finished the stripping run last night -
about a gallon of wild cherries, poured over a kilo of sugar in just enough boiling water to cover the fruit, mashed the whole lot well. Added bakers yeast. Let it ferment out then topped up with another kilo of sugar in the smallest volume of water I could manage.
Let the ferment settle then distilled in a pot still leaving in the fruit.
It started coming off at 75%, then I dropped the hydrometer jar.
Discared the first 50ml. Collected the rest - all of it very strongly flavoured - until it the distilate got so bitter it was nauseating, from taste I'd guess the strength had dropped to 50% by this point so there was a fair bit of alcohol left. Ended up with 2l at around the 65% mark.
I'll rerun tonight to cut out the bitter tails and maybe dilute with some neutral if it's still too strong in flavour.
Wild cherries
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