For My first ferment I used crab apples

[akdaltron]

Hello all,

I have been reading and lurking around here for about a month now. I was going to wait for my first ferment but my auntie showed up with 5 gallons of beautiful crab apples. This was one of the major reasons I wanted to get into this hobby was to make brandy (or maybe fruit shine since I added sugar). After reading slit of different recipies I settled on this

About 2 gallons crab apples cleaned and then frozen
3 large gala apples

I put the apples a pot and brought it up to 150 deg turned off the heat and let it sit for about 2 hours. (While i had dinner)
Then I smashed them all up.

Put them in my five gallon food safe bucket
Added two cans Apple juice concentrate
Added 5 pounds white sugar ( dissolved in warm water)
Added Pectin enzyme ( as directed)
Added Yeast nutrient (as directed)
Filled with water to about 3 inches short of lid
Pitched EC 1118 champagne yeast

SG 1.075

The recipie I am following says to add some of the wash and fruit solids to the thumper when distilling


Did I make any major mistakes or things I could do better?

The only problem I ran into is I believe the ph is pretty low. The strips I have say it's 2-3. (Not a very good color chart)

I tried adding some crushed up tumms (all I have at the moment and its 1 am here). That seems to have brought it up to about 3-4. But not sure. (Again the strips are hard to match up... Maybe I'm just tired!! ). I decide to stop there and check it in the morning and get something better for bringing up the PH.

Thoughts? Feed back? Input?

Thanks in advance for your help. And thanks for all the great info on this site!!

Akdaltron