hi

[hren]

Hi all. First post. Here's how I got here:

A while ago (2 or three years) my wife kept talking about making absinth. She talked about it enough that I looked into what it would take and, for her birthday, got her a still - a 4 gallon milk-can with a column from Mile Hi.

She never made any absinth.

A few months ago, I suddenly remembered that we have it lying around, and figured I'd give it a go. I really like my alcohol (whisk(e)y, bourbon, cognac, mezcal, tequila, pretty much anything distilled), so I figured I'd try making some. Cleaned the still just to be sure, water, vinegar, sac run, though it looks like the Mile Hi guys know what they are doing - never got any off tastes or smells out of it.

Then ran a bunch of cheap wine through it a few times just to get the hang of it. Full reflux mode first, packed the column with copper and ceramic ring-thingies, got some tasteless ethanol at just over 180 proof. Decided that wasn't my thing. De-tuned it, ran some more wine, and got a pretty tasty moonshine at 135 proof or so. The taste reminded me of childhood. I grew up in Eastern Europe and everyone made moonshine back in the day. It was the currency of choice if you wanted to get anything done.

Then I noticed that a friend of mine has a nice apple tree with some way-past-their-prime apples still on it. It was time to get real. Picked a bunch of apples, ran them through a juicer (I have a nice juicer I can put a lot of fruit through fast), added some champagne yeast and a couple of pounds of sugar for good measure, threw all of it, juice, rinds, and all, into a plastic fermenter, and waited. and waited. and waited. Almost a month later I got a great tasting cider. Distilled it in a single run, wound up with something like a half a gallon of 130 proof after blending. Threw in one of those oak spirals (french, heavy toast) and another month later got a surprisingly smooth apple brandy (I know, I know, I added some sugar). A little bit too much of a bite maybe, but awesome taste and smell after cutting to 90 proof. Looked up what the French do (I figure it's close enough to a Calvados) and mixed in a bit of local fildflower honey to take the bite off, but not enough to make it taste sweet. Tastes great if you ask me, and a bunch of my spoiled-with-expensive-booze friends. I even did an honest experiment and didn't tell 'em that I made it when I asked what they thought.

Next, I went and got a bunch of Bosch pears from the corner store. Also a bit past their prime, which I figured is a good thing. Loaded up two fermenters, added the same champagne yeast (red star) wrapped 'em up in blankets. They just finished bubbling a couple of nights ago. Will run 'em this weekend and see what I get. I think the cider is a whole lot weaker than what I got from the apples, but it's totally dry and tastes good. Will know more soon.

Last night I set up my first all-grain, using the Carolina Bourbon recipe for inspiration and adding what I think is an Eastern-European twist on it by using a couple of pounds of buckwheat (heavily pan-seared) instead of the rye. It's bubbling away like crazy as we speak.

Aging the cheap-wine-brandy on a bunch of different types of oak to see what I do and don't like. French, American White, sherry-soaked, charred, and so on. Looks and tastes and smells different, but too early to really tell.

Well, here I am. Still very new to all of this, but having a good run of luck so far. Trying not to get too cocky - I'm sure I'll have a spectacular failure or five before I really get the hang of it.

Wow, that was long.

[dstaines]

Pear brandy is my second favorite kind of brandy. I am very experienced in drinking it. Please send me your whole batch for quality control testing, I'll let you know what you did wrong.

[hren]

What's your address?

Oh, forgot to mention. A few days in, the pears started stinking up my house with the smell of rotten eggs. I did a bunch of panicked reading and tossed in some tomato paste. The rotten-egg smell went away and the awesome pear-cider smell returned pretty quickly.

[S-Cackalacky]

Welcome to the forums. Sounds like you're on the right track. If you haven't already, read the links in my signature. You might also want to take a look at the recipes in the "Tried and True Recipes" and "Recipe Development" sections. The recipes can give some good insight into the overall process of making good spirits.

Good luck to you and stay safe.

[hren]

Thanks! Reading all that and more was the first thing I did.
I'm pretty sure I'm not doing anything dangerous.
Famous last words, I know.

[dstaines]

I'll officially welcome you too Hren, instead of just being a dick. So Welcome! I understand and share your interest in "Pretty much anything distilled". You will find yourself in good company here

Glad you were able to get your H2S issue onder control. I've had that problem before and treating it early is important or it can become harder to get rid of. Of course an ounce of prevention trumps a pound of cure, so I always add nutrients to my fruit mashes at the very start. Did you juice those apples and pears or mash them to a pulp?

I am currently running a milk can pot still very similar to yours, from the same source. It's a good unit for the money, but it also has some problems. I don't share your general confidence that the Mile Hi guys know what they're doing. In particular, mine came with a drilled rubber bung to stop up the top of the stainless steel column, with a thermometer stuck in the hole. Having that thermometer was a helpful visual while I was getting used to how the still performs, but that rubber has got to go. Similarly, the 7 1/2" tri-clover lid has a silicone gasket, and the 2" tri-clover column fitting has a black EPDM gasket. None of these materials are safe for distilling beverage alcohol, and Mile-hi should know better. "Officially" these stills are marketed to fuel producers, and synthetics are not an issue if you won't be drinking any of it (yeah right).

After learning about the hazards of synthetics here, I fixed mine by tossing the large silicone gasket and filling the void where it had been with a paste of flour and water. The rubber bung I kept, but I wrapped the whole deal in many layers of PTFE thread sealer tape. I did the same thing with the 2" EPDM gasket, but I could have used flour paste on that too or just ordered a PTFE tri-clover gasket.

[hren]

Thanks for the advice. It's much appreciated. I swapped out the top rubber plug for a wooden one I made, but I didn't think of the gaskets. Guess I was doing something wrong after all. Who would have thought I'll just use flour paste next time around.

The corn/buckwheat combo is fermenting like crazy. The bubbler's basically going non-stop, a few times a second. Way the hell faster than what I did with the fruit. Don't know if it's a good thing, but I guess the yeast's happy.

For the pears and the apples, I ran them through my juicer. Didn't bother taking out the pits - whatever cyanide's in there would have dissipated when I boiled the whole thing to disinfect before pitching in the yeast. I then threw the pulp back in and added water (and sugar with the apples, but not the pears). Figured having the pulp in there will give me a stronger taste. I've read up a bunch on fruit brandies and found a lot of conflicting info. How do you make yours?

Btw, what's your 1st favorite brandy?

[dstaines]

I have a juicer too but it has way too small of an opening to do any large amount of fruit. In my case I'm generally working with between 18 and 30 lbs. For pears, I ran them through my crank driven corer/slicer, just to break it down into pieces. Then I froze everything in vacuum bags (cores too). That helped the fruit to be softer and let me time the start of my ferment to when I had empty fermenters available. I make beer too, and don't have a lot of storage space for unlimited carboys and buckets. Once thawed again I pureed it with a stick blender, adjusted pH added nutrients, and pitched the cider yeast. Same technique for apples, though I actually just drank the cider.

You did good to include the whole pulp, I will always do it that way. The skin carries a huge amount of the flavor, and you miss that if you just juice it. The trade off is that, especially for pears and apples, the skins contain a lot of pectin which will ferment into methanol. Pears and apples tend to be pretty harsh when the spirit is young and have nasty heads, this is why.

My favorite brandy is Apricot! When done right it's like a sip of a summer day walking through an orchard. I ferment those and other stone fruit off of the pits, they are supposed to have a lot more cyanide than apples and pears.

[S-Cackalacky]

I've only done a couple of apple brandy runs and both used store bought juice. There's a really good apple brandy thread over in the "Recipe Development" section.

[dstaines]

I gotta say, there is no reason NOT to use store bought juice. It's possible to get a stronger fruit flavor carried over with fruit fermented on the pulp and a single pot run, but dealing with the fruit is a PITA. Especially when you've got 30lbs of it taking up literally every cubic inch of your freezer or fermenter space. I'm lucky to have a friend who grows apricots and peaches, so I get a runs worth of culls for free once a year. If I had to buy them at grocery store prices I would never bother.

[hren]

Peaches. Mmmmm. Never tried a peach brandy, but will absolutely make some this summer. Mind sharing your recipe? Do you age it or drink it white?

[dstaines]

I'm going to answer your question with a quote from one of my favorite craft distillers when the Washington post asked him the same question

There really is no recipe. The recipe is: Peaches.
-- Lance Winters, St. George Spirits

[dstaines]

LOL right back to being a dick.

My process in more depth:

I halve at least 20 lbs of peaches or any stone fruit and discard the stones, freeze and thaw them once, puree them finely in a food grade bucket, adjust the pH to about 3.2, add a tsp of fermaid K yeast nutrient, add about a tbs of pectic enzyme, and sprinkle EC-1118 right on top. I periodically knock down the cap of pulp with a sanitized SS spoon to keep it wet with alcohol. When the cap stops rising after 3-7 days I rack the cleared wine into a sanitized carboy. Sometimes I squeeze the liquid out of the pulp that's left, sometimes I'm too lazy. When the gravity drops below 1.000 I run 2.25 gallons it once very slowly through my 3 gallon pot still. Collected in small jars until pretty deep in the tails, then take it all the way down to about 20%. I make the cuts as tight as I can bear to, and then add everything that's left over to the rest of the wine and run that through my pot once, very slow, tight tight cuts. The heart from the first run I keep white. The heart from the 2nd run I sometimes add a couple of lightly toasted peach wood pieces to, for about a month the take it out.

[hren]

Holy shit, the all-grain is goin' at it. Just had to unwrap the blankets - it was beginning to overheat. Crazy.

[dstaines]

yeah, it will do that.

I toured a microdistillery near me and the master distiller showed me the coiled pipe heat exchanger inside the fermenter. I assumed it was for heating the mash up when he cooked it, but it was strictly for cooling the mash down as the yeast worked off the sugar. Without it, in a fermenter that size (500 gal+) the yeast would literally cook themselves to death.

[S-Cackalacky]

I believe apple brandy from store bought juice is the easiest thing I ever made. I can only guess that making apple brandy from "apples" would be one of the hardest things to make.

[dstaines]

Cackalack I should send you a bottle of my apricot this summer. It will make you start looking at your backyard all funny, trying to plan your new orchard in your head. And I'm not bragging here, the trees do all the fucking work

[hren]

I have friends with lots of apple, peach, and plum trees. Just gotta wait till summer's here. I think I'll be doing grains till then.

[S-Cackalacky]

Got apple orchards all around me and was hoping to get geared up to take advantage of it before next harvest in the fall. Already got a line on a small orchard that may provide free fruit. I would need to pick it and process it. Apparently the owner picks what he needs for his own use and lets the remainder fall to the ground. The stuff I made from juice only served to get me hooked on the stuff.

Apricots are one of my favorite fruits as long as they're tree ripened. I can only imagine the goodness of a brandy make from them.

[MichiganCornhusker]

Last night I set up my first all-grain, using the Carolina Bourbon recipe for inspiration and adding what I think is an Eastern-European twist on it by using a couple of pounds of buckwheat (heavily pan-seared) instead of the rye.

Welcome! Carolina Bourbon is a great recipe for inspiration, I think it was my first. Such a great recipe thread, so much great information, such a great cast of characters.
Curious about the pan-seared buckwheat. Is that something that is done for a flavor that carries over to the spirit? How would you describe it?
You might want to double back around sometime and make some absinth, some world class absinthians right here on the forums.

[hren]

Welcome! Carolina Bourbon is a great recipe for inspiration, I think it was my first. Such a great recipe thread, so much great information, such a great cast of characters.
Curious about the pan-seared buckwheat. Is that something that is done for a flavor that carries over to the spirit? How would you describe it?
You might want to double back around sometime and make some absinth, some world class absinthians right here on the forums.

Thank you! Buckwheat has this fragrant, almost floral smell to it. Not sure how to best describe it. I've never tried distilling it personally. I'll run the corn/buckwheat beer in a few days - fermentation is noticeably slowing down - and I'll let you know what comes out. The smell from the fermenter is really nice.

Runnin' the pear cider as we speak, just getting into the tails. Bigger yield than I thought - looks like it fermented to something like 6 or 7 percent. Didn't think there was gonna be so much sugar in the pears.

[thecroweater]

try aging some calvados old old dry apple tree wood if you can get some. You will be very pleasantly surprised how the fruit wood affects the flavour. I found the oak is not the best suited for this particular spirit

[hren]

try aging some calvados old old dry apple tree wood if you can get some. You will be very pleasantly surprised how the fruit wood affects the flavour. I found the oak is not the best suited for this particular spirit

Will do. Won't be hard to get my hands on some apple. Thanks!