Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

[cranky]

If we ain't busy, we ain't living.

I guess that's true but it would be nice to be lazy and do nothing sometime.

[cranky]

Today I made my way back into the plum thicket. I was a week or two late on that one I picked about 40 plums of at least 5 distinct varieties bit most were already on the ground or the trees were too tall to reach any plums even with my extendable picker. The wife has laid claim to the plums and already eaten at least half of them. She is enjoying sampling the different varieties and letting her have then encourages her to let me pick more apples and pears. . I'm actually thinking about sneaking in there this winter and digging up some of the saplings but don't really plan on going back any time soon. While I was there I took a little walk down the path that used to be a road between the farms that were once there and I found these

There is a gigantic rose bush that is easy to get to and completely loaded with rose hips. Some of them are even ripe right now. Anybody ever do anything with rose hips? I'm thinking it might be interesting to add rose hips to a gin or macerate and redistill just the hips or maybe the rose hips and the fuchsia berries.

I also made the mistake of doing the math on the amount of blackberries required to make a bottle of brandy. About 52 pounds per bottle Thats a lot of blackberries but it is a labor of love

[raketemensch]

I also made the mistake of doing the math on the amount of blackberries required to make a bottle of brandy. About 52 pounds per bottle Thats a lot of blackberries but it is a labor of love

They seem pretty dense to me, how many pounds does a bucket of them weigh? I mean, that's still a boatload of blackberries, but maybe it isn't as bad as it sounds?

Booze trivia -- in Connecticut (mostly Polish) people call blackberry brandy "Polish." Pronounced like the nationality.

[cranky]

I also made the mistake of doing the math on the amount of blackberries required to make a bottle of brandy. About 52 pounds per bottle Thats a lot of blackberries but it is a labor of love

They seem pretty dense to me, how many pounds does a bucket of them weigh? I mean, that's still a boatload of blackberries, but maybe it isn't as bad as it sounds?

Booze trivia -- in Connecticut (mostly Polish) people call blackberry brandy "Polish." Pronounced like the nationality.

I worked that out the other night in the Home Distillers anonymous thread ( http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... &start=270 ) I never actually weighed a gallon of blackberries but got the weight off the internet but think it is pretty close to that if not more. Here is a cleaned up version of how I arrived at that figure.

I've been getting 1qt of juice per gallon of berries. Approximately 4.5lbs of berries to a gallon, so 4.5 pounds to a Qt of juice, that's 18 lbs of berries per gallon of juice. 180LBS of berries to 10 gallons of juice, 6.5% potential alcohol so theoretically there is .65gallons of alcohol in 10 gallons of juice. Of course at best maybe 65% of that goes into Eau de Vie but then that's cut to 40% so that brings it up to around .65 gallons of final product. That's 2460ml of final product from 10 gallons of juice. 2460ml is 3.5 bottles of Eau de vie from 10 gallons. 180/3.5 = 51.42lbs per bottle.

[raketemensch]

Ok, so if you're getting 4.5 pounds/gallon, and you're using 5 gallon buckets, you only need a little over 2 buckets.

Still a lot of berries, but nothing like I was imagining.

[cranky]

Ok, so if you're getting 4.5 pounds/gallon, and you're using 5 gallon buckets, you only need a little over 2 buckets.

Still a lot of berries, but nothing like I was imagining.

Yes but the way I juice that is 10 gallons of berries to a single bottle of brandy. Not that hard to pick 10 gallons of berries really but it really is a lot of berries to a bottle.

[FtW]

I also made the mistake of doing the math on the amount of blackberries required to make a bottle of brandy. About 52 pounds per bottle Thats a lot of blackberries but it is a labor of love

They seem pretty dense to me, how many pounds does a bucket of them weigh? I mean, that's still a boatload of blackberries, but maybe it isn't as bad as it sounds?

Booze trivia -- in Connecticut (mostly Polish) people call blackberry brandy "Polish." Pronounced like the nationality.

I worked that out the other night in the Home Distillers anonymous thread ( http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... &start=270 ) I never actually weighed a gallon of blackberries but got the weight off the internet but think it is pretty close to that if not more. Here is a cleaned up version of how I arrived at that figure.

I've been getting 1qt of juice per gallon of berries. Approximately 4.5lbs of berries to a gallon, so 4.5 pounds to a Qt of juice, that's 18 lbs of berries per gallon of juice. 180LBS of berries to 10 gallons of juice, 6.5% potential alcohol so theoretically there is .65gallons of alcohol in 10 gallons of juice. Of course at best maybe 65% of that goes into Eau de Vie but then that's cut to 40% so that brings it up to around .65 gallons of final product. That's 2460ml of final product from 10 gallons of juice. 2460ml is 3.5 bottles of Eau de vie from 10 gallons. 180/3.5 = 51.42lbs per bottle.

180 lbs of blackberries are what I ended up with last year, giving me 2 liters after cuts, there were quite a few not completely ripened yet though. Time is the enemy this year, only have about 100 lbs so far.

I did get almost 200 lbs of pears off the tree this year, apples still aren't quite ready but think I should get at them soon, the bears are trying to beat me to them...

[Jimbo]

..the bears are trying to beat me to them...

The bears must hate our hobby. They prolly have lobbyists in congress fighting us.

[cranky]

Fortunately I don't have bears but the racoons will climb the trees to eat my evergreen blackberries. My biggest problem is homeless people deciding the trees I pick are good places to set up camp.

[bearriver]

If I don't see bear scat next to a blackberry bush then I figure there must be something wrong with the berries. There are plenty of bears here despite being heavily populated. They only pluck the bottom couple feet and stay on the perimeter of a bush. Not much competition if you ask me.

[cranky]

This afternoon I stopped by one of the parks I pick apples at to check the progress of the trees there. One of the trees that has never really produced much before decided to produce so many this year it is actually breaking it's branches. I stood in one place and picked for about 5 minutes and picked at least 2 buckets of apples without moving more than 2 steps. Like the rest of the apples this year they are small but with them being so easy to pick it really doesn't matter. I think I'm going to have to forgo my usual slow, tedious method of processing and just throw them whole into the food processor just to keep up with the shear number of them.

[cranky]

I stopped by the park again yesterday and picked another, 400 apples which is about 2 buckets full. Here is a picture of the tree.

this picture was taken after I had already picked 600 apples from those same branches, and doesn't show the other side of the tree which is quite loaded as well. If I had a better method of grinding them I would pick even more but I can only process them so fast so try not to pick more than I can do in a week. There is also what appears to be a red delicious ready to pick but it is kind of difficult to get to because of the blackberries so I don't know how many of those I can get but they are actually what we used to think of as normal size apples.

Funny thing about that, we now think an apple weighing a pound or more as a normal apple instead of a baseball sized one. I can't even eat all of one of those giant flavorless things. Sometimes I eat one or two of these little apples which have a much more concentrated flavor. I have a Hazen apple I bought last year and it produced rather large "dessert" apples this year and I am actually disappointed in the flavor because it is too mild.

[Jimbo]

Cranky, there's another method thats really fast, you can pick several bushels in minutes. Bring a rake and rake away all the fallen junk. Then climb the tree and shake the hell out of the branches. Bring lots of boxes, youll go home with many hundreds of lbs off 1 tree.

[cranky]

I There's maybe 1 tree I can use that method with Jimbo, everything else including the one I took the picture of are surrounded by blackberries so the picking pole is the only way I can get most of them. The one I took a picture of is only about 8 ft tall. I can actually grab the top branches and pull them down to pick so I can easily get all of those. Everything else in that thicket is tall including one that was a well established tree in a 1936 picture. I cut my way back through there last year but the blackberries grow back so fast you can't even tell anybody has ever been there. The 1936 tree is confusing me this year. The last 4 years it was a very late season tree not dropping any until late October and still producing until the first freeze in December but this year I noticed it has begun dropping so I picked some from it that are easy to reach and they are ripe and way sweeter than previous year while also being at least as large as every other year if not larger and very tasty too.

[raketemensch]

The whole idea of the inaccessible tree in the back of the garden always has me picturing you living in a children's book. I crack up every time you mention it. It's like your Moby Dick.

[cranky]

The whole idea of the inaccessible tree in the back of the garden always has me picturing you living in a children's book. I crack up every time you mention it. It's like your Moby Dick.

I took a picture today to show you guys exactly what I'm talking about.
THAR SHE BLOWS!!!

[cranky]

Today I also pressed 2 buckets worth of apples ground into pulp (6 gallons of pulp). This is what the pulp looks like after a normal heavy first pressing.

Next I will freeze it then when I have 3 of them I will thaw and repress

[cranky]

I stopped at the park and picked 2 buckets of apples 4 days off of 2 trees. 8 buckets which came to 1500 apples total (damn you Sesame Street). One tree was running 200 to a bucket and another 150. I took the time to process one bucket full if them for the wife to make apple butter out of and damn is that some seriously apple flavored apple butter, good stuff . Thanks to my slow tedious method of processing I got 2 buckets pressed and one more resting after grinding. Only 4 more buckets to go, damn I need a proper apple grinder, I think me and Santa are going to have a little heart to heart talk this year about that. I just took the 2 frozen bags of spent pulp, that I posted pictures of the other day, out of the freezer. When it thaws and is re-pressed I hope to get another picture up to show you the final pulp and maybe give some measurements of how much juice came out after freezing plus the final weight of the pulp.

[cranky]

Today I did the second pressing of the 2 buckets of apples that I took pictures of the other day. Here is the picture of what the final pressed pulp looks like.

I got just short of an additional 1/2 gallon of juice from this pressing bringing the total from those 2 buckets up to 3-3.25 gallons. Weight of the remaining pulp after re-pressing was 5 pounds 6.6 ounces. and the compressed block measures 4 inches at it's thickest point by roughly 8 inches in diameter. Doing the math on the apples I believe Jimbo said a bucket of apples weighs approximately 23 pounds, so 2 buckets comes to 46 pounds. I figure 1/4 loss due to the way I chop them so that would leave me with approximately 35 pounds of apple pulp to begin with, although I do believe it was a bit more, maybe next time I will weigh everything before and after but probably not, so for the sake of argument we will say 35 pounds of pulp. That means I extracted approximately 29 pounds of juice from those apples. Now you probably understand why the remaining pulp is flavorless and if I add water to it it grows like one of those compressed dinosaur sponges.

[Jimbo]

Curious, did you take a sip off that jar? How does it taste?

[cranky]

Curious, did you take a sip off that jar? How does it taste?

I did take a sip, I personally can't tell the difference in flavors between the first pressing and the second but it is much paler and your mind tells you that mean the flavor should be milder but I can't tell. S.G readings are the same as well. I placed the first pressing in one carboy (started that with 1122) and the second pressing went into another carboy which is now full to capacity, and is using D-47. As soon as I get 7 gallons that have been started with 1122 I will switch to D-47 and when I get 7 gallons of second pressing I will start the next with 1122 to see what the difference is. The early first press and second press carboys are next to each other and I will try to get a picture of them to show the color difference. I'm also in the process of freeing up a carboy and 2 more gallon jugs that are holding cider from last year that will be given out at Christmas. I've spent a considerable part of my day washing bottles and getting things ready for that as well as canning the apple butter that has been cooking for the past 3 days.

[cranky]

Here is that picture of the 2 carboys.

You can see that the 2nd pressing is considerably lighter than the first pressing. Even though the 2nd pressing is in one of my blue carboys the difference is pretty clear.

[Euphoria]

I'm looking for a good recipe for unprocessed raw fresh squeezed apple juice. I'll be coming into about 8~10 gallons of it in the near future. I would really like to know a good ferment recipe that anybody has had good results with. I'll also be running it through my flute still, (or would I be better off running it through my pot still head rather than the flute?) If I use the flute, should I leave a few of the plates out for this? (It has 4.) So far, I'm unsure really what to make from it, so...suggestions anyone???

[Jimbo]

The beautiful thing about fresh fruit is you dont need a 'recipe' per se. The less you do to it the better. EC1118 ferments clean and thoroughly. Dont add anything but yeast, nothing. Give it a month to ferment out and settle. Then run it. The flute will be fine, altho I wouldnt use more than 1 or 2 plates.

Be careful with the cuts. The fruit esters/congeners come over early. With a flute youll have compressed heads and finding that sweet spot will be difficult. Cut too much and youll lose all the apple flavor/aroma. Might be best to do a deep strip and then a spirit rn on a pot, so you can see (smell/taste) more clearly what Im describing.

[cranky]

Pretty much what he said ^^^^. Jimbo is the apple master for sure so listen to him and read his apple thread too. It's in his signature.

I've run it with both the pot and my 4 plate flute. If you can, take out some plates. My flute has fixed plates and on that last run I ran it too slow, which compressed the heads and made the apple bomb hard to find, also don't even bother smelling it coming off the flute, a day later everything will be totaly different. If I recall right the first apple I ran off the flute I ran mostly like a pot still with very little reflux, enough to keep the ABV around 80% but the second time I ran too slow and compressed the hell out of the heads and it was tricky to blend.

[Euphoria]

Jimbo & cranky,
Thanks for the info and the heads up on techniques. Sorry for the delayed response, but I was off-line for a couple of days.

[cranky]

Always happy to help

[Jimbo]

Always happy to help

[cranky]

I got a few more gallons of cider pressed yesterday and another bucket and a half of apples ground up and ready to press. A couple days ago I finally got the 7 gallons of last years cider bottled. Most of that will be given away at Christmas which keeps people from getting too nosy about all the apples I'm going through or complaining to management about me spending time making cider at work, plus contributors get extra.

Today the guy that let me pick all his pears came up to me and asked if I wanted his grapes as well. Of course I told him "Hell yes!" He said to stop by whenever I want and pick as much as I want but wants me to leave him some to eat. He said there are so many that I can't pick them all. He obviously doesn't know me very well, after all I am the guy who went over and virtually stripped all his apple and pear trees bare. But I did notice that he had bittersweet nightshade sneaking into his grapes and made sure to advise him to get rid of it before it becomes a serious problem, plus contributors get extra right now I figure I owe him several bottles of cider and at least 5 bottles of perry, might as well add some grape wine to the mix. I've never actually made grape wine or brandy but figure I can figure it out, pretty much like any other fruit, press, yeast, wait.

[Jimbo]

figure I can figure it out, pretty much like any other fruit, press, yeast, wait.

haha, yup.