Crazy Over Friut?

Information about fruit/vegetable type washes.

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Thoant1957
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Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Thoant1957 »

Ok. I've read, read some more, and now I'm turning red. I became interested in making fruit mash after drinking some peach that was so damn good.
So I studied but because I'm a practical experience type of guy, which means my brain is basically toast, my success on 1st and second run has not been good.
Tried Apple first run and it turned out to have a serious bite not smooth at all. Now I'm working on peach and having trouble with the fermentation.
I'm doing this for distillation not wine. Would I just be better off to use corn and flavor after the run with fruit? I'm running a cooper hybrid still from clawhammer.
Any help is welcome
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Bushman
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Bushman »

Can you give us a little more detail about what you have done thus far?
Apple recipe used? How you ran the still?, cuts made? Etc.
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cranky
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by cranky »

Apple can be tough to make cuts on and takes time to settle down and develop.
Thoant1957 wrote:Tried Apple first run and it turned out to have a serious bite not smooth at all. Now I'm working on peach and having trouble with the fermentation.
It's hard to make suggestions without knowing specifically what you did. Did you add sugar? What type of yeast? What temps are you fermenting at? Are you using fresh fruit or processed juice? Are there preservatives? How was the apple run? How did you do the cuts? There are a whole lot of variables that we don't currently know and need to to help.
Thoant1957 wrote:Would I just be better off to use corn and flavor after the run with fruit?
A lot of people make a lot of flavored things using neutral made from various things or a grain base but my personal belief is that if you are going to flavor it using fruit, you get best results using fruit for the base.
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Copperhead road
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Copperhead road »

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 38&t=48526

That is the best thread on fruit I have ever read, check it out the fella is an absolute pro!
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Thoant1957
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?.w

Post by Thoant1957 »

From the beginning should be best. Please don't think the worst I just hate typing so much and my damn southern talk never is translated well by the voice to text programs.
I started with 30lbs of apples, two varieties. I sliced and cored removing the cores. Froze them for a couple of day then placed in approx 7 gallons of water for a couple of days. I then heated that mixture to about 180, then cooled and added sugar (6lbs), and a woman more water bringing the gravity to approx 1.6. After reading about different yeast I opted for bread yeast. I actually had to pitch three times over the course of a few days but it finally cranked up. About 2.5 weeks later and after it was completed I siphoned off the mash and removed the mess at the bottom. Approx one week later I made the run, with ten gallons, leaving me about one gallon left to sit and make mabey wine for my wife.
I ran the first pint and a half and disposed. The rest I ran, I did separate what I thought where the hearts and tails etc. it proofed out at 135 in the hearts about 115 in the beginning going to 110 at the end. I then mixed the cuts together and cut to 105 with spring water.
I think that about covers that run.
This run I have used less fruit(peaches) and about 7.5 lbs sugar to a gravity of 1.5 only pitched bread yeast once but still have no activity in the air locks.
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cranky
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by cranky »

OK, lots of problems here
Thoant1957 wrote:placed in approx 7 gallons of water for a couple of days
Adding water takes away flavor
Thoant1957 wrote:heated that mixture to about 180,
Heating it takes away flavor
Thoant1957 wrote:added sugar (6lbs)
Adding sugar takes away flavor
Thoant1957 wrote:bringing the gravity to approx 1.6
High gravity is hard to ferment and can cause off flavors
Thoant1957 wrote:I opted for bread yeast.
Bread yeast may be OK for rum but not fruit and not high gravity, use a wine yeast. Start with EC-1118
Thoant1957 wrote:This run I have used less fruit(peaches) and about 7.5 lbs sugar to a gravity of 1.5 only pitched bread yeast once but still have no activity in the air locks.
See everything above.
Pikey
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Pikey »

As cranky said - (one of our fruit gurus)

You don't mention any added acid in your peach - citric acid or lemons to add for theh yeast. Nor any yeast nutrient - use according to instructions on the pack. - Without acid or nutrient, your ferment is unlikely - there was a little acid in your apples, so that went eventually.
Thoant1957
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Thoant1957 »

This brought several things to mind:

If the beginning gravity reading is two low, say, 1, then wouldn't sugar be a necessary additive?
When using fruit, what would be used to bring volume of mash to 10gall, my preferred run size, if not water?
One reason I had opted for bread yeast was just trying to keep it simple. I'm guessing simple is not simple?
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Pikey »

Copperhead Road gave you a link way up the thread.

Read it and you will have your question answered.

You could try 1 litre each red grape and apple juice, 1 kg sugar and 1/2 tsp citric acid,1/2 tsp nutrient water to 5 litres and bulk that up to whatever fermenter size you have - that will give you a kind of brandyish, but fruit is not the easiest place to start. Read that beautiful 1st post in that thread !
Edit:
I started with "sourmash" which you can find in UJSSSM (Uncle Jessies.....) in Tried and true. That is easy and will give you decent results at small cost over several generations
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Pikey »

BTW Peach is an awful place to start - even the best struggle with that one !

I tried fr many years to try to make "peach wine" to taste like that i could buy cheap in a bottle at the "Offy" - Never got any of tehm to taste of peach at all !

Now it is perfectly obvious that the flavour is added AFTER the wine is made. I suspect your "Peach" is made the same way.

[Edit - ok for your first go just make any old shine and after distilling put some DRIED apricots in there with a little sugar (you can add more later if you want) keep tasting every couple of days and you'll get something quite nice quite quick - won't be peach, it'll be apricot but hell it's pretty close and when you get the flavour you want take the apricots out.]
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cranky
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by cranky »

Thoant1957 wrote:If the beginning gravity reading is two low, say, 1, then wouldn't sugar be a necessary additive?
I haven't run into that problem even on things that some people claim are low sugar fruit. If I were to run into such a problem I would bring the sugar level to no higher than 1.060, probably not even that high. Bring the sugar to no higher than most fruit would be naturally which is around 6% potential alcohol (about 1.045-1.050 SG)
Thoant1957 wrote:When using fruit, what would be used to bring volume of mash to 10gall, my preferred run size, if not water?
Fruit or fruit juice. I do 12 gallon runs myself and have been sitting on 4 gallons of blackberry juice for a couple years waiting to accumulate enough juice to run off a batch of blackberry. I will continue to wait until I have enough because that's what gives the best results. I'm not trying to be an ass or mean, but if you want fruit flavor you have to have fruit to get the flavor from. Alternatively, you can make a fruit based neutral/vodka and add fruit, fruit juice or fruit essence to it to get that fruit flavor you are after.
Thoant1957 wrote:One reason I had opted for bread yeast was just trying to keep it simple. I'm guessing simple is not simple?
No unfortunately yeast really isn't that simple, but it doesn't need to be all that hard either. Wine yeast for fruit, grain yeast for grain, bread yeast for other stuff...like bread :moresarcasm: Sorry, I'm not a big fan of bread yeast for alcohol but some people are quite happy with it for most anything but fruit. I personally think until you get the hang of fruit EC-1118 is the best yeast for beginners. It ferments clean and cuts are easy and distinct. After you get the hang of it you can move on to other yeast, I like D-47 and 1122 because they ferment at cooler temperatures and add fruity esters but they make cuts difficult.

I think fruit may not be the easiest thing to learn with but it is well worth the effort, but it can take a lot of effort and if the fruit isn't free it can get quite expensive. I usually recommend a beginner start with something easy like the All-Bran recipe and once they get the hang of that move on to other things. However, cuts on fruit are much different than cuts on a grain based product or rum so it requires a bit different way of thinking about cuts.
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NZChris
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by NZChris »

Peach is very elusive, probably because the dominant flavors have high and low boiling points. Because of that, the advice you get from forum members with no peach experience will probably not capture the peach.

I can't say I've succeeded yet, but my advice would be to double distil in a simple pot and read Kiwistiller's guide to cuts before running into smallish jars, aiming for at least 12 jars. From there on, ignore all advice and use your senses to select a blend, making up samples of prospective blends before committing to one. The trick I haven't tried, that I think might be the answer, is to try blends with middle hearts jars left out. These are the jars with the least flavor.

I have my peach hearts cut aging in one jar and the heads and tails aging in another. Three years later, the feints jar still tastes better than the hearts jar. I will probably end up blending them, but I'm not in a hurry to do that yet.
Thoant1957
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Thoant1957 »

Many heart felt thanks for what I hope is good advice. As with most advice I've received in life some of all will shape the fruits of my labor. I'll start, which had been advised earlier at my local brew store with a different yeast and different fruit blends. I'm just partial to peach everything and would prove to be the most difficult.
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by Shine0n »

A good way to get good peach would be to find 300 lbs and make a pure peach brandy, no sugar!
Mine has taken a year and has developed the most wonderful peach flavor you could imagine.

Even the first one I did with very little sugar was great at 6 months, it just takes time for the fruit flavors to show up.
More fruit, less or no water and no sugar and the flavors will show up, put it away and forget about it. (yeah right)
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contrahead
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by contrahead »

Last week we made peach jam and peach jelly and peach leather. Yesterday I processed peaches all day long. Some of these filled my fermentation carboy, others filled my jerky drier and still others went into freezer bags.

This will be about my third time for fermenting peach wine. I don't add any sugar or water, don't worry about the acidity and don't bother to take any specific gravity readings. Nontheless this year's whole batch will be converted into a potent "fortified" wine..

My last fortified peach wine had a few problems. I did not make enough! Secondly it was cloudy. Thirdly I made the mistake of sweetening the final product with real sugar (that caused a few corks to blow in the middle of the night).
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When I make wine these days I seldom even bother to seperate the juice from the pulp. I'm more concerned with creating ethanol than with filling wine bottles. I simply cull and clean the fruit in baths of bleach water and then of sodium or potassium bi-sulfide. Before I mulch the fruit in a food processor I might have to remove all the seeds or stones. I don't remove grape seeds but blend up the fruit only slightly so as not to cut into the seeds (which releases tannin) if possible. No sugar or water is added. Next the recommended dosage of sulfide disinfectant is stirred in and the filled carboy of mush sits calmly for 24 hours, letting the sulfide work. Finally a starter of yeasts, yeast nutrient and pectic enzymes are added.

For wine the ideal acidity is about 0.6% (which I guess is about pH 4.0). Most grapes hit within the acceptable acidic ballpark without any effort. Peaches according to this source fall between pH 3.30 – 4.05, indicating to me that acidity concerns can be ignored. Everybody likes EC-1118, because it is an excellent yeast with a high alcohol tolerance. However for some white wines or for a fortified peach wine like I intend to make; a milder, less devouring yeast might be preferable. By not consuming all the natural sugars – a less aggressive strain of yeast leaves a bit more sweetness and perhaps more fruity taste in the wine.

My volume or yield of liquid will be less than the 5 gallons I would normally get from squeezing the fruit. My current peach fruit is somewhat unripened and dry,though. I had to take what I could get while the getting was good. That means that if I expect to get adequate natural sugars from these young peaches – then I'll have to add extra pectic enzyme and wait longer for that pulp to be broken down into fermentable juices.

Once fermented the must won't be discarded until after it is distilled, along with about half of the wine. The other half of the wine will be allowed to clarify like normal wine. Eventually I'll blend that wine back with its own brandy and add perhaps a little artificial sweetener with mabey a drop of almond extract.
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contrahead
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by contrahead »

Same topic: different verse...

Last week I finished distilling a banana liquor. It turned out practically well, with a heavy yield of alcohol which has a nice smooth, buttery-banana aftertaste. It was not however a spirit made purely from banana fruit.

On that occasion my 6 gallon fermentation bucket was filled with about 1/3 cornmeal & distiller's malt barley wash, 1/3 used backset with 6-7 lbs sugar added and 1/3 banana puree from about 25 lbs of ripe bananas the local grocer sold to me cheap. This produced a very thick cap that belched up through the airlock and left lots of solids in the mash and on the floor. Almost any other fruit or vegetable could have been successfully substituted for the bananas though, and still this mash would have produced a flavored spirit.
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Re: Crazy Over Friut?

Post by udiraz »

Hi.

I think you just complicated things.

I started to make alcohol with grapes. It is the ideal fruit to make alcohol, and I think that there's a good reason why almost all ancient cultures made alcohol from grapes.
It is very juicy, and very very sweet. you can easily get 13% or more alcohol wine - more than double than apples. It also tastes very good (cognac, for example).
Where I live (Israel) it is also cheaper than apples per weight, so per litre of alcohol it is even more cheap.
So, I would really recommend to start with grapes if you can get them. However, like any other fruit, you have to crush and press them.

After grapes I did apples. Also - keep it simple is the lead principle. grind, press, add yeast (I added 1118 and 1116, which made no significant difference in quality), ferment, and distilled.
Anything else you add besides fruit and juice will only damage the final product.
I also would not freeze or do anything alike. Keep it simple.

Afterwards of course, you have to know your cuts, buts a different story.

And another thing - from what I noticed, it takes at least a month of aging until it even starts to taste good. apples takes less time than grapes, but they both benefit a lot from ageing at least a few months. If you want a really good product, that tastes good and not just hit your head, age it in oak barrel. you will not regret !
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