Sherry or Brandy . advice ?

[Scurrillous]

I was given a case of 30 year old homemade plum wine. It didn't taste too great so I decided to make some brandy. I could not tell the abv but I assumed it was probably above 10%. I ran 10 bottles (7.5 litres) on a fast run and was surprised at how little alcohol I ended up with. The corks were dry and they broke in half under the corkscrew but I filled the pot anyways. I am guessing that after thirty years of improperly stored bottles that a lot of the alcohol evaporated.
I have an SG hydrometer and a spirit one but neither helped me figure out the abv on the wine.
Now I have seven 250ml (1 cup) jars varying in strength from 96 proof to 15 .
Jar 1 - 96
Jar 2 - 78
Jar 3 - 68
Jar 4 - 54
Jar 5 - 36
Jar 6 - 20 proof and smelled bad.
Jar 7 - 15

If I just add them all to a pot I end up with a 26% alcohol . Do I call it sherry ?
Sherry is supposed to weigh in at 15% to 20% abv so that is not going to work.

If I discard the last two jars and assemble Jars 1 to 5 I would end up with 33% abv and cutting that in half with distilled water would give me 16.5% sherry.

All this math is driving me crazy. Should I just save everything and add it to a Scotch mash for an interesting flavour note?
Should I add a thumper to my rig and bubble my grain mash through a thumper filled with 26% plum wine extract?
I don't want to throw it away.
My other choice is doing another run with the full seven jars and trying to end up with one 26er of decent brandy.\

The product I have collected smells good and I don't want to waste it. What would you do with it ?

[rgarry]

Air them out, taste them and then decide. Don't get hung up on a name (sherry vs brandy).

[stillin]

+1 rgarry

Let em air out 24-48 hrs. If it still don't taste good, put a top on em and let it sit a while and age. I let a gallon a sweetfeed sit for 6 months and was amazed at the difference it made but I'm not a brandy man either so someone brandy and blending exp. might could chime in here. Lettin booze sit for 6 months doesn't happen very often around my house but I can say I did it once!

[beelah]

Who keeps plum wine for 30 years? sure you weren't distilling vinegar? I tried once to distill some old and oxidized wine... it tasted bad and oxidized before I ran it and it tasted just as bad afterwards. How does it taste by the way...If it don't taste too good, just save it for a future cleaning run.

[Scurrillous]

Good advice. I tasted Jar #2 today and the plum flavour was strong in it. I guess I could call it slivovitz.

I know it wasn't vinegar but it sure was weak. The previous owner of the wine died several years ago and I think it sat upright in the bottles for a long time.

It might be a waste of time but I think I will just run all 7 jars through one more time which should give me a 26er of liquor that I can let sit for a year.

[dakotasnake]

i would run the entire case of wine in a pot still nice and slow, air out and make proper cuts, age it on cherry wood or white oak let it set for at least a few months. you may be surprised how it turns out.

[Scurrillous]

I tried that dakota. It ended up really weak. That's why I am considering what to do next.
I do think I will run it through again, although it's such a small amount I am worried about scorching the bottom of the boiler.

[Angel_Kefka]

Many friuts don't have the sugar content to reach 10% on their own. Not sure about plums, but if it was just fermented juice with no sugar added then I wouldn't be suprised if it was only 6-7%, which would lead to a low abv on the output, especially if you think some alcohol evaporated and it was even weaker than that.

[Dnderhead]

" Not sure about plums" about 9% sugar.
so say a 5 gallon weights 40lb* x .09=3.6 lb in 5 gal=5.1%
*just guessing..

[Scurrillous]

Thanks for the tips. I didn't realize something so low in alcohol could be a wine.
So yes; it probably started out weak and got even weaker !

That appears to be a calculator for specific gravity without using the hydrometer. Am I right ?
If I weigh 5 gals of mash and it weighs 3.6lbs then it is 9% potential alcohol or did I get that wrong ?

[Dnderhead]

" I didn't realize something so low in alcohol could be a wine"
any fermented fruit .it would not matter if it was 2%.
but i thank below 1% is not considered alcoholic?
most fruit wine makers add sugar or better white grape concentrate.
white grape adds a "fruity" flavor with out any real flavor of its own.
most like to have it at 10% or more do to it keeps better.
to be brandy you cant use sugar so its either has grape juice added to the ferment or grape juice is fermented/distilled and flavored with fruit .(all them different colored bottles in US)

[frozenthunderbolt]

although it's such a small amount I am worried about scorching the bottom of the boiler.

Add water to it.

[Scurrillous]

Add water to it.

I had considered that but I wasn't sure if I did if I could still pull a decent percentage from it. Could I ? How would that work ?
It sort of feels like one step forward, one step back.
If I add water I guess I would only add enough to... (sorry, I just don't know enough) but maybe I should figure out enough to cover the bottom of the pot to a depth of 1 inch ? The pot is 12 inches in diameter..... so . 300 ml or 10oz ?
Hmm. Now that I did the math it does make some sense to me. I would only be adding a little more than 1 extra 250ml jar.

My math skills need honing,. It's been a while. But I think I got that one right.

On a happy note; apparently there are two other boxes available to me.
One contains a full twelve bottles and I can get it in a day or two and the other has eleven bottles and it might take a week or two to get it to me. They are all from the same person. I found out that she is an elderly woman who had forgotten them in her storage and just gave them to a friend of the family. They were all in liquor store boxes and probably stored vertically.
Based on the very limited info I have; I am guessing they were not made by adding sugar which explains the low ABV. (Thanks Dnderhead). Add to that the degraded corks and I understand why I am not getting a lot out of it.
I just took a good deep sniff of my number two jar and it smells really good. I think this is going to work out fine. I will wait on the next two boxes and add the distilled to a stripping run. Then run it one more time and I think I may have something worth saving.

[Dnderhead]

how about making something rather high proof and distilling along with it?
dont know what goes along with plumbs.but pick something compatible.

[Scurrillous]

Yuppers. That sounds like a good idea.
I have seen lots and lots of info here and elswhere on the concentrated grape juice wines.
I have never done a wine ferment so it will be fun and interesting. I think the flavour mix from plums and concord grapes would be plum good.
Thanks for the suggestion. My plastic buckets are empty now so maybe I will give it a go today. I hope I can find some on sale. It's pretty pricey for the Welches and yet most seem to recommend it over the no-name stuff.

[Scurrillous]

It's been almost exactly a month since I decided to follow Dnderhead's advice.
The very next day I bought 15 cans of Welches frozen concentrate.
After that, things pretty much went downhill.

Note to other winemaking newbies: a couple of days is all that is needed to let the must (wine mash) aerate. After it is well started, put the damn airlock on !
I didn't, so it took almost a month to ferment and was still very sweet by the time I gave up waiting and ran it.

I believe the ABV was 15% and I had about 15 litres in the pot...so not too too bad and worth doing. There seemed to be two schools of thought here concerning whether to do a stripping run or not. I elected not to.
I ended up with a little over 2 litres at 55% .

The unfortunate thing for me was that I completely forgot to add the plum brandy from the previous run. So it's still sitting and waiting for something to happen to it. Kind of defeated the whole purpose of making the Welches in the first place.

Now comes the good part... ( I think ) ...
I had bunch of (whadyacallit) stuff left in the boiler that smelled and tasted really sweet and after spending 35 bucks on the grape juice I did not want to let it go to waste. I somehow doubted that I could just pitch some yeast into it and start the process again although maybe I could have. I also thought the brandy I had just made was a little light in the flavour dept and remembered people recommending raisins. I don't think Welches has too much in the way of tannin flavouring. I mentioned this to my partner who is the only one who can definitively say where anything resides in our kitchen and she pulled out a forgotten box of Raisin Bran® !
We dumped it in and added the trusty EC-1118.
Two days later I have a pretty full carboy of this crazy brown mixture with a purple scum on top that just refuses to stop bubbling and smells more and more potent by the minute.

I don't know what to call it. I am thinking that the primary flavour will be grape but I am curious how much of the bran will come through. And what do I call it when it's done ? Wine whisky ? Bran Brandy ? Brisky ? Whandy ? I am actually excited to see how it turns out.
Whisky is often aged in sherry casks. Brandy is often aged in whiskey casks.
Am I onto something here ?

[Black Eye]

Hopefully you can call it delicious and enjoy it.

[redmud]

I almost always taste my mash to check for sweetness, I am not sure I would with the way that one looks

[Scurrillous]

Still bubbling away every 15 seconds or so. It just won't quit. I am a little afraid to taste it for sure but I think I will be pleasantly surprised. Perhaps later today I will do SG and taste at the same time. I'll need to rerack it first because I don't have a long enough tube to make it past the crusty top.
Enzymatic browning is worrying me now a little. I looked it up after thinking about the brownness of this.

Ok. I just racked it.
It tastes like orange juice to me.
It tastes like pound cake to my partner. go figger. At least it was palatable.
The SG showed another 5% available so i decided to run some of my barley mash and just let it sit all nicely degunked. If it starts up again I will be happy and if not I will decide whether to re-yeast it or just run it for what I can get.

[NZChris]

As the plum flavor is strong, you might be able to blend it with neutral before ageing it.

Do a run of plum schnapps to blend with it.

[Scurrillous]

I gave up on waiting and ran it.
Volume wise it was not a spectacular result but I ended up with one bottle of very nice liquor after http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... lit=nuking.

All the wine and raisin flavours are there.
Plums too.
Not bad for backset .