Scorched apple brandy

[Steve Broady]

I'm doing the spirit run on my first all fruit apple brandy right now, and I have to say that I'm blown away! I've done a few brandies before, using some combination of fruit, juice, concentrate, and sugar, but this is the first time I've kept it 100% pure apple and nothing else. Hopefully I'll blend it tonight, and see what my wife thinks. I'll get to the scorched bit in a minute, I promise.

I started with a bushel of apples from my favorite orchard. Bar none, the best apples I've ever had, and some varieties I'd never heard of. Everything other than the cardboard box got chopped up and put into the blender, with just enough water to get it moving. Stems, seeds, everything. The only thing I added other than apple and water was a little pectinase to help squeeze more goodness out of those lovely apples. I hydrated a packet of EC-1118 in some water which I'd used to rinse the blender, and then pitched that into the bucket of applesauce. Every day or two for the first week, I'd give it a stir to knock the cap down. Eventually, the cap didn't so much fall as dissolve, and I was left with a lovely soup that smelled like apple wine in the best way. I planned to leave it for a few months to really develop some flavors, but about a month in I noticed a thin white haze growing on top. It still smelled good, but I guessed that I had a lacto infection and needed to get it run soon.

I have a simple pot still which I run on my kitchen stove. I was going to filter the solids out and just run clear wine, but this stuff did not want to filter. It's either too thick or too thin, and either way you look at it it was being a pain. Figuring that it's thin enough to move around, I decided to try putting everything into the boiler. I kept stirring it while it heated up, then threw the lid on, turned the burner down, and hoped for the best. I turned my condenser so that it pointed up instead of down, hoping to get some more flavor development in reflux.

All was going well until I smelled that unmistakable smell of scorching. I cut the power, let everything settle down, then opened the lid. Yup, it scorched. It wasn't too bad, and after a little scraping and stirring with a long spoon, the smell was pretty mild, and still good overall. I figured it's probably trash, but nothing to lose at this point, so I put it all back together and decided to run it. This time I turned the power up higher to keep a rolling boil, which seemed to do the trick. Collected the low wines until I was down to about 1-2% coming off the spout and called it a day.

As an aside, I tasted what was left in the boiler, mixing it with a little simple syrup, and it tasted like apple sauce. No scorch flavor. Good enough that I decided to add sugar and a little water and get a second round of fermentation going. But that's another story.

So today, I decided to do the spirit run. I have more apples fermenting, and I was going to wait and combine all the low wines, but because of the scorch I wanted to keep this separate. I set it up to go as slow as I could stand, and started collecting in small jars. Tasting every now and then to see how it's going, naturally. First of all, the elephant in the room. The scorch is definitely there. But I almost think it's going to work with the flavor, especially if I age this stuff on oak. It's almost caramel, toasty, campfire flavor. Not something I'll try to repeat, of course, but I don't think this batch will be a total loss. So aside from that, I am blown away with the amount of flavor I'm getting. The stuff I've made before was light on the apple flavor. This stuff is intense! Not like drinking high proof apple cider, but there's no question that it started out life as apples. I think the combination of keeping it pure apple, using good apples, and taking the time to run the still low and slow has really paid off. I will definitely be doing this again!

I've been reading a lot here, and learning as much as I could. The difference in what I was making before and what I'm making now is night and day, and it's entirely thanks to the folks here who are willing to share. Thank you, one and all! I'll be raising a glass to you tonight.

[Steve Broady]

Just a quick follow up. We blended the jars tonight. Same thought, that scorch flavor is there but it’s not that bad, and really reminds us of apples and campfires. What’s really interesting is that you get that scorch prominently on the nose, but it’s much more in the background when you taste it. The apple comes out nicely. I have two hopes. One is that since the smell is so prominent, it’ll evaporate early in the aging and leave some better flavors and aromas behind. The other is that the flavor will play nicely with the toasted apple and pecan sticks I’ve got in there now, and the oak it will get in a week or so.

Overall, I’m still mad at myself for scorching it, but I think it’ll still make something enjoyable.

[NZChris]

Had you buttered the bottom of the pot?

[Steve Broady]

Had you buttered the bottom of the pot?

I did not. I read your advice about that after the fact, and I will definitely use that technique in the future when I need to run any solids through the boiler. I’m thinking about this whole thing as a learning opportunity. Even if it ends up totally undrinkable, I’m already learning things which I can apply to things in the future.

[NZChris]

i didn't make up that advice, I found it years ago, probably when researching Slivovitz. A quick search found that advice here in 2014, but it was probably posted earlier than that.

I passed it on to a friend who tried it, but who turned the flame off to attend to a family emergency. He tried to get away with re-lighting the flame several hours later, without re-buttering and agitating, and got burned.

I've only had burns with starch and when I've run the pot dry.

[Steve Broady]

I took the apple and pecan out about a week ago, and replaced it with a piece of an apple brandy barrel which I toasted at 380F. It’s already taken on a lovely color. I gave it a quick taste today, and it’s young, definitely, but also surprisingly drinkable. Honestly, the first thing I thought was that it tastes like scotch. Not the good stuff, naturally, but if you told me this was scotch I would believe you, and I wouldn’t spit it out. Unfortunately, the apple flavor is now either gone or hiding. I intend to give it several months at least before I make any decisions about its fate, but I was curious to see how it’s changing already.

Based on this, I would say that while you can’t get rid of a scorched flavor, you might be able to work with it. Time will tell if that stays true. I hope I never need that knowledge again!