My brother-in-law has a serious raspberry problem in his back yard. We got to talking about it last year, and being that he loves Brandy and I love homebrew, decided that we should probobly turn them into Brandy. Step 1, make wine (really familiar with that part, no issues there), Step 2, distill....quite a bit more involved. That lead me here, after 3 months of lurking/reading I decided I knew enough to give it a go.
Fast forward through a month of fermenting/racking - I decided to use the wine for my my first "real" run with my shiny new SS pot still (I did a cleaning and sacraficial run earlier). I'm very suprised how well it came out - VERY drinkable, and the middle of the hearts & tails definitely have a raspberry flavor. I tossed about the first 500 ml (yep, I know that's a bit deeper into the heads than I really had to go, but it smelled awful) of both 5 gallon batches in foreshots and kept the rest down to 40 proof (about the time it started running real slow and tasting real funky).
Really impresed how well it came out....after a day on oak chips it's already got some nice color, and a (OK, several) test determined that it sips just fine too. Yep, I'm hooked....
Raspberry Brandy
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