Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Discussions of fruits, veggies and grains other then just mashing

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Fredistiller
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Fredistiller »

Thank you cranky!
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Bushman »

Cranky pardon my lack of knowledge but what is the difference between your strainer and a juicer?
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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With mine anyway the juicer only lets juice through and the strainer lets through some pulp.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Bushman wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 6:37 am Cranky pardon my lack of knowledge but what is the difference between your strainer and a juicer?
Probably what Sillanoob said. I've had electric juicers that used a cone shaped centrifugal grater-screen to separate the juice from the pulp. That design is what I think about as a juicer. This used with the regular screen would let a lot of solids through but with the berry screen doesn't really allow much in the way of solids through.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Today I took the apple chopper to work, took it apart, cleaned it and began reassembling it. My intention was to get everything cleaned and run the pears and apples I have and use the press at work to press them. Over the past few days I've sewn up some new press bags for the job but we have been so busy at work that there isn't a whole lot of free time...that and I decided while I had it apart I would make a new video about how it is assembled and show it going through 100#s of pears. I got a video of how I assemble the blades but that took a lot of time. I did get the chopper back together but that was all the time I had so hopefully tomorrow I can get the camera set up and and finish the video.

In the mean time...Mrs Cranky went to work on plums but they are too ripe and soft to separate from the pit easily and most of them were already moldy. Plums are like that, they tend to mold very quickly. So we salvaged what we could and just plan on eating them. They are pretty sweet at around 18 brix. I dumped out the moldy plums but in retrospect shouldn't have, I should have just squished them, added yeast and seen what happened.

Now I have to see if the apples I picked 2 weeks ago are salvageable but I suspect they are going to compost too.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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I'm eager to see the video!
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Been checking our plum tree at the community garden and still a ways off from being ripe. Going to check out the apples later today.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Bushman wrote: Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:02 am Been checking our plum tree at the community garden and still a ways off from being ripe. Going to check out the apples later today.
I assume they are European plums. The Asian plums are done down here but the Europeans are still green. I was looking at my multi plum yesterday and spotted a few sugar plums. Mrs Cranky really loves the sugar plums but there won't be many this year.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by subbrew »

Cranky, in another thread someone asked about the best plums for brandy. I speculated that an italian plums due to the more intense flavor might be better than a juicy Asian. But have you done any experiments.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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subbrew wrote: Mon Aug 09, 2021 1:57 pm Cranky, in another thread someone asked about the best plums for brandy. I speculated that an italian plums due to the more intense flavor might be better than a juicy Asian. But have you done any experiments.
Not Cranky but in my limited experience the Asian plums that I ran two years ago vs the Italian's i ran last year I defiantly prefer last years plums.

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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Never made brandy from plums as it seems like a lot of work removing the seed. OZ how do you process the plums?
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by stillanoob »

Plums are a bit of work. Sticky gelatinous mess. But the brandy is delicious and it is perfect white. I just smash 'em up and remove the stone one at a time. If some get through don't worry about it. Some ferment on the stones. Well worth it.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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stillanoob wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 5:12 am Plums are a bit of work. Sticky gelatinous mess. But the brandy is delicious and it is perfect white. I just smash 'em up and remove the stone one at a time. If some get through don't worry about it. Some ferment on the stones. Well worth it.
Do you have a link to your recipe?
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Bushman wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 6:54 am Do you have a link to your recipe?
Link? Heck, I'm doing well if I even make notes. :roll:

Here is the outline of my recipe and procedure. Start with somewhere around as many gallons of plums as you want must. In my last batch I had 10 or 12 gallons of plums and I wanted about 12 gallons of must. I want to net 10 gallons as that is what my still holds and I find that going a couple of gallons over I net 10. I rinse the fruit well in an idophor solution. Then I manually split them open, remove the stone and smush the fruit. I find it easier to smush as you go. I have tried the other way and it was more work for a less good job. In my last batch example I wound up with about 7 gallons of smush. I added water to bring it to 12 gallons and enough sugar to raise it by 3%. I use ECC1118. Punch down daily until dry. To rack off I have aa bucket inside a bucket. The bottom bucket has a hose attached at the bottom. The top bucket has holes in the bottom. I put a brew bag inside the top bucket. Don't punch down the day you are going to rack. Use a colander to get skins etc. floating at the top out as much as you can. Then rack the rest through the bag/bucket setup. Put in carboys for a fewe days until it settles and rack again and run.

The heart of hearts of the strip run is really good. Maybe even better than the 2x distilled. But there is so little that it isn't worth it to keep it. So I just collect all low wines, running down to < 10% ABV output and run it again.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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stay safe
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Last edited by Oldvine Zin on Tue Aug 10, 2021 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Oldvine Zin wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:33 am
Bushman wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 4:46 am Never made brandy from plums as it seems like a lot of work removing the seed. OZ how do you process the plums?
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... 0#p7635646
No sugar or water added
Lots of work but worth it

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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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I have never done a comparison between the two because Mrs Cranky loves our Asian plums too much to allow many of them to be made into brandy. What Asians do make it to the still are mixed with the Europeans which are mostly Italian since Mrs Cranky also loves the French sugar plums. One thing I observed with wine making is if you freeze then thaw the plums the ferment finishes with more plum flavor. Post frozen also finishes with more color. I can't say for sure how the flavor of unfrozen Vs post frozen carries over after distilling because I just can't remember right now.

My preference for plum brandy like most brandies is no added sugar or water. I mash the plums up in my hand as a de-pit them and do a primary ferment in a bucket. A week or so later I strain them into a carboy and let them finish and settle, which tends to take a long time in my experience but I like the results.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Yesterday at work I managed to get everything set up. Got all the pears washed and weighed
PEARS 09 AUG 21 #4A - C.jpg
PEARS 09 AUG 21 #6A - C.jpg
120 #s in the buckets. the buckets and unacceptable ones weighed 12#s bringing actual weight of pears down to 108#s.
PEARS 09 AUG 21 #7A - C.jpg
I tried to set up and film the actual chopping of the pears but there were a couple of technical difficulties that prevented it until I was half way through so I wound up not getting it filmed. I left the chopper and some buckets of apples there, which is probably a mistake because I've had problems in the past with people on other shifts deciding to try to operate it when it wasn't completely ready, then run around talking about how dangerous it is :evil: Well it's not any more dangerous than a car...or the stuff we routinely operate at work but some people just have to be stupid and currently I don't have a removable switch. I do intend to add one but currently don't so I put it aside and wrote on it in sharpy "IT'S NOT YOURS LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE". I doubt that will do any good but they can't say they weren't warned. Anyway, when I go back Friday or Saturday I will try to film chopping the apples. I did get a little bit of explaining filmed and with some apples to show a timed run I should be able to put a decent video together.

In the mean time, I did get the pears all chopped and pressed.
Here is a pic of the press I was using
PEARS 09 AUG 21 #8A.jpg
It's the 15 Ton press at our shop but didn't really do much better than my home made bottle jack press at home. I found that pressure had to be kept pretty low but that might just be the new press bags I made, which worked very well until one of the guys I work with egged me on a bit about having "another gallon of juice in there" and I pressed a bit too hard and blew two bags out :oops: I made them big enough to easily handle a bucket of pulp each, which amounts to 2 pre-chopped buckets of apples or pears, or roughly 48#s.

So I have now learned that 50 psi is the correct pressure for pressing
PEARS 09 AUG 21 #12A - C.jpg
and 75psi is never exceed pressure. 100 psi will blow out my bags.

There is a reason I don't usually do this stuff indoors and that is it tends to make a hell of a mess. What I should have done was make the press bag fit around the opening of the shopper and sit inside the bucket so it would be much cleaner and neater to handle. Maybe I'll start working on that idea with the next round of bags I make. It took about an hour to clean up the mess but I left work with 8 gallons of pear juice at 12 brix. That comes to 13.5 lbs to the gallon, which is actually quite low for pears but enough to do the run I want so I will have some to add to the finished apple brandy.

I still need to get it all into carboys and start them fermenting but there were other priorities today. Maybe I'll go do that here in a few minutes.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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cranky wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 7:46 pm
Damn I wish that I still had a shop with all those toys!

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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Letting the bags bulge out the sides might be a problem.

Have you seen the design that has slats for between each layer? They use a frame that fits the slats to help shape each layer as they stack them so that there are no bulges. Slats are very efficient as the juice in the center of each layer of pulp doesn't have to travel very far to reach freedom.

What I find helps, is to have a thick piece of rubber under the ram so that you don't have to crank it down so often to keep the pressure high on the fruit. A section of car tire tread does it for me.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by CoogeeBoy »

So, are we talking the same drink here with all these different methods?

Pressing the fruit vs fermenting fruit chunks etc? Do they produce vastly different results?

I am intrigued by those that press the fruits, my method is to cut the fruit into small pieces, add some pectinase and leave overnight, then mash in the morning and pitch yeast.

I have done plums (simply cut them and removed stones by hand but it is laborious) and now pears.

I don't push the mash down each day though and wait for it to stop fermening.
Pear Brandy Mash
Pear Brandy Mash
Then strain and then distill.

Some of my pears ready for pitching yeast and a pear tartin I made with a few left overs!

If I was single, it would be my Pear Tartin Panty Dropper, it was hugely successful at home here. Unfortunately I'm happily married (she's happy, I'm married) so I got a pat on the head...
Pear Tartin Panty Dropper
Pear Tartin Panty Dropper
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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CoogeeBoy wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:40 pm So, are we talking the same drink here with all these different methods?
Absolutely not. :D
If I'm wanting to make a particular drink, I research that drink and there are always several methods of making something like it.

What often works for me, is deciding what type of product I want to make from the fruit I've been offered, then researching it to see if it is a new rabbit hole I really want to go down. It usually is :D
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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CoogeeBoy wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:40 pm If I was single, it would be my Pear Tartin Panty Dropper, it was hugely successful at home here.
I'm sure my family would be very happy if I produced that for a treat. :D Could you PM me the recipe please.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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NZChris wrote: Wed Aug 11, 2021 12:10 am
CoogeeBoy wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:40 pm If I was single, it would be my Pear Tartin Panty Dropper, it was hugely successful at home here.
I'm sure my family would be very happy if I produced that for a treat. :D Could you PM me the recipe please.
Just sent you a PM but sitting in my outbox, have asked admin how to make sure it gets to you.

All the best
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Got it, thanks. :thumbup:
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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NZChris wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:22 pm Letting the bags bulge out the sides might be a problem.

Have you seen the design that has slats for between each layer? They use a frame that fits the slats to help shape each layer as they stack them so that there are no bulges. Slats are very efficient as the juice in the center of each layer of pulp doesn't have to travel very far to reach freedom.

What I find helps, is to have a thick piece of rubber under the ram so that you don't have to crank it down so often to keep the pressure high on the fruit. A section of car tire tread does it for me.
I have seen and used many different methods over the years. I have a cage that goes around the bags and slats that I used to put in between bags and found it made little to no difference. I've never had one split at a bulge. The split actually came from my method of doing 3 pressings. The first one like pictured with the bags hanging over the sides. Once that is about 50% compressed I release pressure, fold the bags in half and turn them 90 degrees. This gets about 90% of what can be gotten. Then If I feel the pulp is not dry enough I will fold it over one more time, rearrange it and press one more time. Often I will fluff the pulp after the 2nd pressing for the 3rd but I didn't this time. I shouldn't have listened to the guy helping me and tried to get that last quart of juice, I knew better. I also knew better than to put that much pressure on it. The bags are made of fairly cheap muslin fabric from Wal-Mart. I couldn't afford the monks cloth that I really wanted, which has a much coarser weave. Next time I'll get my fabric from Joannes or another sewing store but these will work for a few years.
CoogeeBoy wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:40 pm Pressing the fruit vs fermenting fruit chunks etc? Do they produce vastly different results?

I am intrigued by those that press the fruits, my method is to cut the fruit into small pieces, add some pectinase and leave overnight, then mash in the morning and pitch yeast.
There are a couple reasons I don't ferment apples or pears on the pulp. First off I get way too much fruit to chop it up by hand and I don't like fermenting with seeds and stems in the mix.

Second is space. I can get as much as 1600 lbs of apples in a year and regularly get 600 lbs at a time. 2 buckets of apples makes one bucket of chopped apples. There are 24 lbs of apples to a bucket, so 48 lbs to a bucket of chopped, more if you add water to the mix. So to ferment 600 lbs of apples on the pulp would require 62.5 gallons of space, to do 1,600 lbs would take 167 gallons of space and all that pulp floats to the top for at least several days and if the tops are not on securely will make a big mess. If pressed the apple juice only takes up 38-46 gallons for 600#s and 100-123 gallons for 1,600#s.
Last edited by cranky on Wed Aug 11, 2021 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Just bottled 4 fifth’s of my Blackberry Liqueur.
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... 58&t=67443
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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The first 25L (+-6Gal) of ripe elderberries of 2021
The first 25L (+-6Gal) of ripe elderberries of 2021

The rainy weather wasn't a problem for my elders, no sign of rot like my grapes. They gave a lot of fruit, very juicy but with a light taste (what did you expect). The black berries are taking colours too.

I'm currently looking for a new freezer as my old one is...old and quite small and wifey don't want that I take hostage the kitchen freezer.
I was wondering if I could add the berries little by little to the fermenting wash when they are ripe instead of freezing all my berries and then ferment everything. Do you guys already tried this?
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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cranky wrote: Wed Aug 11, 2021 6:38 am There are a couple reasons I don't ferment apples or pears on the pulp. First off I get way too much fruit to chop it up by hand and I don't like fermenting with seeds and stems in the mix.

Second is space. I can get as much as 1600 lbs of apples in a year and regularly get 600 lbs at a time. 2 buckets of apples makes one bucket of chopped apples. There are 24 lbs of apples to a bucket, so 48 lbs to a bucket of chopped, more if you add water to the mix. So to ferment 600 lbs of apples on the pulp would require 62.5 gallons of space, to do 1,600 lbs would take 167 gallons of space and all that pulp floats to the top for at least several days and if the tops are not on securely will make a big mess. If pressed the apple juice only takes up 38-46 gallons for 600#s and 100-123 gallons for 1,600#s.
That makes sense to me. I admit I wondered how they would have made commercial quantities of schnapps etc, I imagined a floor of people cutting fruit, which is what my grandmother did but that was for making dried fruits.

Thank you Cranky.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by jonnys_spirit »

Does that 1600# (65’ish buckets) roughly yield about a 5 gallon barrels worth of aging brandy? That’s a ton of work wow!

Cheers,
J
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i prefer my mash shaken, not stirred
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