I’m sure this may have been covered elsewhere in the multitude of pages here but thought I’d share a recipe I found and am currently fermenting for myself as an experiment.
Of course I did not follow the recipe to a “T” but it’s bubbling along happily non the less.
Very curious how this will turn out as I’m not so much interested in infusions but more flavours achieved with a pot still.
As this is my first try I figured I’d put it here instead of the “tried and true” section
Last edited by Just 4 Fun on Thu Mar 26, 2020 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Just because it's called a liver doesn't mean it lives forever.
I typically do 23L ferments with 4kg sugar as a constant, for this one I used a mix of jalapeño and Serrano peppers as that was all I could find in the shops right now.
Basically as follows
-1lb each of the peppers (2 pounds or 1kg total)
-4kg sugar
-1table spoon lemon juice
-bread yeast
-20L clean water
I boiled the cut up peppers in 4L of water for about 1/2 hr and dumped in the fermenter
Boiled another 4L water then added lemon juice and sugar off the heat to dissolved, return to the heat and simmer for 1/2hr to invert the sugar and dump that in the fermenter
Top it off with the remaining 12L water and pitch the yeast when it cools below 30*c
Put it together last night and it’s bubbling along happily already and smells.......well peppery.
Just because it's called a liver doesn't mean it lives forever.
A few years ago I did 5kg load of manzano chilli (hot enough to kill a gringo) which I got from one harvest off my 10 year old chilli tree. Unfortunately due to the heat of last summer it finally killed the chilli tree but 10 years worth of chilli of one plant was good run.
Anyway put on some plastic gloves and diced up the lot then took a sg reading with my refractometer 1033 was the reading so I wacked them all in the freezer for a week and after thawing took another reading 1038 so along with 4kg of inverted sugar made up a 40 litre ferment and used EC1118 yeast.
The wash was like one small taste would burn all the way down for a good 10 minutes so just had to bottle up 10 stubbies to make some chilli beer. The rest went thru my 4 plate bubbler and after a DP I was shocked. No real heat but a full flavour of the fruit and putting it on French Oak for 18 months made a top shelf drop.
Just wanted to follow up on this as I finally had a chance to run it.
First pass through my 27L pot still then ran the low wines through my 10L with a thumper cutting off my collecting at 50%.
Ended up with 2.4L @ 78%, aired out for 3 days then watered down to 45% netting 4.4L total.
On the nose there is a slight pepper aroma, but on the palette there is very little flavour although a slight sweetness and good mouth feel.
Think I’m going to call this one a “vodka”
Typically when I do sugar washes with fruit or cereals there’s still a lot of flavour after running it the same way so was surprised when there was very little flavour on this one.
Now as a wine I could see it as a great kitchen wine for sauces, marinades and reductions but with the Serrano peppers it would be far too spicy for me to enjoy on its own.
Not sure I will try this again but it was fun to test out of curiosity.
Just because it's called a liver doesn't mean it lives forever.
Weird that the flavor didn't carry over. I made pepper shine that had peppery aromas. I didn't ferment them though. I made mine like a gin run, so maybe more like a flavored vodka? I used dried peppers I soaked in the hearts of a triple pot stilled weetabix sugarhead. I'll have to try it again sometime.
