Apple eau-de-vie(brandy) question

[naeco]

Hello,

My name is Naeco and I am new to this forum and thank you in advance for having me. I've been making hard apple cider for 2 years now and decided to try the distillation of my precious nectar for a change. I have a 5 gallon of hard cider that's been aging for a year and is simply delicious. It is completely dry and has an abv of 7%(very little sugar added(cane sugar)) . The yeast used for the fermentation is Safale S-04. I have 2 questions I would lite to get help with. BTW, I will be using a pot still for the distillation.

1 - Since the ABV is so low, should I add apple concentrate to the cider and re-ferment wit a stronger yeast(Lalvin 18) to get a higher ABV and if so, wouldn't that affect the quality(taste) of the eau-de-vie and make it less apply ?

2 - If I want something with lots of arome like a poire wiliam, do you recommend I add some frozen apple concentrate to the cider before fermentation or after fermentation ?

Thanks in advance and looking forward to learning about this fine art .

naeco

[Dnderhead]

Id distill as is,,apple has a lot of methanol so make good cuts..

[Prairiepiss]

If you have 5 gallons of 1 year aged cider that is good tasting. Why waste it by running it in a still. Don't get me wrong here. I know this site is about distilling. But you have spent a year making a good drink. So drink it. Make a new batch to run in the still. Something that you won't waste a year making. Or am I missing the point here.?

[WalkingWolf]

I agree PP -- I've run a bad wine experience and produced good spirit but I wouldn't run a year old product with a pleasant flavor profile just for the heck of it.

[myles]

I would agree with this too. OK I like my cider stronger, say 12%, but I have to add extra sugar to get that. I would only run aged booze in the still if the flavour was wrong.

Interesting use of S-04 yeast - I have just started 40lbs of blackcurrants with the same yeast. Normally I use a wine yeast but had this available as I use it on rum. Will see how it turns out.

[naeco]

Id distill as is,,apple has a lot of methanol so make good cuts..

How can I calculate the exact amount to remove ?

Interesting use of S-04 yeast - I have just started 40lbs of blackcurrants with the same yeast. Normally I use a wine yeast but had this available as I use it on rum.

I find that wine yeast doesn<t leave me with enough apple flavour but the S-04 if amazing with apple. The only down size is it's not as resistant to alccol and will stop fermenting wayyyy before a wine yeast.

I agree PP -- I've run a bad wine experience and produced good spirit but I wouldn't run a year old product with a pleasant flavor profile just for the heck of it.

I was under the impression that distiling a bad product will give you a bad spirit so that's why I was thinking of fermenting my aged product that I know is good ?

Anyone know the answer to my 2 questions ?

1 - Since the ABV is so low, should I add apple concentrate to the cider and re-ferment wit a stronger yeast(Lalvin 18) to get a higher ABV and if so, wouldn't that affect the quality(taste) of the eau-de-vie and make it less apply ?

2 - If I want something with lots of arome like a poire wiliam, do you recommend I add some frozen apple concentrate to the cider before fermentation or after fermentation ?

[Dnderhead]

if you want to hold the "nose" dont use concentrate,,much of the smell is removed when concentrating..
do a slow ferment,fast fermenting can "scrub" out the smell along with the co2..
when they say bad in -bad out,,they dont mean it has to be a aged wine it can be a good "green" wine.
a bad one whould be one that has spoiled or soured,lack of flavor etc..
it takes about 30lb/13kg of fruit to make one 750ml bottle.

" A Poire William* can be either a true pear brandy, distilled from pears and made in Alsace in France and in Switzerland, or a hybrid, made by infusing crushed pear with a grape-based spirit.
*a type of pear also called bartlit..

[Odin]

Naeco,

If your drink is 7% now and you like it and are sure you want to turn it into an apple brandy, I will try to answer your first question. Second one, I leave for somebodye else.

If you are content with the taste of your cider, I would advice you not to add anything to make for a higher ABV. The best result you may get doing it that way is a cider of the same quality you have right now, but at a higher ABV. Now, a lower ABV is good for creating a fine apple brandy. My experience is that it is difficult to get the apple flavour over when distilling. I tried some 12% cider and had to drink it at around 55% in order to be able to convince anyone that they were drinking APPLE brandy instead of something else. Then I tried a 10% cider and at 55% the apple flavour was okay. Good taste on your apple cider and low ABV? Perfect combination! By distilling you can concentrate your drink to - say - 42%. That is 6 times the 7% you started with and will have a sixfold taste concentration. In order to get the same on a 10% apple cider, you would need to drink it at 6 times 10% is 60%. Too much! Low ABV and a good tasting wine? That will make a perfect brandy. Dont temper with your wine, is my advice.

Pot distill everything twice. The first run should take you from 20 litres of 7% to around 7 litres of 19%. The second run should be slower and should give you the opportunity to make your cuts. Discard heads, collect middle run, discard half of the tails. You do want to get rid of the heads, because of methyl accumulation, you do need quiet a lot of tails in order to get taste over. I guess the end result of your second run should be something like 2.7 litres at around 50%. Let it rest in a glass bottle for 2 months with a little honey (teaspone) and sherry (teaspone) and a bit of wood (plain oak, 15 grams per litre), then filter it through a coffee filter, water it down tot 42% and you should be fine.

Odin

[naeco]

Naeco,

If your drink is 7% now and you like it and are sure you want to turn it into an apple brandy, I will try to answer your first question. Second one, I leave for somebodye else.

If you are content with the taste of your cider, I would advice you not to add anything to make for a higher ABV. The best result you may get doing it that way is a cider of the same quality you have right now, but at a higher ABV. Now, a lower ABV is good for creating a fine apple brandy. My experience is that it is difficult to get the apple flavour over when distilling. I tried some 12% cider and had to drink it at around 55% in order to be able to convince anyone that they were drinking APPLE brandy instead of something else. Then I tried a 10% cider and at 55% the apple flavour was okay. Good taste on your apple cider and low ABV? Perfect combination! By distilling you can concentrate your drink to - say - 42%. That is 6 times the 7% you started with and will have a sixfold taste concentration. In order to get the same on a 10% apple cider, you would need to drink it at 6 times 10% is 60%. Too much! Low ABV and a good tasting wine? That will make a perfect brandy. Dont temper with your wine, is my advice.

Pot distill everything twice. The first run should take you from 20 litres of 7% to around 7 litres of 19%. The second run should be slower and should give you the opportunity to make your cuts. Discard heads, collect middle run, discard half of the tails. You do want to get rid of the heads, because of methyl accumulation, you do need quiet a lot of tails in order to get taste over. I guess the end result of your second run should be something like 2.7 litres at around 50%. Let it rest in a glass bottle for 2 months with a little honey (teaspone) and sherry (teaspone) and a bit of wood (plain oak, 15 grams per litre), then filter it through a coffee filter, water it down tot 42% and you should be fine.

Odin

Wow, thank you Odin for the great answer ! My friend that ownes the pot still told me that he only distill once and check the ABV while distillation. Once it's at 50%, he says it's as good as it gets and stop the process ? You recomend I do it twice ... will it let more of the flavour come through ?

Thanks

[Odin]

No, once will not be good enough when using a pot still. The low ABV you start with is just not high enough to get you into the realms of both a good drink and a strong enough brandy. The first run is there to get a higher ABV, say 6.5 litres at 20 to 21%. You pretty much got over all the alcohol. Then the second run can start. The higher alcohol percentage makes it easier to make your cuts, BTW. Discard foreshots & heads, collect middle run and tails until around 45%. Then stop. Doing a single pot still run is possible (and some people like it), but not on a 7% wine. The highest you get out may not even reach 50% at all. Single distilling is more suited for a mash or wine of say 12% to 14%. Or with other than pot still equipment. I would advice you to do some more reading in the new to distilling forums. There, you can find a lot of info on how first and second destillations work, how to make cuts, etc. This may help you to get a better understanding of how this can enhance your efforts. Would be ashame, would it not, to somehow not get the maximum quality out of that great cider, right? On the forum, you will not find all the info on brandy making. Most is about moonshine & whiskey, but the general theory is the same. Good luck and I hope this great hobby of ours catches you like it did catch me. And if any questions remain, there is always somebody around to help you on homedistiller.org

Odin.

Edit: And yes the second distillation will give you better taste. One pot still run on a 7% wash and stopping at 50% will defenitely leave out any tails (and hearts as well), so you actuall throw away most of what you are after.

[Richard_of_Danbury]

I was under the impression that distiling a bad product will give you a bad spirit so that's why I was thinking of fermenting my aged product that I know is good ?

Not so, I made a wine from my own vineyard. It was a blend of many varietals and after a year still tasted awful. I decided rather than throw out over two dozen bottle of wine I would distill it. Wow! It was great. However, from all that wine I got less then 16 oz. of "grappa". But it was great!

Richard of Danbury

[Fourway]

I was under the impression that distiling a bad product will give you a bad spirit so that's why I was thinking of fermenting my aged product that I know is good ?

Distilling spoiled, soured or putrified product will get you bad spirit or no spirit...
Some of the most delicious spirit on this earth however is distilled from thick gloppy horrifying seething muck... stuff you wouldn't even consider drinking.
The bad in bad out maxim is largely a myth... it's a reasonable beginners rule of thumb to keep people from expecting to extract spirit from their elderberry wine that's gone to vinegar and fly eggs but past that it's actually a fairly poor instruction.
In the case of apples, it is extremely difficult to get apple flavor from hard cider, the most exquisite cider lovingly distilled gives you perfectly passible vodka with maybe the faintest hint of the ghost of the distant memory of apples... if you have a terrific palate or a willing imagination (often easy to confuse the two).
Consistently getting dry spirit that is actually redolent of apple starts with making a slurry of crushed or frozen and then thawed apples and fermenting the slurry... distilling at very low abv and remixing solids back into the low wines for second run. Starting out with a mix of apples that includes inedibly bitter, sour and woody varieties like the ones you'd find in an old abandoned orchard that's gone to seed doesn't hurt either.
The methanol is actually in the fresh apples to start, it's not a byproduct of fermentation... one of the tricky things about apple flavor is that methanol is part of what makes apples taste like apples... along with a number of other low boiling point volatiles that you tend to lose with the deep heads cut you need to take to lose the methanol... so in order to make up for this big cocktail of stuff that boils off at 165-170 and actually would be part of recognizable apple flavor (and blinding hangovers) you optimally want to start with stuff that has such high concentrations of the other components of apple flavor that they are unpalatable as eating apples.
Obviously not everyone lives somewhere with 100 year abandoned orchards that have become forests of inedible apples... a reasonable substitute is to use a wide variety of eating apples with an eye toward apples with sharper and deeper flavor (more granny smith, fewer delicious) and see if you can scrounge up a big pile of crab apples to mix in.

[naeco]

Distilling spoiled, soured or putrified product will get you bad spirit or no spirit...
Some of the most delicious spirit on this earth however is distilled from thick gloppy horrifying seething muck... stuff you wouldn't even consider drinking.
The bad in bad out maxim is largely a myth... it's a reasonable beginners rule of thumb to keep people from expecting to extract spirit from their elderberry wine that's gone to vinegar and fly eggs but past that it's actually a fairly poor instruction.
In the case of apples, it is extremely difficult to get apple flavor from hard cider, the most exquisite cider lovingly distilled gives you perfectly passible vodka with maybe the faintest hint of the ghost of the distant memory of apples... if you have a terrific palate or a willing imagination (often easy to confuse the two).
Consistently getting dry spirit that is actually redolent of apple starts with making a slurry of crushed or frozen and then thawed apples and fermenting the slurry... distilling at very low abv and remixing solids back into the low wines for second run. Starting out with a mix of apples that includes inedibly bitter, sour and woody varieties like the ones you'd find in an old abandoned orchard that's gone to seed doesn't hurt either.
The methanol is actually in the fresh apples to start, it's not a byproduct of fermentation... one of the tricky things about apple flavor is that methanol is part of what makes apples taste like apples... along with a number of other low boiling point volatiles that you tend to lose with the deep heads cut you need to take to lose the methanol... so in order to make up for this big cocktail of stuff that boils off at 165-170 and actually would be part of recognizable apple flavor (and blinding hangovers) you optimally want to start with stuff that has such high concentrations of the other components of apple flavor that they are unpalatable as eating apples.
Obviously not everyone lives somewhere with 100 year abandoned orchards that have become forests of inedible apples... a reasonable substitute is to use a wide variety of eating apples with an eye toward apples with sharper and deeper flavor (more granny smith, fewer delicious) and see if you can scrounge up a big pile of crab apples to mix in.

Thank you Fourway for the information. Do you think adding a couple can of apple concentrate to the cider before fermentation could help bring the apple flavor over into the spirit ? If not, can I add some in the finished product until I'm satisfied with the taste ?

How do the makers of poire wiliam bring so much fruit over after distillation ?

Thanks

[Fourway]

Thank you Fourway for the information. Do you think adding a couple can of apple concentrate to the cider before fermentation could help bring the apple flavor over into the spirit ? If not, can I add some in the finished product until I'm satisfied with the taste ?

I think that if you have good tasting aged cider you will be crushingly disappointed if you distill it.
You will make your tasty cider into novice quality neutral white spirit at best and undrinkable lighter fluid at worst.
If you want to make apple spirit that tastes like something ferment whole smashed up apples and put the fermented muck in the still unstrained.
Do not start with cider.

How do the makers of poire wiliam bring so much fruit over after distillation ?

Pear flavor persists much better than apple.
Also... I'm pretty sure they dont use pear cider.

[naeco]

Thank you Fourway for the information. Do you think adding a couple can of apple concentrate to the cider before fermentation could help bring the apple flavor over into the spirit ? If not, can I add some in the finished product until I'm satisfied with the taste ?

I think that if you have good tasting aged cider you will be crushingly disappointed if you distill it.
You will make your tasty cider into novice quality neutral white spirit at best and undrinkable lighter fluid at worst.
If you want to make apple spirit that tastes like something ferment whole smashed up apples and put the fermented muck in the still unstrained.
Do not start with cider.

How do the makers of poire wiliam bring so much fruit over after distillation ?

Pear flavor persists much better than apple.
Also... I'm pretty sure they dont use pear cider.

I have lots of cider so I don't mind wasting some on this experiment. I think I'll just add the apple concentrate to the spirit until I like the taste ... can doing such a thing make the spirit go bad since apple concentrate can rot or will the high level of alcohol protect the concentrate from going bad ?

Or, I could age the new spirit in crushed apple and let it age for a couple month and filter it before bottling ?

[Dnderhead]

it time for you to do some experiments.but must say much of the brandy in US is grape brandy flavored after.

[The Baker]

'How do the makers of poire wiliam bring so much fruit over after distillation ?'

It willl be partly the William pears. I went to a meeting addressed by the local pear distillery
(they send the concentrated spirit to France for blending and bottling) and they said they will
only use William (aka Bartlett, I think) pears because the flavour is so good.

[Fourway]

I use sekel pears (the little green ones) and they carry flavor very well in double run spirit.

[The Baker]

I use sekel pears (the little green ones) and they carry flavor very well in double run spirit.

Yeah, they are possiby a variety not grown around here......
Anyway I have not heard of them; although I am not involved in fruitgrowing...