flavor

[PANMAN1965]

Hi guys, its been a while.... I am gonna fire back up soon and want to experiment some. So far my very best stuff is made from 50 lb cracked corn...50lb rolled oats 50lb cracked barley 10 lbs molasses. I have that all mixed up and make it in small batches like the sweet feed recipe since I can't get the sweet feed anywhere close. I want to try my hand at some fruit runs ( I have made wine and beer for a long time) but the last few attempts I have made, Have not gotten the fruit flavor to come through. Its good but no fruit flavor at all. we cut it to 80 proof ..... I have a small stove top.. with a thumper and a liebig ...... I have heard that if I cut down more toward 65 proof the flavor will come out more.... any help would be appreciated. I THINK I posted his here in the past but cannot remember.

[bilgriss]

I have very little experience with fruits. But I'm a good listener. I believe you want good ferments with flavorful fruits, and people tend to favor a single or 1.5 distillation. Your pot and thumper should get you in the right direction. Much of the flavor is to be found in parts of heads you might be accustomed to cutting out, and finally, some of those flavors emerge after a period of time even though they aren't there initially. Time and patience. I think Cranky's apple thread is a good source for much fruit wisdom.

[Shine0n]

If you are adding sugar with the fruit it will lose some flavor, the more sugar the less fruit flavors from my experience.

I've run peach, plum, strawberry and apple, plum had the most original flavor of the base fruit, the peach really doesn't taste like peach but it does have a very unique flavor of sweet and a back end of light peach.

The strawberries turned out really good but it was my first and I didn't read enough, wait long enough and kinda drank it too young except 1 jar that I had for a year... my mistake as it was very smooth and full of strawberry flavor. oops, should've done my research first!

As mentioned, read through Cranky's threads, Jimbo has some, palinka, paulinka, 《- something like that has some very good info on fruit .

This is my take from my experience, find a fruit that will be a strong base for flavor, use pure juice if possible and if not don't use no more than .5 lb sugar per 1 lb of fruit.

Keep a lower OG 1.050-1.065ish and use a good yeast, ec1118 is a good starter as it will ferment dry and is easier when making cuts, Use the lower end of the temp tolerance of the yeast for a slower ferment.

If possible, make enough ferment for 3 runs. Strip 2 and use the other to lower the abv of the low wines and add to to the final spirit run, do a nice med paced run and collect in pints or half pints. Let air for 24 hours, then it's it's up to you, also mentioned is that the fruit flavors hide in the heads and will appear later during the aging process either white or oaked but remember that oaking will mask the flavors of some fruits and can easily overpower the base fruit you want to capture.

I'm sure I've missed some or alot of specific details as it's 430 am and I haven't had enough coffee, lol ,but there are many good threads on how to get a good fruit brandy and plenty of one's with miserable failures so you'll have to do a little reading, go to the fruit threads and look at some of the stickies and I'm sure you'll be finding some good stuff.
FYI, I've had some good fruit washes done in a pot thumper with 1 run but it was done very slow, with very tight cuts and alot of blending. Don't throw away jars and keep them labeled because they change more than you would think and might end up adding some of them later on.
Don't be afraid of the heads, great flavors there, fruit flavor will hide and will take time to re-emerge if they ever do.

Good luck, glad to see you back, and start a thread in the fruit section and you'll get some more help along the journey.

Shine0n