Fruit / Berry Recipes

Refined and tested recipes for all manner of distilled spirits.

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Hambone
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Hambone »

I hate cloves...pungent little bastards. Ruined myself smoking clove cigarettes as a kid..,
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Slivovitz »

20200812_135258.jpg
I see the cap on top of my apricot Barrel starting to get watery I think it's going to drop in the next 48 hours.

Question does it actually drop to the bottom or just get waterlogged and still float around the surface?
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Slivovitz »

I still hear faint bubbling but not much.
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Day 22 fermentation

Post by Slivovitz »

It is day 22 and things have been looking about the same for the last week. Still some bubbling.

Have you ever made peach or apricot wine and if so how long did it take to complete fermentation?
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by psf »

my boys finally went back to school so I was able to thaw the bushel of peaches in the freezer. followed the recipe. used K1-V1116 yeast and a little DADY. SG around 1.070. kept it in the garage, stirred twice a day and it only took 4 days for the cap to fall. stayed around 90F the entire time till the cap fell. gravity reading says it's done and so does taste. I'm letting it settle before I rack it over to secondary containers before the final rack to cook off.

how much of an off flavor can I expect from the fast ferment? Taste like a REAL cheap wine. plan is for a single run through a thumper. A lot of variables to say exactly. quick search of this thread didn't say much in regards to a fast ferment.

Thanks.
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Slivovitz »

Single run was ok, but a double better. Different flavor profiles for sure. Details when I free up
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by shadylane »

A friend is making brandy out of over ripe free stone peaches, I don't know how many pounds were used but he now has three 50 gallon barrels almost full and he's not done yet. No additional sugar was added but he plans on adding a gallon of my neutral per barrel before he does the stripping runs. He claims the neutral works better than adding sugar and will draw out more of the peach flavor.

I don't know if he is right, but he does it every year and is really good at it.
My baine marie pot will be on lone to him for the next couple of weeks.
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by psf »

thanks for the reply from a guy that has dominated the last few replies on this topic but didn't answer my question.

thanks for the reply from a guy that normally has valuable input but decided to talk about some random bull shit.

nothing has changed in the 3 month break I took off during the summer.

search seems to be the best feature on this website vs asking the active members.
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by NZChris »

psf wrote: Sun Sep 04, 2022 4:49 pm thanks for the reply from a guy that has dominated the last few replies on this topic but didn't answer my question.

thanks for the reply from a guy that normally has valuable input but decided to talk about some random bull shit.

nothing has changed in the 3 month break I took off during the summer.

search seems to be the best feature on this website vs asking the active members.
Have you considered that nobody putting their hand up to tell you "how much of an off flavor", is the answer you were looking for?

Search is always better as it gets answers from people who no longer post here.
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by psf »

Touche'

quality answer as always...plus I didn't wait that long before I ran off at the mouth.

Its not like I'm going to throw it out. I'm going to cook it off no matter what anyway.
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Stonecutter »

NZChris wrote: Sun Sep 04, 2022 5:16 pm
psf wrote: Sun Sep 04, 2022 4:49 pm thanks for the reply from a guy that has dominated the last few replies on this topic but didn't answer my question.

thanks for the reply from a guy that normally has valuable input but decided to talk about some random bull shit.

nothing has changed in the 3 month break I took off during the summer.

search seems to be the best feature on this website vs asking the active members.
Have you considered that nobody putting their hand up to tell you "how much of an off flavor", is the answer you were looking for?

Search is always better as it gets answers from people who no longer post here.
+1
it’s such a broad question that is full of variables so you’re not going to get any real “binary” answer.
Getting upset because active members don’t want to fill you full of bullshit certainly isn’t the solution.
You stated that it tastes like cheap wine. So there ya have it. Do YOU taste any off flavors? Does it smell like shit? If not then I wouldn’t expect anything surprising out of the spout.

Edit: posted same time as PSF. Looking forward to your updates
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by shadylane »

psf wrote: Sun Sep 04, 2022 4:49 pm
search seems to be the best feature on this website vs asking the active members.
Start a new topic and we will try to help with the problem.
Folks here are comparing notes about success using Taters Fruit and Berry recipe. :ewink:
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by The Baker »

Don't crush the peachy goo with your feet if the peaches are the ones with a savage point on the end of the stone.
I tried it!

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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Stonecutter »

The Baker wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 1:22 am Don't crush the peachy goo with your feet if the peaches are the ones with a savage point on the end of the stone.
I tried it!

Geoff
Owww, now that’s f**ng brutal! That could put you in the hospital or at least require some
first aid
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Ben »

After seeing Taters post on peaches I perused my provincial promotions to pinpoint a peach purveyor.
I initiated interest, inquisitive for imperfect items of intake, intent on ingredients to intoxicate I explained.
Hither I hightailed it, harvest handy, haggling, hem and haw concluded, home I zoomed, a hundred pounds of peaches heavier.

Threw them in the freezer, except a few to build a test yeast culture from, if I can get it built up and reasonable final gravity/flavor I will use the wild yeast. If not I will use a cake of WLP099 from another project.
0908220948a.jpg
I think I may make a strong corn whiskey mash instead of the invert sugar water.

Thanks for the inspiration Tater!
:)
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by The Baker »

Love the alliteration, Ben.

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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by psf »

Following up on my original question. The fast ferment didn’t give any off flavors, or at least any that come through my cuts. Thought my hearts cut was low with only a little over a gallon. I started with about 10 gallons of must with about a gallon of pulp must in the thumper. My peaches were not ripe when I froze them. Next time I think I’ll make sure the peaches are ripe and I’ll doing a stripping run and then spirit run.

Took 2 liters of tails and added peaches to mascerate for a few weeks. I’ll run that in my 2L mini still to see what I can get.
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Garouda »

Raspberries, blueberries, mulberries...
The German Himbeergeist = raspberry spirit or eau-de-vie. Berries like blueberries, raspberries or mulberries have a too low sugar content to be processed like other fruit brandies.
This does not mean that we cannot follow the same process, we can very well make a wine from mulberries and then distil it.
The raspberries are expediently ground or mashed and then soaked in undiluted spirit (90-95%), with 0.5l – 0.7l of spirit being taken into account per kg of berries.
They will stay for one or two weeks, then be distilled in a pot still, or with a plated column where max three plates are 'active'. As blueberries have got less flavour than raspberries, I would take 0.5l/kg.
Those berries contain pectins, so expect to have some methanol to discard. Despite the low boiling point, methanol occurs in all fractions during distillation. Paradoxically, even more so in the tails. Methanol is highly soluble in water indeed, therefore, methanol will distil more at the end of distillations, when vapours are richer in water. So distil slowly at the beginning to catch as much methanol as possible in the foreshots.
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by Tater »

Always go low and slow .Had a taste of some single run
peach brandy from a steam outfit similar to one in my avatar. Just smaller size .Couldn't been much over 40-50 proof but was damn tasty. Making lower proof single run fruits and berry doesn't seem done much anymore
I use a pot still.Sometimes with a thumper
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by njinjune »

I followed this recipe without the lemon. After strip run, my alcoholmeter read close to 0-3. Is that right or did something go wrong?
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Re: Fruit / Berry Recipes

Post by zach »

Maybe you should test the distillate with a hydrometer as a 2nd check. How does it taste?

Did you take an initial and final specific gravity before ferment and then again before stripping?

A refractometer is useful to take initial readings with messy ferments.
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