Maui Gold Pineapple Brandy

[butterpants]

Nice writeup. TY

[Shine0n]

I'm subd

[CatCrap]

Checked this morning. Looks like the strip run ec1118 batch is working, at a moderate pace. Not too crazy, but not too slow either. So that's good news. The pure juice kv1116 batch didn't appear to have any activity yet. I'll check it when I get home tonight, which will be around the 24 hour mark. It's possible it was too acidic for the yeast to be happy. If there's no activity, I'll try to raise the acidity using calcium hydroxide, to at least over 4.0. Then I'll repitch, but it will have to be ec 1118 as I don't have anymore kv. Really really hoping I can get it to go... a failed ferment would he might disappointing.

[butterpants]

Your username makes me giggle every time I see it. Just keep posting, I don't care what it's about.

[CatCrap]

Woohoo!! Success! Well, sort of.. minor victory.

Both ferments are chugging away. And at a nice healthy pace. I guess the KV just took a little time to get it's little tiny yeasty engines going. Or maybe i'm just used to the heavy pitching i do with DADY for AG, UJSM and Neutral(WPSOW) and Bakers in Rum. Those take off quick and hard, usually within a few hours. I don't work with other yeasts, like EC, and KV too much. But, that is definitely an aspect of my distilling "Hobby" (obsession/thing i spend every free waking moment on) I'd like to expand and improve on. Branching out to trying other yeast strains and learning how to use them properly. It's nice for a beginner like me to use DADY and Baker's because they're very inexpensive, come in bulk, and very very well researched, tested by the folks on the forum here. They're reliable and i know what to expect, and can trouble shoot if need be. So, i'll need to put some time into researching and testing some other yeast strains. From my research so far, i think some i'd like to try are US-04 and 05 for my AG, and i'll have to look around and find some other interesting varieties. I guess i prefer to order online, but there is always shipping costs(unless on amazon) which are often as much or more than the yeast itself. I could buy from the brew shop too i suppose, but they're going to cost more than the internet. And, the brew shop guys aren't terribly helpful.. partially on me, because i don't tell them i'm distilling, and partially because they don't know that much about it.

I'll celebrate this minor victory with a white russian. Made kahlua with the recipe on here (tater's kahlua) and holy crap I am in love. It is REALLY good, and tastes just like store bought Kahlua. Which is stupid dumb expensive. I'm making more neutral just to make more Kahlua. I also make it out of rum. If you buy a bottle of Kahlua it says it's made from rum. I find i enjoy both, Vodka and Rum base.

I digress.

I like your username too, fella. Not sure where butterpants came from.. but it's always funny to imagine where folks user names came from. It makes me think of Butters, whom is likely my favorite south park character.

I'll work on getting an avatar picture.

CC

[butterpants]

I've pooped my pants as an adult in front of other adults who never fail to remind me of the incident.

I ran with the name.


US-05 has been awesome for corn squeezins, Bourbon so far. I might try something more estery for single malt....04 run warm maybe. USW-6 too. Get bulk 500g packs, repitch slurry. I wouldn't worry about yeast rinsing or washing. Not for hooch wash.

[CatCrap]

WOW That is not what i expected from your username.. but.. uh... ok.....

Lol.. hey man it' s not that big of a deal really... happens to the best of us. I've definitely vomited in a cab, subway, airplane and many cars.

Back on track.. just a very fast update. Holy shit these are some explosive ferments now. The strip run is at a steady fast pace, releasing a rapid fire bubble stream every five seconds. THe pure juice, slow start, KV ferment is going super hard. Constant bump of the airlock, about 5 times per second. I looked a little closer, my fermenters are opaque white plastic, you can see through them just a tiny bit, and both ferments are foaming like nuts. They both have a cap of foam that's all the way to the lid. That's about 6 inches!! So, i don't dare to open them for fear of fucking something up horribly. I'm just going to hope and pray that this is as high as the cap will go, and it doesn't blow the lid or overpower the airlock.

Good Problem to have. Don't want to count me chickens yet.. but.. pineapple brandy, here i come!!

I've a feeling this will be a good one.

[butterpants]

Air locks can suck it.

[Shine0n]

Good luck bubba, sounds good.

The fruit aromas will be better with time and me personally would keep it white to not mask what little pineapple that do show up.

[CatCrap]

Thanks for the well wishes and suggestion.

You do make a great point about not muddying up the flavors with wood. I don't generally like white spirits. The UJSM that i age i kept a jar white, and, i just realy prefer it oaked. Generally all my spirits i like some oak on them. For the last run of Panella Rum i did, i used some used wood for aging. I've found that keeps the oak flavor light, and the color light too. I realize some aging and improving will happen even if kept just white in jars, but my thought is that having some wood in there will help and improve the aging process? Like the idea if you're going to age a delicate spirit in a barrel, you'd use a barrel that has already had several different aging cycles in it. Like perhaps even 4-5 other likkers first, then that barrel has most of the Oak flavor taken out, but it's a good vessel for aging, to allow it to breathe, and allow the spirit to go in and out of the wood. However, A jar is not a barrel. So, perhaps i'm misguided here. I guess ideally i'd like to put a small piece of well used wood in each Quart jar, just so it has some wood in it. I'm not sure yet, haven't decided. I checked on my month-ish old banana spirit the other day, and the banana flavor is really outstanding at this point. Probably stronger now, in aroma and taste, than when i ran it, and after airing and cuts. So, i think alot of these fruit spirits, the fruit will hide for a little while and then really start to come out over time.

Again, really appreciate the advice and any more advice. Maybe i'll leave some white, and some on well used wood? I suppose i could always add wood to it later if i don't like it or think it needs it. Shoot.. it could just be an appearance thing tricking my mind, maybe i do like clear spirits, i just think the color makes it more to my liking? Who knows..

So, the late start pure juice KV batch is finished today. I tasted it, the foam had died down all the way, and it was dry. Still has some pineapple aroma to it for sure, but not much taste. But then i found the same thing with the banana. After fermenting it didn't have much flavor of the fruit, but when i ran it off the smell and taste came back strong. Then came on even stronger a month later. Even though i strained it through nylon bags and a chinois(very fine mesh strainer) some fruit pulp still made it through to the ferment. So, when i racked it out of the fermenter to my secondary for clearing, i syphoned below the pulp and above the yeast lees. I'll rack it the same way into the boiler when it's cleared a bit more in a few days.

The other batch, the pure juice/canned juice/sugar h20 is still going, somewhat steady, but has slowed down a little. I don't usually like to open the fermenter and check until the airlock stops, at least almost completely if it's been a while. So, i'll let the EC batch go a few more days and finish off. SO, far, i'd say this experiment is going well. Once they've both finished, i'll strip off the EC batch, then add that gallon or so of strip to the 5 gallons of pure fruit wash. It finished dry, so that's about 7% alcohol. Hopefully all goes well and i get a nice spirit out of it.

More updates to come, thanks for watching folks,

CC

[CatCrap]

The strip run had some good pineapple flavor. But it def came out very early. I added the .8 Gallons of strip to 5 G of wash, from pure pineapple juice, and did the spirit run today.

Mannn.. this has been the time where it has been the hardest to pitch foreshots. The first drips to come out of the still tasted like straight pineapple juice... at 70 ABV. Ugh.. so wish i could have kept that.. but, not wise, so i added them to the fores Jug. I only took 50 ml of fores then started collecting. I opted to collect in all pint jars for this run, and many of them i did not fill up all the way. Ended up with just shy of 12 pints of spirit. The first jar had a great pineapple smell to it for sure. From there it got weaker as it went on, but the hearts jars (i assume them to be hearts) had nice and pleasant aroma still. I'll air out for 24 hours and then attempt cuts.

Question: If i want to include a lot of heads to my final keep cut... can i try to improve the quality/drinkability of them by airing or aging well? I read a thread on AD that a guy had a big heads cut on his run, but he aired with a coffee filter over the jar for 30 days. I'm not sure if this plan would work, and i've never done anything like this. My fear is that A. the pineapple aroma will dissipate just like the heads aroma. B, i'll suffer significant ABV loss. So, just curious what yall think... can i keep a LOT of heads in the final blend, and try to make a product that is still pleasant, and still has the pineapple aroma, by either airing for a longgg time. OR by aging for a longgg time? I've found, and read other's experiences, that fruit aroma can be hard to find in the early stages, like during cuts, and right after aging, but seem to return later on. So, it's possible that the pineapple aroma WILL be there.. i'll just have to check back in a month or so. My other thought.. is that i know with Whiskey you want to keep a good amount of tails in it to give the spirit character. Aging can do an awful lot to improve tails, and actually if you don't include much taills your Whiskey will turn out too clean, wont have enough character. Is there any chance that i will have luck doing the same thing with heads? My gut tells me that the heads will not age out and clean up like tails do. That maybe airing for a long period, and waiting for a while for the fruit flavor to come back is my best strategy. But i'm not sure about this. I def do not want to air out the pineapple smell too.

Cuts will come in a day or two. Looking forward to hearing some advice, and i look forward to letting you guys know how my results come out!!!

Pineapple brandy woo!!

[CatCrap]

Alright! Results are sort of in. The spirit run has been, uh, run. I'm not going to call it a failure, but i can't really call it a success. Not yet anyway.

So, 5g Wash and .8G low wines were run in my pot still, resulting in 10 pints and 1 quart.
ABV were as follows:

1: 62
2:58.5
3:57
4:56
5:54
(Quart)6:50
7:44
8:41
9:37
10:33
11:26

Doing cuts, as expected, most pineapple flavor was found near the start of the run. Coming off the still, i found the pineapple flavor faint, after airing for 36 hours or so... unfortunately.. i gotta say, it's a bit lacking. If you really really smell close and look for it, it may be there. My sniffer aint as sharp as it used to be, so it could be more prevalent.. but i don't think so. A bit dissappointing, especially after all the work put into this run. But, you never know until you try it, right? So, I won't call it a failure just yet, because i DO know that with fruit, that fruit flavor can hide on ya, and return later on. So, hopefully when i return to these jars some months down the road the pineapple flavor and aroma will be there. I'm hopeful! So, my aging was as follows:
I blended jars 3-10, and half of jar 2. Jar one just had too much heads for me. Like i said, the pineapple flavor wasnt really strong anywhere in the run, so i didn't really see much to be gained by keeping all the heads. At least by keeping the hearts which were smooth, and much of the tails, which i found pleasant, with pretty much none of the classic wet-dog/cardboard aroma that you find in other types of spirits, that this will age out to something nice, even if it isn't very pineapple flavored. The last jar wasn't super pleasant, and quite watery so it didn't make the cut. But jar 10 even at 33 abv had a nice sweet faint fruitiness to it, so it got kept in. I opted to keep half of jar 2, for the abv boost, and i didn't find the heads to be too offensive. A little heads for sure, but nothing terrible.
Anyways.. I yielded 4 qts, or a gallon of keep. The blended abv was right around 49.5, so i'm calling it 50. That, i would say, is at least a success. I managed to get in the abv range i hoped for, if on the lower end, by only using a very minimal amount of sugar. So, to me, 50 is a good spot to age at. That means i can drink it as is (50% is so far my preffered bottling ABV) or bring it down a little for bottling. Perhaps a little water when it's been aged will help bring that fruit forward. I have no clue.

2 Quarts - Straight Pineapple Eau de Vie 50%ABV
1 QT - Pineapple "Brandy" with a very small piece each of charred used bourbon barrel, and toasted french oak mini stave (from SD) This quart i also included about 2 OZ of pineapple infusion.
The pineapple infusion was made by taking one whole pineapple, ripe, cutting into 1/2" Square cubes, and macerating in 50% ABV neutral for 3 months. It's got nice pineapple flavor and aroma, and a light sweetness.
1 Pint - Pineapple "Brandy" with one each of charred oak and toasted french mini stave.
1 Pint - Pineapple "Eau de vie" with 2 OZ of pineapple infusion
So, 2 QTS straight. 1 Qt Wood and Infusion, 1 Pint wood only, 1 pint infusion only.

Hopefully i get at least something good out of all this. I'll be sure to update this thread in the future when this gets some real age on it. Wish my jars luck!

So, to anyone out there hoping to make a pineapple brandy, while i cannot say anything conclusive at this time.. i can say this... if you plan to do this from pineapples, it is a fucking hell of a lot of work. But i don't suspect it is much more work than other fruit spirits from whole fruit. You could try this with store-bought juice, but i can't imagine that the results would be better than using real whole fruit and juicing it. So, i don't want to discourage anyone from trying this, but i can only submit my honest opinion. Pineapple may not be a good fruit for making brandy or Eau. But, i'll just mention once more, my results are premature and inconclusive. I can give a more definitive opinion in 6 months, a year and in two years. I think it would be great if someone else did try this, and could compare to my results. Like i said, the only way to find out, is to do it. And i did it.

Thanks for following along folks. Hope i didn't disappoint, but i had to be honest. The fruit just didn't come through very well upon final distillation. Perhaps if you distilled on the fruit you'd have better results, i just don't know.

CC