Maui Gold Pineapple Brandy

[Fishkiller68]

Hey all,

I am going to put together a recipe and make a brandy out of Maui Gold Pineapples. Now these pinapples are a hybrid pineapple that has much higher concentration of sugar and a lower acidity level. This is going to be expensive but hey it's worth a try. So here is what I am thinking. I am going to make a 15 gallon wash using 8 Maui gold pineapples. I was thinking I would put them in a blender and puree the poop out of them and then add them into a pot of water and boil them to extract as much sugar and flavor as I can. Then I was thinking of adding 10lb or so of Torbinado sugar, which is sugar that has a little bit of Molasses left in it, to kick up the alochol % while adding a little bit more sweetness to it as well. Then I would run it through my reflux still minus some packing to try to preserve some of the pineapple / Torbinado flavors.

What do you think?

The company the does distill Maui Gold pineapples on Maui has a winery juice their pineapples for them and then the make Vodka out of it. I don't have the luxury of a Winery that would do that for me and think a brandy would be so much better.. lol.

[der wo]

When I think brandy, I think fruits only. No sugar and above all no or as little water as possible.

But of course what you plan will work. But it's not a real brandy IMO and will taste less pineapple like.
But why cooking? Blend them, add sugar and water and finally yeast.

[Fishkiller68]

I was thinking the boiling would be good for breaking down the pineapple even more and releasing more of the sugars for fermentation and for killing any natural yeast that may be on the fruit. Do you think it would adversely affect the fermentation?

[der wo]

Are grapes cooked to make wine? No. When you would cook it, it would evaporate some of the flavors. Cooking is sometimes recommended with very hard fruits like quince, but athough I never mashed pineapples, I am sure it works fine without here.
Yes of course, bacterias. So perhaps lower the pH a bit with citric acid (and perhaps add a buffer too) before pitching the yeast and distill it soon after the fermentation has finished.

[MDH]

I wouldn't acidify pineapple. It's very acidic as it is. I don't even like to eat raw pineapple much of the time, as it's both too sweet and also far too acidic.

My own personal route through this would be to blend the flesh thoroughly with chlorine-free water, stir out any excess bubbles of oxygen. Check the pH - if it is below 3.5 or so, bring it up to around 4.3 with the addition of water, then proceed to ferment using wild yeasts (let it begin to ferment by itself) in a well airlocked carboy or fermenting vessel. Keep the ferment nice and warm (No trouble in Hawaii I presume). Once it finishes, immediately distill it, as Der Wo suggested.

If you want good flavor, avoid columns. Do the second distillation through just a basic pot very slowly, keep around 30-40% as your hearts, then proof it down with rainwater or something else very clean to about 50% and age it in a glass carboy with a snug lid for at least six months.

[Fishkiller68]

der wo -- Ok, that make sense, I will not cook it then. I will just blend it and add a little of the Turbinado sugar to get more of the sweetness and to boost the alcohol content. These pineapples are very expensive so I'm trying to keep the number of them down. They are being shipped to me in California from Maui.

MDH - This kind of Pineapple is a hybrid called Maui Gold. It has a much higher sugar content then standard pineapples and a much lower acidity. So I may have to increase the acidity if I am not going to boil to kill bacteria / wild yeast. I may try to get the distillers yeast going faster to create a CO2 environment quickly to stop any natural yeast or bacteria from starting first. From what I understand, this pineapple variety will actually start fermenting on it's own if not picked fast enough..


I was thinking of running my re-flux as a pot still on this batch to try to get as much flavor as I can for the pineapple brandy.

[der wo]

Making fruit brandy is always expensive, except you pick yourself for free.
I would use the column. Especially if you want to do single runs. To keep out the tails. But it's up to you, you have two opinions now.

BTW, every fruit will start to ferment without yeast.

[Fishkiller68]

Here is some information on the Pineapple variety I am going to use.

http://pineapplemaui.com/pineappleshop/about-us/


Really, Use the longer column? just less packing? How would you do it?

[der wo]

With packing.
I would concentrate and draw off some fores and collect some small heads jars. Then run it in potstill mode (with a CM shut down the reflux condenser, with a LM open the needle valve) until the abv drops to a certain point (somewhere 65-70%abv. I decide during the run). Here I try to hold the abv, but start soon to collect small samples and decide later what's hearts and what's tails.

[MDH]

This kind of Pineapple is a hybrid called Maui Gold. It has a much higher sugar content then standard pineapples and a much lower acidity.

Interesting. You learn something new every day. If you get a pH reading of raw juice, please let us know how it looks.

Clostridium and other spoilage bacteria are inhibited at a pH below 4.7, so if the juice is already more acidic than that, you're good to go, and may not need to acidify.

For the record, eau de vie mashes like lower ABV, since the goal of eau de vie is pure fruit flavor and not too many of the volatile acids and higher alcohols produced by yeast in strong alcohol. I would try to aim your alcohol potential at 6-7%, ideally. If your still is very small, only 8%.

If you're going for a domesticated yeast strain and don't want to try with wild yeast, then I would pick either Red Star Cote de Blancs or Lalvin K1.

[NZChris]

I know of a pineapple venture that went belly up because they couldn't get the flavor into the bottle despite having a very expensive SS column still and professed 'expert' distiller teaching them how to run it. I wasn't around at the time and I don't know what things they tried.

Adding sugar of any description dilutes the pineapple flavor and you are going to have enough trouble capturing it already. If you feel you must use it, ferment it separately and blend it later.
Some of the volatile flavor components will come off very early in the distillation and some won't come over until quite late, so you are going to have to put your clever hat on when distilling and doing your final selection.

I have put pineapple in my gin head while running gin, but never tasted it in the finished product.

[MDH]

Sometimes, aging an eau de vie will return flavor that otherwise seemed like it was lost. I had this experience with Santa Rosa plum and Marechal Foch grape. Both were neutral and uninteresting as a new distillate, and slowly gained all of their flavor back as they aged.

With pineapple, you could just take neutral white spirit with its head cuts already made - so it's plenty soft and drinkable - and put it back in the still with crushed pineapple, and distill again. You will not need to make cuts, so you might get all the flavor you are looking for.

[piperdave]

Pineapples also have a proteolytic enzyme in called bromelain so I'm not sure if that would affect yeast health or not. Something to consider.

The enzyme is heat labile so heating it would break it down.

EDIT: after checking the interweb a bit it seems pineapple juice is quite commonly used for fermentation so I guess the yeast can put up with whatever is in there.

[Bvritr]

I havnt tried making a brandy from them yet but have dropped a few chunks in finished product. I will say that Maui pineapple is the best in the world to eat though if you ever get the chance. I mighr just be alittle bit biased though

[NZChris]

I have eaten pineapple that would have been grown for the failed venture and they were the nicest pineapples I have ever tasted. Unfortunately, the project was dead and gone and the equipment sold off before I got a chance to put my oar in.

[Fishkiller68]

The Distillery I went to in Maui owns the Maui Gold Plantation on the Island as well and has a winery juice the pineapples for them and then ferments them and distills them for Vodka in large glass stills they designed. I was curious why they never tried making a brandy with it and thought it sounded tasty since the pineapples taste so good and are more sweet and less acidic then others.

I'm thinking now that I may just make a rum with the turbinado sugar and then run the rum through pureed Maui Gold Pineapples to get the flavor since Brandy seems really difficult to do.

[NZChris]

You can make a cocktail with rum, pineapple juice and a slice of lime and bypass the bother of trying to catch a pineapple in a bottle. This is kind of like what I do with feijoa, another name for pineapple guava. Because it is so difficult to make a brandy that is easily identifiable as feijoa, I use my failed attempts at brandy to make cocktails using feijoa drinks from the supermarket.

[Fishkiller68]

These pineapples are had to come by and don't last long. So I would need to catch it in a bottle to make it last or just get really drunk while I have them..

[NZChris]

Try vapor infusion. The kind where you suspend the fruit above high proof spirit.
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=site%3Ahomedistiller.org%2Fforum%2F+vapor+infusion&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab&gfe_rd=cr&ei=E5f6WJ2ZBpLp8wedwo7oAw

[Whitecap72]

I posted a honey pineapple recipe in the shared recipe forum on this site. Really simple and tasty. Let me know what you think.

[butterpants]

What was the end result Fish?

[firewater69]

I aged a pear brandy on some of the same pears that it was made from, it came out nice. Might work for pineapple too.

[CatCrap]

I'm going to give pineapple brandy a go. Just made some banan a likker with good results. I did a 1.5x run. Got a bit of a lacto infection on the 2nd 5 gallons of wash, it didn't seem to effect the distillate, positively or negatively.
Why pineapple?
Relatively inexpensive
High sugar content.
Easy to juice
High yield of juice
High percentage if flesh on pineapple only have to skin, core, and put through the juicer.

I'll juice some today and get an sg/brix reading on the juice. I'm hoping it's high enough I don't heed to sugar boost, and not too high that I need to water it down.
So.. 50l pure pineapple juice, maybe a little yeast bomb to ensure smooth fermentation, hydrate yeast and pitch. I might do ec1118 unless some one suggest another yeast?

Also for the spirit run I'll probably cut up some pineapple, put it in a cheesecloth sachet and put it in the boiler. I had good results doing this with bananas, although the flavor is on the more cooked side.. like deep rich dark very ripe banana flavor.
I'll update soon

[The Baker]

Making fruit brandy is always expensive, except you pick yourself for free.
I would use the column. Especially if you want to do single runs. To keep out the tails. But it's up to you, you have two opinions now.

BTW, every fruit will start to ferment without yeast.

I think the yeast is often on the skin of the fruit....

If that is right you are automatically getting (providing you leave the skin on the fruit) the yeast that is the best yeast for that fruit, nature has provided it.

Geoff

[butterpants]

I'm going to give pineapple brandy a go. Just made some banan a likker with good results. I did a 1.5x run. Got a bit of a lacto infection on the 2nd 5 gallons of wash, it didn't seem to effect the distillate, positively or negatively.
Why pineapple?
Relatively inexpensive
High sugar content.
Easy to juice
High yield of juice
High percentage if flesh on pineapple only have to skin, core, and put through the juicer.

I'll juice some today and get an sg/brix reading on the juice. I'm hoping it's high enough I don't heed to sugar boost, and not too high that I need to water it down.
So.. 50l pure pineapple juice, maybe a little yeast bomb to ensure smooth fermentation, hydrate yeast and pitch. I might do ec1118 unless some one suggest another yeast?

Also for the spirit run I'll probably cut up some pineapple, put it in a cheesecloth sachet and put it in the boiler. I had good results doing this with bananas, although the flavor is on the more cooked side.. like deep rich dark very ripe banana flavor.
I'll update soon

That sounds pretty amazing. This thread intrigued me but I'm too lazy to spend the $ and time on something I've not tasted and unknown results probable.

[CatCrap]

Well.. initial results are in. These pineapples had a sugar yield of 1.055 SG. Not sure what that is on brix, i could check on the refract if yall want to know, but brix doesn't really matter as much to me as SG. So, that i guess, is good news. Seems high enough to go for a straight pineapple juice ferment. No added sugar, but also, sadly no watering down. I say sadly, because it is going to take an epic quantity of pineapples to get enough juice. I found that one medium pineapple gave me around a Pint of juice, from the juicer. Not including what i can squeeze from the pulp. More on that in a second. I suppose it's also a good thing that i don't need to water down or sugar boost. It should have as much pineapple flavor as possible. I may not even need to put the fruit-sachet in the boiler for the spirit run. We'll see.

So, my method was skinning, coring, and then putting the flesh through my juicer. It's quick and relatively easy, BUT, and this is a big butt, not very efficient. By that, i mean, that the juicer does produce nice, clean, sediment free juice, and fast. BUT, the pulp has a lot of liquid left in it. And the pulp container isn't very big so it fills up after 2-4 pineapples. That makes it a bit of pain, because i have to disassemble and clear the pulp chamber after every few. I did this at work, and didn't have what i needed to effectively solve this small issue. I tried putting the pulp in cheesecloth and squeezing by hand, but, as i learned from the first AG i did... squeezing by hand sucks sucks sucks. So... i'll be employing the same solution for the pineapple as i do for AG, the one i learned here on HD. Paint strainer bags and a new mop bucket/wringer. I found it worked fucccking spectaculary for grains/corn. It made a major PITA job far far easier. Now, it's still a lot of work, but there' s a hell of a lot of wash left on those grains, so absolutely worth the time, effort, and mess. I can't imagine squeezing by hand again. I could skip this step, but i think i could yield a lot more and waste far less juice by squeezing the pulp.

So, i'd estimate, that there is at least 25% more juice to be gained by squeezing the pulp. I'll juice the flesh, put all the pulp in paint bags and squeeze it with the wringer. The other option here would be to puree the flesh in the blender and use that for the ferment, but, as i learned with the bananas... at some point, some squeezing/straining is going to need to happen. So, in this case, i think it's best to do it Pre-Ferment. For my NCHooch Bourbon and Booner's all corn, i'll continue to ferment on the grain and squeeze after. But for this pineapple brandy, i'm going to try to ferment with strained juice. The juice is certainly not watery or clear, it has a lot of the pineapple flavor in it, but really no large solids whatsoever. The idea is that after it's done fermenting i'll rack it off the yeast sludge, let it clear a couple days and rack into the boiler. Hopefully this won't take too damn many pineapples. I'll try to get a count on how many pineapples it takes to get a batch, what the yields look like, and all the other fun details.

As for yeast, i'm sure if left long enough this would ferment on it's own. But i would not trust wild yeast when this is such a timely costly endeavor. Wild yeast may work great, or it may not work for shit. So ill be pitching my own yeast. I'm open for suggestions. I know EC1118 will work, clean, high attenuation, can handle any abv i'd ever attempt, and reliable. Again, for something with this much investment, probably best to stick with what i've used before and know will work. So, unless someone has another suggested yeast, that will be my choice. I think this could be a really awesome, exciting, different spirit. Or it could turn out like shit, who knows.
I can't believe anyone would use pineapple for vodka. Seems like a ton of work to just strip the flavor out.

Start my own thread? Or just post my results here? This isn't exactly a lively thread, but i don't want to be a dick and take it over.

I'll juice 2 more cs of pineapple tomorrow. The ones i did today were very very big. About as large as they get(that i've seen). They were fine quality, but could have been a touch riper. I find when they start to just get a tiny bit soft, and a little bit of mold growing on the bottom of the skin(a little) their just right for eating. We keep them in the fridge, so i doubt their going to ripen much more. I could go to the trouble of ripening them more at room temp, but i think i'll just go as is.

Once i have enough juice i'll get the ferment going. Might have to do one 25L batch at a time. Strip the first batch and save the low wines until i've got the other 25L of juice fermented and ready to go.
CC

[CatCrap]

Ohmahgawd..... that was so awful. so so so much work. Took me basically all day. 7 cases of pineapple... juiced, but there was 30+ qts of pulp to squeeze that held most of the juice. The paint strainer bags and mop wringer was not very effective either. Mostly had to wring it out by hand. I can say for almost certain i'll never do this again. At least not like this from fresh pineapples. I hope this spirit is damn worth it. So much sweat has gone into it.

[butterpants]

I kind of want to see pictures of you all sticky and covered in pineapple rinds. Must smell amazing.

[CatCrap]

uggh.. it does smell great, but also sticky as hell. The pulp filled up a garbage bag quick and then that bag ripped. =/ BUT.. Their are certainly worse things to be covered in. Well.. yeh.. it was a lot more trouble than i'd bargained for when i decided to do this recipe. There's no going back, and hopefully most of the hard work is done. Big thanks to Cranky and Jimbo for inspiring me to do fruit brandy. Their work with apples and fruit is inspiring. I'm about halfway through Cranky's epic "let the fruity goodness/madness commence muahahah" (ok that's not quite the thread title. It should be "Well this is the end of apple season for me" - Cranky, because he uses that phrase, oh, at least 7 times so far. Love it.
Back on topic.. I've got everything all ready to go to ferment, just gotta clear out 2 fermenters. So.. more mess... time to set up the mop bucket again... Need to rack and squeeze 40# of Crack from my first 50L batch of booners, that's occupying two fermenters. Of course, AG is also a lot of work too. Not like the sugarheads and rum, where i just get to rack things off, clear, and run. AG and Fruit Brandy requires copious straining. But i do know all this trouble will pay off. If i dont fuck it up =)

Details soon to come. I've a plan for the pineapple... I believe it is well conceived and the best solution and use of my resources.

7 cs Pineapple @ 13.99/cs
4 qts. Dole Brand canned pineapple juice from the store. (yuk.. i'd never drink this stuff.. It tastes like a pineapple that's been drank and pissed out by an aluminum can. Always hated canned pineapple juice. But, it's a part of my gameplan to make this work. I don't want to do a single run, it has to be at least a 1.5X. Explanation soon.

[CatCrap]

Alright! As promised, it's time for details. After all this trouble n work i finally put my pineapple brandy ferment down.

I'll start off by explaining what i did, and why. When i've done these fruit brandys, if i can call them that, i'm still pretty new to the game so not a seasoned veteran brandy producer (Looking at you Cranky and Jimbo) But, i've used everything i've learned here to guide my decisions, and put as much effort into the fermentation side as i can muster, now it will be left up to my skill as a distiller to finish this with finesse and care, so it is worth my time and work and a success. Of course, as we like to say on here, the only person who has to like the distillate is me. But, I try to hold myself to a high standard and make the very best drop i possibly can.

So pretty much any time when i Pot still, i do stripping runs and accumulate 4-6 runs worth and do a spirit run, slower, and collecting in numbered jars to do the cuts a couple days later after airing. For UJSM, AG, rum, and most other recipes this is not an issue. But for fruit brandy, getting enough wash to do a run can be more difficult and expensive. I know that the key to successful fruit spirits in this style, is either distilling on the fruit, which isn't possible for me with internal elements, other than my sachets, or using fruit juice or puree. From my research and light experience, that best gameplan by far is to use as pure of juice as possible. No added sugar, no watering down. The more you add other products, adjuncts, sugar or water, the less fruit flavor you will retain in the final distillation.

So, my method has been to do 1.5X runs. In order to do a run of any kind, the minimum i like to use is around 4-5 gallons. So, i try to do 2 fermenters worth of any recipe. My fermenters are from brewhaus.com and are 25L at max, or 6.6G. I could do two spirit runs, but this would yield me around 2-2.5 G. Low wines. This just isn't enough for my still, it would barely cover the bottom element. So, I could do a single run, but i haven't really been a fan of the results of a single run. Thats where the 1.5X run comes down. If i do a single run, my aggregate keeper abv would be around 40% ABV or less. This just isn't enough for aging on oak the way i like to do it. I prefer to be in the 50-70% range. So if i have 2 runs worth, and do one as a strip and add it to the second for a spirit run, i think it accomplishes my goal. The spirit run produces distillate that's high enough in abv for aging, has some of the refinement of a double run spirit, and the flavor of single run wash. To me, it's the best way to go in this case.

In this case, i tried to get as much fresh squeezed pineapple juice from real pineapple as possible. I cut, cored and juiced 7 cs. of pineapple in total, and every case is about $15 and 25#. The juicer as i mentioned was terribly inefficient and left me with 6g plus of pulp holding a ton of juice which i struggled mightily with in squeezing in paint bags in the mop wringer. BUT... squeeze i did... and my total take from all the pineapple was about 29L. This would have been enough for one very full ferment. So, method was this:
I filled up one fermenter with 21L of the real pineapple juice, which had a final SG of 1.050. Not bad.. if it ferments to 1 it will be 7% alcohol. The other fermenter, i put in the remaining 7 or so Liters of fresh real pineapple juice, and to this i added 4 cans @46oz each (5.75QT total) of Dole Brand Pineapple juice (SG 1.054), and 7L of water with 2# Sugar dissolved in it. So this fermenter ended up being 19L @ 1.055. My plan is for the better ferment (the one from pure pineapple juice) will be the spirit run, added with the low wines that i strip out from the "lesser" ferment of 19L with the sugar, h20 and canned juice. I thought it wiser to save the better ferment for the spirit run.

Both ferments are sealed up and ready to start working.

My thoughts on yeast: I've got bakers (for rum and yeast bombs), DADY (for neutral and currently whiskeys, though i'm looking for a new whiskey yeast) a few packs each of EC-1118 and K1-V1116. I thought i'd like to do both with 1116, but i've only got two packs. Now, 2 5g packs, really should be enough for 2 ferments in the 5G range. But i always tend to over pitch. So, i used the EC for the strip run and K1 for the spirit. I chose them because i've read and seen that they produce clean, well delineated cuts, and do well with fruit. They're both very hardy and versatile yeasts, that do well in many conditions, including temps, yeast nutrients, PH, other environmental factors, etc etc. They're also both Killer Strains, so if there is any Wild yeast present the EC/K1V should viciously murder the Wild yeasties, then take over. Each ferment received a small does of yeast nutrients, including Fermaid K, DAP, Epsom, and Vitamin B. Along with the yeast choice(s) i wanted to be as sure as possible i'd have successful fermentation. I'd hate to lose all the work i put into this.

And that's pretty much it. I'm not sure what aging protocol will be. Hope fully my keeper cut ends up being right around 65. I'll probably stick to just toasted wood, so as to not overpower the fruit.
I'll post results when we get there!
Once again, I f ing love this hobby. It is a heck of a lot of work at times, which can be good and bad... but i love it so much. I'm sure i'll continue to love it more as my aging stock ages!!


Wish me luck!!

CC