Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Discussions of fruits, veggies and grains other then just mashing

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Swedish Pride
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Swedish Pride »

some good info there.

I would borrow a buggy and fly around the place but was asked to pick when the golfers were gone for the day, and they lock the gate after hours so I'd have to walk 1 mile to the apple tree....

I've two alternatives as I see it.

1. go over on a shitty day when noone in their right mind would be golfing, borrow a golf cart and pick as much as I can.
2. go over at night to the back of the golf course and jump a little wall and only have 100yards to the apple trees, only problem with this is that the wall Id be jumping would be the next doors wall, that coincidentally has an orchard, so they may not like the fact i walk through their orchard to get the free apples on the other side.

as far as processing I think i have it sussed, I'll try the paintmixer i have in the shed if that don't work I'll smash it in a bucked with a heavy piece of timber , like this


I've an old asspress about that I'll fill up and put an piece of of a trunk of a tree to press down on, should get okish results.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Alchemist75 »

Well, new mexico in general comes up somewhat short in the wild fruit department shy of what's growing in folks back yards. The two big ones are prickly pear fruit and juniperus monosperma that grow in abundance in my area. In past years we've wildcrafted enough prickly pear to produce a few good gallons of wine. It comes out tasting like a gamey dry red which isn't to my taste much but it might make a decent brandy. Harvesting it is a bit of a mad dash in late August, the local wildlife seem to know just exactly when the fruit is ripe and if you're not quick on the draw they will decimate the entire seasons growth in a matter of days. Processing it is a daunting task as well, Lotta soaking, boiling and filtering to get all the hair like spines off the fruit.
Our particular species of juniper, as far as I know, has never been used to produce commercial gin but the berries are very sweet and aromatic so this year I'm harvesting some of that to see if a decent gin can't be made with them, perhaps even try fermenting them outright. lord knows there's plenty of the fruit to work with.....
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Wooday »

After last year's total bust, our local trees are going gangbusters.

Friends of Fruity Goodness, it is on.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Alchemist75 wrote:Well, new mexico in general comes up somewhat short in the wild fruit department shy of what's growing in folks back yards. The two big ones are prickly pear fruit and juniperus monosperma that grow in abundance in my area. In past years we've wildcrafted enough prickly pear to produce a few good gallons of wine. It comes out tasting like a gamey dry red which isn't to my taste much but it might make a decent brandy. Harvesting it is a bit of a mad dash in late August, the local wildlife seem to know just exactly when the fruit is ripe and if you're not quick on the draw they will decimate the entire seasons growth in a matter of days. Processing it is a daunting task as well, Lotta soaking, boiling and filtering to get all the hair like spines off the fruit.
Our particular species of juniper, as far as I know, has never been used to produce commercial gin but the berries are very sweet and aromatic so this year I'm harvesting some of that to see if a decent gin can't be made with them, perhaps even try fermenting them outright. lord knows there's plenty of the fruit to work with.....
I have always wanted to try making something with prickly pear fruit, fortunately we don't have any cactus near where I live so I doubt that will happen any time soon.
Wooday wrote:After last year's total bust, our local trees are going gangbusters.

Friends of Fruity Goodness, it is on.
I'm glad you are getting apples this year. That press looks awesome! :thumbup: I want to get one of those air hydraulic jacks.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by cranky »

My own fruit season kind of took a big hit this month. Life kind of snuck up and sucker punched my wife and I when we weren't looking the other way. Fortunately everything is now returning to normal but it really put a dent in my fruit season. I had been working on getting some plums going when my wife went into the hospital. I wound up leaving about 2 gallons of plums sitting in the living room the whole time and by the time we got back home again I had 2 gallons of rotten moldy plums and a ton of fruit flies in the house :( Fortunately I did manage to get most of them into the freezer before everything happened. Because we ran out of freezer space I had started to process some of them before everything happened. I had actually pasteurized 2 or 3 gallons of plums and placed it in a bucket with yeast and an airlock before we left. I have no idea whet condition it's in but hopefully it is fine and has a whole lot of hungry yeast waiting to go because last night I pasteurized and mashed up another 4 gallons of frozen plums which I plan on adding to the bucket in a little bit. I pasteurized these because I don't know how long it will be before I get to them, I also usually pasteurize plums when I make wine because plum can get pretty funky if you don't pasteurize or use silfites and I never use sulfites. I I still have another 4 or 5 gallon bags oi plums in the freezer which I need to clean out but I need to free up a fermenter first.

I think I have finally made the decision to go ahead and a mixed fruit brandy out of everything. I haven't assessed exactly what is in the freezer but there is a full gallon of blackberry juice in the fridge and another 4 gallons of blackberry that has been finished for 2 years waiting on me to get around to picking enough to run. I'm pretty sure I have at least another 2 gallons of blackberries and maybe some grapes and who knows what else but I am going to go ahead and ferment it all and run it together for a nice mixed fruit :D

As for apples, I missed the trees I was going to ask to pick so all that's left now are the dime park trees. The antique produced like crazy and should be good for many hundreds of pounds of apples. These are also the apples we make apple butter, sauce and pie filling out of. I don't know that we will have enough energy to do that but I plan to start picking them this weekend and keep going til December. There are some lesser trees in the park as well which will add good qualities to the brandy and of course last are the KDs which look like they may have produced enough to make a batch of iced apple cider which is something really special when I can pull it off.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Pikey »

raketemensch wrote:Fruit Salad Brandy? I’ll have a glass.
I bet that comes out really nice ! :thumbup:
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by cranky »

I used to do an April brandy, which is, every April I would clean out the freezer, put all the fruit that didn't get used over the winter into a brandy and run it. It usually comes out quite fruity but you couldn't tell which fruit because there was no distinct dominant fruit, I used to drink a schnapps that was like that. I think I actually sent MCH a sample once. I actually liked it very much. It's a little harder to do with my bigger setup because it takes a lot more fruit. I could set up and run it in the little pot I suppose but I really don't want to do the cleaning on it.

This afternoon I opened the bucket I had started before my wife got ill and as expected It has a little bit of mold showing up. So I cleaned another bucket and put the new pulp in that instead. I think tomorrow I will probably strain the moldy stuff and get it in jugs or maybe just put it in wine bottles with corks until I get around to it in the hope that this prevents further problems until I can get a large batch fermented. I will probably get that gallon of blackberry juice fermenting as well and maybe get the rest of the fruit thawed and see where I stand.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by cranky »

Now that things are closer to normal I have begun thinking about fruit again. I am working on cleaning out the freezer so we can get the winter's supply of soups and such put back. The years jelly was made before the problem so that is taken care of. We still need to do apple butter and pie filling but if that doesn't happen it won't be that big of a deal. In the process of cleaning out the freezer I managed to get the last 5 gallons of plums thawed, pureed and pasteurized. That gave me 4 more gallons of puree so I have 8-9 gallons of plum puree fermenting. I found another gallon of blueberries as well so that should be 3 gallons of blueberries to add to the mix. I'm actually getting a bit excited about this one and beginning to think I may have more fruit than I can fit in the boiler in a single run. I'm also considering resurrecting the little boiler so I can run directly from the big boiler into the smaller one then fire that up and do the second run. I haven't done that in a while but I'm certainly thinking about it.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by The Baker »

Hi, Cranky,
Good to hear Mrs. Cranky is much better.
That hospital bill was incredible, much more, I think, than it would have been in Australia (with the same standard of care and expertise).

You said, " I'm also considering resurrecting the little boiler so I can run directly from the big boiler into the smaller one then fire that up and do the second run. I haven't done that in a while but I'm certainly thinking about it.".

That is usual, I think, in a big whisky distillery (and others?), but this is the first time I recall (in probably more than ten years in several forums) it being done by a hobby distiller.
Sometimes I have thought of it myself but not seriously, haven't got the set-up to do it. A thumper comes first and that will be a while, just getting organised at home after a three year gap. I used to distil at the farm shed but the huge grass fire (14,000 hectares? or maybe 35.000 acres? ) melted the big water tank; the fireys saved the shed.

Obviously you found it worked well if you might do it again?

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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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The Baker wrote:Hi, Cranky,
Good to hear Mrs. Cranky is much better.
That hospital bill was incredible, much more, I think, than it would have been in Australia (with the same standard of care and expertise).
I gotta say the level of care she received at this hospital is far better than the level her mother received at the other hospital they could have taken her to and while it was happening I just didn't care how much it cost, just that it worked. I'm glad it did work :D
The Baker wrote:You said, " I'm also considering resurrecting the little boiler so I can run directly from the big boiler into the smaller one then fire that up and do the second run. I haven't done that in a while but I'm certainly thinking about it.".

That is usual, I think, in a big whisky distillery (and others?), but this is the first time I recall (in probably more than ten years in several forums) it being done by a hobby distiller.
Sometimes I have thought of it myself but not seriously, haven't got the set-up to do it. A thumper comes first and that will be a while, just getting organised at home after a three year gap. I used to distil at the farm shed but the huge grass fire (14,000 hectares? or maybe 35.000 acres? ) melted the big water tank; the fireys saved the shed.

Obviously you found it worked well if you might do it again?
I actually never really thought about it before, it was just a convenient way to do it when I didn't have enough juice or fermenters to do 3 or 4 12 gallon runs. It's actually not a bad method. I know it is one of the oldest methods. I've seen the stills in that configuration referred to as a "singling still" and a "doubling still". I also know a lot of slivovitz is made that way. I used to use it a lot because a single run down to 30% can usually fill the 4 gallon boiler enough to keep the element wet throughout the run. The only real reason I stopped using it was I left it sitting wet too long the last time I used it and don't really want to take the time to do the cleaning runs. I also had built the flute and started using it for a one run and done method but I think the double run gives me a better final product than the flute when it comes to brandy. Right now I'm thinking it wouldn't hurt to give everything a good cleaning so I might as well go ahead and include the little pot when I do everything else. I think it will actually be the best method with this mixed fruit.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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OK, so my buddy and my companion in booze making, has produced a yummy apricot wine. He fermented it with a combo of sugar and 'cots which he made from fresh fruit harvested from his back yard. He added a bit more sugar than I think his wine yeast could tackle but the end product is actually quite delicious. He wants to distill half of his product but I've not yet tried distilling an apricot brandy especially with excess sugar in the mix. Have any of you played with apricot brandy? Does the flavor come over well? Since I'm the still operator I'm thinking trying to nail it in a single run is our best hope but input from the wise would be useful......
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Alchemist75 wrote:OK, so my buddy and my companion in booze making, has produced a yummy apricot wine. He fermented it with a combo of sugar and 'cots which he made from fresh fruit harvested from his back yard. He added a bit more sugar than I think his wine yeast could tackle but the end product is actually quite delicious. He wants to distill half of his product but I've not yet tried distilling an apricot brandy especially with excess sugar in the mix. Have any of you played with apricot brandy? Does the flavor come over well? Since I'm the still operator I'm thinking trying to nail it in a single run is our best hope but input from the wise would be useful......
I was hoping someone who has done apricots would chime in but it looks like they may not be watching this thread. I haven't yet found any free apricots so I haven't done them. I think NZChris and TheCrowEater have done them and I know there have been others but I can't recall who exactly. Personally if I am happy with a wine I would just leave it as wine. That said if you are determined to try, go ahead and see what you can do, if you like what it does in one run great! or if you don't you can always run it again.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Yeah, I tend to share your opinion about it as just wine. It's damn tasty. My friend wants to run half so we'll run half. I guess had it been me and I intended to run it I wouldn't have added much if any sugar but I suppose we'll see what we end up with. Usually I run brandy real slow and only do one run to try to get the best flavor though the cuts can be touchy. Brandy is finicky
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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It wasn't me, I don't live in apricot country.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by der wo »

All those fruits, apricot, peach, mirabelle and of course plums give great brandies. I have done all of them except apricot, because they are expensive in my area and I haven't found a tree unfortunately.
Apricot brandy is very famous. Google "Wachauer Marille" or "Marillenbrand". Marille is the Austrian word for apricot and Wachau is the region with the most famous apricots. Because the flavor is very intense, there are selled successfully many cheap blends from brandy and neutral grain alcohol "Marillenschnaps". They have still much fruit flavor. So to use sugar is possible with apricots, but of course without is better and of course only without sugar you are allowed to name it brandy.
I fermented and distilled all those fruits on the pulp. No water or only a bit with the yeast starter. The pros distill it with plates, I with my reflux still.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Well that's optimistic. Yeah, not brandy in the technical sense but close enough. Just by taste I'm guessing his wine is in the 6-8% range but I could be off. I'm hoping it pulls a decent yield.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Alchemist75 wrote:Well that's optimistic. Yeah, not brandy in the technical sense but close enough. Just by taste I'm guessing his wine is in the 6-8% range but I could be off. I'm hoping it pulls a decent yield.
I'm not sure you're correct there Alcy - 6-8% by taste - yet a couple of posts back you said you thought he pitched more sugar than a wine yeast could cope with, giving the expectation it was a sweetish wine ? Generally speaking, I think up to 11% or so it will ferment to dryness, and many wine yeasts nowadays will go way higher than that. If you have sweeetness and the ferment stopped naturally, I'd be thinking in the low to mid teens. {Except for that wierd plum of mine of course ! :roll: }
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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der wo wrote:
......... So to use sugar is possible with apricots, but of course without is better and of course only without sugar you are allowed to name it brandy.............
Oh TRemble Tremble :shock:

I'm still gonna call mine "brandy" - on the basis that if I get dragged up before the Beak, what I'm doing is likely to be more the cause, than what I'm calling it. :lol:
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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@pikey:
You may well be right, taste is hardly a reliable indicator. The thing about his ferments vs. Mine is that he plays with a lot of unknown variables so goodness only knows how a given ferment will play out. His wine has always been reasonably good though it seems there's noticeable variance from batch to batch even with the same fruit. One time it'll be sweet, another it'll come out tart not to mention the seasonal variance he seems to get. The yields we pull when distilling his stuff are frequently all over the map as well. One of these days I'm going to try his base recipe and try to dissect what's going on....always an adventure working with his joy juice for sure
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Alchemist75 wrote:@pikey:
You may well be right, taste is hardly a reliable indicator. The thing about his ferments vs. Mine is that he plays with a lot of unknown variables so goodness only knows how a given ferment will play out. His wine has always been reasonably good though it seems there's noticeable variance from batch to batch even with the same fruit. One time it'll be sweet, another it'll come out tart not to mention the seasonal variance he seems to get. The yields we pull when distilling his stuff are frequently all over the map as well. One of these days I'm going to try his base recipe and try to dissect what's going on....always an adventure working with his joy juice for sure
I always wind up with different results even when I try to do everything the same. Fruit just varies from year to year. I assumed when you said
Alchemist75 wrote: He fermented it with a combo of sugar and 'cots
you meant he used Cote des Blancs yeast, which will ferment up to 14% and is known to leave residual sweetness so I would guess it is somewhere above 12%.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Sorry, 'cots as in apricots. He uses "wine yeast" but I'm not clear on the exact strain. The way I see it, if it comes out tasting great then it's gold. Guess we'll find out soon enough, he's coming by this Friday with a decent quantity of the wine.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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The other day I thawed and processed 5 more gallons of plums, this finishes off the plums. After pasteurizing and blending to a pulp that left me 4 gallons of pulp. I made a yeast bomb using a little bit of pulp mixed with 50% water in a jar which I added yeast to then shook vigorously for a few minutes every half hour or so for a couple hours. Then I added it to the 4 gallons of pulp. The next morning it blew the lid right off the bucket and plum pulp went all over the laundry room floor :oops: . I haven't cleaned it up yet but my wife still isn't up to going out there and doing the laundry. I added some from the one bucket into the other so it won't happen again and it continued fermenting very vigorously. It's slowing down now. I also strained most of the moldy stuff and got about an imperial gallon of juice out of it. I could have gotten more but didn't really have time to set up the little press and press it properly. So far it isn't showing any signs of an infection, if it does I will put it in the freezer until I'm ready to run it.

Yesterday I stopped at the dime park and picked the low hanging apples. I got about 1.5-1.75 bucket of them, they are very small this year, I guess because of the extremely dry summer we have had. I haven't checked the SG yet but I am hoping they have a high concentration of sugar. Because these apples keep very well my plan is to stop as often as I can on my way home and pick a bucket or two until I get 300 lbs or so. That would be enough to fire up the chopper one more time before the end of the season and that should get me enough to run and save just a little for cider.

I still need to bottle the 16 gallons of plum wine I have and now have a plan for cleaning the bottles. I think I am going to start bringing bottles to to clean, then all I have to do is bring them home, sanitize and bottle.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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cranky wrote:
Alchemist75 wrote:@pikey:
You may well be right, taste is hardly a reliable indicator. The thing about his ferments vs. Mine is that he plays with a lot of unknown variables so goodness only knows how a given ferment will play out. His wine has always been reasonably good though it seems there's noticeable variance from batch to batch even with the same fruit. One time it'll be sweet, another it'll come out tart not to mention the seasonal variance he seems to get. The yields we pull when distilling his stuff are frequently all over the map as well. One of these days I'm going to try his base recipe and try to dissect what's going on....always an adventure working with his joy juice for sure
I always wind up with different results even when I try to do everything the same. Fruit just varies from year to year. I assumed when you said ..............

100% agree - the best wines I ever made were "mediocre! when repeated - be they fruit, grain, Flower or leaf ! :lol: :lol:

Distillation of "wines" seems to give better consistency - whilst "Beers" change their names every time they are made because they taste so different each time :)
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Well we ran that apricot. It wasn't anything to write home about fresh off the rig. I kept the foreshot cut kinda narrow in an attempt to preserve the best of the flavor and while the head was definitely fruity it was offset by a distinct bitter character. In the future I might attempt a rather wider cut here, late heads were less bitter. The heart was smooth and buttery with a light fruity note but by the time I made the tail cut I was unimpressed with the product thus far. Oddly, running deep into the tail is where the better flavors came through, much more subtle and somewhat sweet. Not bad if we called it moonshine but as brandy goes I've tasted better before aging and aging is probably what it needs. That being said I think my friends plan is to smooth it with an apricot juice infused simple syrup and drink it as is which might be tasty regardless. I think the wine it was distilled from was mutually agreed to be better tasting by far but you never know, a few months on oak could change that.....not discouraged but I might change my approach some next year if he wants to try again
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Alchemist75 wrote:Well we ran that apricot. It wasn't anything to write home about fresh off the rig. I kept the foreshot cut kinda narrow in an attempt to preserve the best of the flavor and while the head was definitely fruity it was offset by a distinct bitter character. In the future I might attempt a rather wider cut here, late heads were less bitter. The heart was smooth and buttery with a light fruity note but by the time I made the tail cut I was unimpressed with the product thus far. Oddly, running deep into the tail is where the better flavors came through, much more subtle and somewhat sweet. Not bad if we called it moonshine but as brandy goes I've tasted better before aging and aging is probably what it needs. That being said I think my friends plan is to smooth it with an apricot juice infused simple syrup and drink it as is which might be tasty regardless. I think the wine it was distilled from was mutually agreed to be better tasting by far but you never know, a few months on oak could change that.....not discouraged but I might change my approach some next year if he wants to try again
Brandy often changes drastically over time. I was thinking maybe consider soaking some dried apricots in it.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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I have been trying to get around to straining the plum that's fermented out now but time seems to constantly get away from me. I am also kind of hoping the fruit flies disappear with the colder weather coming in. I have also been trying to get around to bottling that 16 gallons of plum wine. I finally decided the only way that is going to happen is for me to take the bottles to work where I can find time to wash them, then bring them home and sanitize them when I'm ready to bottle. I got 24 bottles done yesterday and was all set to do another 24 today but after bringing the bottles in I realized I forgot my bottle brush so they didn't get done today :( Hopefully I'll get it all done by my next weekend and get all this wine bottled. I have bottles everywhere and In the process of rounding up the 81 bottles I need to bottle all this stuff I found 6 bottles of Asian pear wine I made 2 or 3 years ago and forgotten about. When I bottled this stuff it was just plain horrible :sick: but I figured it wouldn't hurt to bottled it anyway so that's what I did. When I found them I figured I would give it a taste and see if it came around or not. I have to say it's some pretty good stuff now. I'm actually quite happy with it.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Shine0n »

Glad to hear you got a little something done Cranky, the fruit flies and time have been my biggest obstacle so far as well.
It's still warm here for the most part but much cooler than it has been, low 80's day and 60s and sometimes 50s during the night.

How exactly do you keep them little buggers out of your fruit? I'm scared to death I'm going to open a bucket to have vinegar and not must!
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Shine0n wrote:Glad to hear you got a little something done Cranky, the fruit flies and time have been my biggest obstacle so far as well.
It's still warm here for the most part but much cooler than it has been, low 80's day and 60s and sometimes 50s during the night.

How exactly do you keep them little buggers out of your fruit? I'm scared to death I'm going to open a bucket to have vinegar and not must!
You can set traps for them made out of fruit vinegar, apple cider vinegar is good, with a drop of unflavored dish soap in it, which works pretty well. If you try to use scented soap they won't go near it. The soap breaks the surface tension when they land on it and they get trapped. I think it works well with a thin must too. Another thing I do is put heads in my air locks, this works like a fruit/vinegar fly magnet and they just commit suicide in it. Somewhere I have a picture of one of the masses of dead flies in an airlock. Also Fruit flies actually sleep and they wake up groggy. I use this to my advantage and do a lot of things in the morning before the majority of them wake up, it helps that I get up at 4:30 most mornings. I also will find where they are sleeping and take my shop vac and suck up as many as I can, it even works on the flying ones, all you have to do is get close to them and they get sucked in. Tats not to say I am successful in keeping them out all the time, some occasions I have had some go vinegar, I run it anyway with good results and save some to use as vinegar and make more traps out of.
Shine0n
Distiller
Posts: 2488
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2016 6:00 am
Location: Eastern Virginia

Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Shine0n »

I shop vac a few times already, last week my wife left the back door wide open all freaking day and the trash can had about a million it seemed like and I took the vac and went to work. lol

My 3 year old got the biggest kick out of sucking them in but I have no hope of pressing the these apples and will just let them ferment on the pulp because of things happening :crazy:

I guess pressing after fermentation will be ok?
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