The slivovitz experiment.

[Alchemist75]

I've been on hiatus lately, no new posts, no ferments or distilling. Sometimes you just gotta take a break and do something else. I'm coming back to it here and it begins with an attempt to make plum brandy. My best friend had come into maybe 10 pounds of plums and was set on the idea of making slivovitz. Now considering that the average plum only has about 4 grams of sugar the outlook seemed dismal in my eyes at any rate. I advised him to ferment them without sugar because I feared his product would suffer if he added any. His ferment was small, only a 6 gallon batch using only 5 pounds of plums. He set it up to ferment and it finished out in 3 days. I knew it wouldn't yield anything if we ran it so I reluctantly told him to add 5 pounds of sugar and re start things. It finished out about a week later and I stripped it in pot mode which gave us less than a gallon of low wines. After tasting the low wines and deciding they were horrible we mutually agreed that we could try to save it by running it through the column. The spirit run yielded about a liter surprisingly enough, of 94% spirit that I assumed would be vodka. Boy was I wrong, vodka it most certainly is not. No, it's a tasty, smooth brandy is what it is. Lot of fruit flavor in it. It's a species of slivovitz to be sure despite the minimal fruit and excess sugar added. Run through a column no less. I'm sharing this one simply because I was surprised by it, I guess extra sugar isn't always the make or break many seem to think it is. It makes me think differently about doing brandy in the future, maybe yield can be increased without completely sacrificing flavor after all....

[Bushman]

Never thought sugar was a make or break, sugar always increases yield and sometimes helps with flavor. I my humble opinion.

[Kareltje]

I remember a remark of Pikey, that plums, after being boiled, gave much more flavour and taste.
So my question is: did you boil some of the plumwash to dissolve the sugar?

[fizzix]

Wondering where you've been hiding, Alchemist75, and you show up with magic brandy.

[HDNB]

drink it.

made some slvovitz about 4 years ago. i kept it as a prize it was so good. it got pushed to the back and i found it about a month ago...the flavour and smell are gone.

[Alchemist75]

Aye, we boiled the plums and strained out the pulp. The neck of his glass fermenting vessel would have made doing a mash a major headache. He's since picked up a large plastic bucket that will make mashing possible. The flavor is light to be sure but it's definitely there. My column always preserves some of the flavor due to its dimensions. It's like fruity vodka.

[Irishgnome]

I ran my final batch of fresh fruit slivo for the year.
This last batch was plums only, no added sugar, water or yeast. All natural!
I processed this batch according to my father-in-law’s directions. I mixed the plums with a paint mixer a little at a time, adding some and mixing. My bucket was close to 6 gallons full of mixed Italian plums.

"Italian Plums"

After mixing I threw an airlock on, wrapped with insulation and left this in my basement for a month. (He said that I should have left the lid off!)
After pulling the lid off, I spooned off the cake “moldy top layer”, then ran through a paint straining bag to pull the stones out.
I have a five gallon alembic still with no way to really churn the mash to prevent scorching. My father-in-law explained that the stones will add a bad nutty flavor if they burn. I use glass marbles in my still when running pulpy fruit mashes, but I was nervous about leaving the stones in.

"Mixing them up "

"Stones"

"Plum mash is ready to run"

To be honest the results were good, but not great in my opinion.
In the first few batches I ran this year, I added water, sugar and yeast. The added sugar helps if you ask me, maybe the yeast and water helped the flavor as well?!

My father-in-law is from Eastern Europe the land of Rakia and Slivovitz. He’s the one who pushed me to run a batch of plum only. The homemade that he has from his family is unbelievable! Something I really would like to recreate.
I gave him a blind taste test and he agreed that the one with sugar was better. My assumption is that the quality of plums are to blame.

Now that winter is approaching and my fruit supply has closed up, I need to run some grain mashes.

Cheers,
Irish

[Alchemist75]

Yeah, I tried to get him to only use fruit but he just didn't have enough do it. Nonetheless, good slivovitz was produced, a Jewish beuddy of his tried the stuff and identified it for what it was without being told. I know from experience what adding sugar can do to the flavor but in this case we were successful. There are no hard absolutes in a world defined by possibilities.