several grinder/presses over the years, they were mostly all worth a shit till I built the one in the link below. Bottom line is 2 good choices, use a juicer, it will take a long time, but you'll juice all your apples eventually. Or build something like this, which works great for large quantities. Pretty much all other options are crap and just a frustration.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 4#p7018787

huge pot and add water just enough to cover the top of the apples and warm them up to make them mushy and then pulp-itize the contents?

No, cooking is not a good option. For lots of reasons.

and add water/sugar and yeast then seal it up and let it go? Would there be enough wild yeast in the peel to do the job or should I throw in a Ec-1118 or kiv-1116....or is this a job for bakers yeast?

Dont add anything. Just apple juice and yeast. No sugar or water, Best flavor is just from straight liquid apples. A bushel is 45 lbs. I do them 5 gal pail at time as I work through the piles, sort wash grind press in above press I built, about 22 lbs in a 5 gal pail, makes 1 1/4 gallon on avg. Yes 1118 is a good option.

Good luck, if you dont have piles of apples, get a juicer, maybe a used one off craigslist or something. I once did 150 lb of pears in a Champion juicer. Took a while, but made some damn nice brandy at the end of the day. Cheers.

[bcboyz86]

Well, it might not be as cost effective to build/buy a juicer right off the bat. A family I grew up with has a HUGE cherry and Apple orchard, and they do tons of juices and foods with cherries and apples...like Chappel pies.(cherry-apple) probably the best kind of pie I've ever had... So I'm kinda wondering what it would cost for enough apples to make 5gal of juice, the apple juicing apparatuses, and press...or just buy 5gal of straight from their juicer Apple juice? And maybe another few gallons of apple-cherry juice. If their chappel pie is as good as it is, stands a good chance chappel cider would be delicious! Would I just need to make sure they don't add preservatives so the yeast works?

[Jimbo]

Definitely, buy juice off them. Ive done that too. If they know you Im sure they'll sell you several gallons juice at a reasonable price. Local orchards around here sell it as fast as they can press it, so dont add anything to it. You might wanna ask just to be sure.

[Alphadog]

Just to be clear here: If I have a 15 gallon boiler, I can add 15 gallons of strained (of yeast) apple juice after its been fermented and then do a run? No extra water or sugar added to get it to 15 gallons or higher abv? Will it still yield about a third total volume of heads, hearts, and tails? Lastly, would the extra sugar be only for higher abv and if so how do you dissolve it without heating up the apple juice to dissolve the sugar?

[Bushman]

Just to be clear here: If I have a 15 gallon boiler, I can add 15 gallons of strained (of yeast) apple juice after its been fermented and then do a run? No extra water or sugar added to get it to 15 gallons or higher abv? Will it still yield about a third total volume of heads, hearts, and tails? Lastly, would the extra sugar be only for higher abv and if so how do you dissolve it without heating up the apple juice to dissolve the sugar?

You should not charge the boiler above 12 gallons. Your abv will be lower by not adding sugar but as mentioned earlier the benefits are worth it. The abv will be lower probably 8-10% and with any fruit run it will be a little higher in the heads than with a normal wash.