Best fruit(s) for brandy

[hawkwing]

I’m looking for advice on what fruit or fruits make the best brandy.

I live in an area where grapes are not grown. Not much of a fruit area at all. We can grow apples but they are usually tart. I’ve used local apples to make hard cider with good results. I will probably distill some at some point. My only possible way to make real brandy is to try a wine kit or grape or raisins. Not sure if sulfites would be a problem though. And it would be rather expensive. Also from reading on here raisins are not the same as grapes for flavor.

The article about the date brandy is interesting.

So I’m wondering what has been your best successes with fruit brandy’s?

[Salt Must Flow]

I have only tried a ghetto Brandy using frozen grape juice concentrate. I used 26 frozen tubes ($45.00) to make a 10 gal ferment with 10 tsp DAP. I used EC #1118 yeast. I added enough water to get 10% potential ABV. It finished in 6-7 days with no issues.

I just did a basic stripping run with my keg boiler. I then did a spirit run using a small 120V pot still I made. After all my cuts I got at least a half gallon at 150 proof. I had some French Oak chips so I put a good amount in there. I proofed some down to let people taste it compared to a bottle of store bought brandy and everyone preferred mine even though mine was mildly oaked. I added more oak so that should help. They both had the same 'base' odor & flavor, but the store bought was richer/deeper/complex in oak, had a strong bite and strong burn. Mine was as smooth as can be and everyone mentioned that first.

I don't know if I would say it was cheap, but it was fun and turned out good I think. Real fruit would be even better I'm sure. I probably could have done a 5 gal batch, but I didn't want to risk exposing my element on either of the runs.

One day I want to try a peach brandy.

[hawkwing]

Which frozen juice did you use? Welch’s purple?

[NormandieStill]

I made a sloe brandy as my first attempt at distilling. Left white, after 1 year it's turning into something quite interesting. Better cuts would have helped massively but hey... learning curve! It's got a good plum presence on the nose, but I cut too far into the tails and without oak they're not ageing out very quickly.

Takes a lot of picking, and probably isn't worth it unless you have a bumper year. I'm crossing my fingers for this year, but it's unseasonably warm again so there's a good chance of a frost killing off all the early flowering fruits.

[Salt Must Flow]

Which frozen juice did you use? Welch’s purple?

I got it from Walmart and made sure it was 100% with no added sugars. I think it was this one. Turns out it was cheaper and better than I could find at other stores. Other stores had corn syrup and/or didn't have enough of them in stock. WallyWorld had plenty.

[stillanoob]

Plums make a great brandy if you can get those. Pears and peaches too.

[Demy]

I have successfully distilled apples, pears, plums, oranges, figs, cherries and other these ... I found them for free or cultivated, you can also distil many other fruits ... look around and see what fruits you can find in your area then start from that ..

[hawkwing]

What was the best flavor out of all of them?

[contrahead]

I've made grape and apple brandy both, as I suspect many others here, have too.

I've also made Peach and Apricot brandies which lacked the definitive taste that I was looking for. But the resulting flavor enhanced, fortified wine that I made from distilled apricots, and then added back to the parent wine, and then doctored up a bit - was far more exciting than the distillate alone.

I've never had enough blackberries, cherries or blueberries to experiment with in this manner. But I lean towards the notion that blackberries would make the finest brandy.

[cranky]

I have two favorites, pear and mixed fruit. My mixed fruit is made up of whatever is left in the freezer from last year when I need room for this years fruit. It tends to be very good with a distinct fruit flavor but you can't pick out exactly which fruits they are.

And for the record, the worst apples make the best brandy but apple flavor can be elusive. Pear and other strong tasting fruit will tend to carry a lot of flavor over.

[shadylane]

In my neck of the woods, the best fruit for brandy is wild plumbs (Prunus americana)
There used to be a thicket of them nearby until a fool bulldozed the trees into a pile and burned them.
During prohibition, the original owner made brandy that was shipped to rich folks in Memphis.

[stillanoob]

The apple brandy takes aging to get really good. The plum is good right off the spout.

[Demy]

The apple brandy takes aging to get really good. The plum is good right off the spout.

Yes it is true for apples but I found that a 2 year aged plum brandy (white, woodless) developed (amplified) the flavor incredibly.I have a small bottle of apple brandy from the early days when I started (2017) and it smells delicious but I resist drinking ...

[stillanoob]

The apple brandy takes aging to get really good. The plum is good right off the spout.

Yes it is true for apples but I found that a 2 year aged plum brandy (white, woodless) developed (amplified) the flavor incredibly.I have a small bottle of apple brandy from the early days when I started (2017) and it smells delicious but I resist drinking ...

I hope enough to make enough this year to age some. I ended up drinking all of what I made two years ago within a few months. It was just too good to stay out of and I didn't have much. Last year was a bust for plums in my area so I didn't get to make any. Jelinik ages theirs 5 years and it is really good. Going to be fermenting and stripping on the stones next time.

[shadylane]

Going to be fermenting and stripping on the stones next time.

Ferment maybe, but I'd dip the liquid and pulp out of the fermenter to keep the pits out of the boiler.

[jonnys_spirit]

The best fruit for brandy hands down is going to be free fruit. I’m pretty sure I saw some numbers on how many 5g buckets of apples it takes to make a 5g barrel of apple brandy and it was maybe 60-70 buckets depending on the apples? Grapes maybe 30 buckets or so - all depending on how much juice and sugars the fruit gives up.

Cheers!
-j

[hawkwing]

I wish I was in a grape zone. Or that I could get grape juice concentrate cheap. Wine kits are my only option for that. Only easy to get large quality fruit I can get is apples. But last year my supply was no good.

[cranky]

It takes me around 100 gallons of apple juice, maybe more to fill my 5 gallon barrel at barrel strength. It takes me 13to 14 lbs of apples per gallon, many people report 16-18 lbs per gallon. So it takes me a minimum of 1,300 lbs of apples to fill my 5 gallon barrel. That comes to about 55 buckets of apples for 5 gallons of barrel strength brandy. At 16 lbs to a gallon it works out to 1,600 lbs or 67 buckets to fill a 5 gallon barrel so even cheap apples work out to a lot of money. Now figure you lose 1/4 to 1/3 of that aging over the next 2 years and you wind up with a final amount of about 5 gallons after tempering. So doing the math that comes to about 260 lbs, or about 11 buckets of apples per gallon of brandy or 52 lbs per bottle. Now figure there are between 50 and 200 apples per bucket so an average of say 120 per bucket and that works out to 260 apples per bottle...I think I should print that on my labels

I think I get a gallon of juice for every 3 gallons of blackberries at 6% potential alcohol so to fill a 5 gallon barrel of blackberry brandy would take something like 300-400 gallons of blackberries. The interweb says blackberries weigh 4.5 lbs per gallon so that works out to 1,350- 1,800 lbs of blackberries to fill a 5 gallon barrel which is about the same as apples but takes a lot longer to pick. It takes me anywhere between 1 to 5 minutes to pick a bucket of apples and can take more than a half hour for a bucket of blackberries, although thornless varieties are a lot quicker to pick.

Other fruit produces more or less juice per lbs and higher or lower amounts of alcohol. Plums tend to have more sugar than apples. My sugar plums produce exceptionally high sugar. More sugar means more alcohol but not necessarily more or better flavor. Plum brandy tends to carry a lot of flavor over so you can get away with stretching it easier if you need to save money.

Perfectly ripe pears are almost completely juice, by contrast apples are about 70% juice so you get more product per lbs of pears. Other fruit vary.

All of this works out to the fact that if you want to make brandy and don't have access to free fruit it works out cheaper to buy juice than it is to buy fruit. The down side is the results won't be quite as good but by carefully choosing the right yeast. There is no need to buy wine kits for brandy as long as you can buy bottled juice but even that tends to work out to quite a lot of money. You also have to make sure that juice has no preservatives that will interfere with the fermentation.

[VLAGAVULVIN]

Was making kinda calvados of the local apples. Besides, it was very interesting to distill the mixes of aplle&sloe or apple&plum. They were not strange. They were tasty but unrecognizable

[Demy]

I wish I was in a grape zone. Or that I could get grape juice concentrate cheap. Wine kits are my only option for that. Only easy to get large quality fruit I can get is apples. But last year my supply was no good.

I understand you, I cultivate a bit of grapes here in Italy, the grape distillate is very good while grappa is a more difficult product but if done correctly it is excellent. A magnificent product is also obtained by fermenting the whole fruit (crushed) .. both worlds

[hawkwing]

So I can get apple juice, bananas, dates and maybe raisins fairly cheap. Possibly some other grocery store fruit juices are not too bad. Which would make the best liquor?

[stillanoob]

Going to be fermenting and stripping on the stones next time.

Ferment maybe, but I'd dip the liquid and pulp out of the fermenter to keep the pits out of the boiler.

After watching videos and reading it seems that is how they do it in slivovitz country. The few real slivovitz's I have gotten my hands on have a strong almond and slight bitter taste and I really like it. I suppose if it seems to have the correct flavor profile when tasting the ferment I might strain it before running it.

[VLAGAVULVIN]

So I can get apple juice, bananas, dates and maybe raisins fairly cheap. Possibly some other grocery store fruit juices are not too bad. Which would make the best liquor?

Be careful with bananas. They do need saccharification. And they make lotsa congeners you would not be happy with.

[Andrew_90]

The lads this side of the pond are very fond of using raisins.

[NZChris]

Start with the easiest one, apple juice. All you have to do is aerate it, pitch a suitable yeast, then keep it at a temperature the yeast likes. All of the others have pulp to deal with, which is fine if you are set up for it.

[Demy]

There isn't a better one, but if you get the juice start with that, easier, no mashing, then you might want the "real" fruit.

[hawkwing]

I’ve made apple cider from real apples. It’s a lot of work to juice them all. I can’t remember but something like 5-6 pails to get one of juice.

[jog666]

I would steer clear of watermelons. Checked my 3rd round of wine the other day & I dont think it will work out like persimmons did wine wise but Im going to strip it just to save the alcohol. Im really glad I didnt take that 2.5 tons of free melons last week now.