Christmas brandy

[Jn96]

I’m sure I am not the only one who has made a product then had to decide how to save it cause it just didn’t turn out how you thought. Well here is my story of my first run…

After 8 months of reading and dreaming of the day I own my own still my significant other gave me one. I had to fix it up some and make adjustments but I was ready to go so I collected some more equipment and after the appropriate cleaning and sacrificial runs I did my first run in December 2024 of what I now call “Christmas brandy”.

It was a simple 7 gallon store bought apple juice ferment that I upped the SG with frozen juice concentrate(this was a mistake but more on that later lol). It fermented to 1.000 and so I ran it. I pulled 250ml of fores and the there were a ton of heads, I say they were heads due to how sharp they were and they had a chemical and apple jolly rancher type flavor I worked in a factory that makes simple syrup years ago and it instantly reminded me of that. I collected so much heads I was afraid that’s what the spirit was just gonna taste like but finally it went into hearts and I collected about 1.3 liters of decent spirit before tails hit very hard. I didn’t run it out because I knew I didn’t want to introduce the feints from that back into anything I make in the future. The spirit was ok but not great. Lost most the apple flavor to the heads that I chose to keep out of the final product.

It wasn’t what I wanted and while it wasn’t bad I knew I wouldn’t drink it so I decided to play around a bit. I took the hearts, proofed it down to 10%(that was the only way to stretch the volume enough to recharge the still) and charged my thumper with mincemeat pie filling and 100ml of late heads from just before cutting to hearts. I ran it and made cuts again. The entire spirit was very clean for the second run with amazing dark fruit and nutty characters so the thumper charge definitely did work. I did tossed the first 25-50ml on the second run due to a waxy almost plastic flavor that cleared up really quickly. I bottled it at 100 proof and found out it mixes great with some eggnog.

If I were to make it again. I would avoid the juice concentrate. I’m definitely no expert but I suspect that what I gained in proof resulted in a loss in flavor after cuts from a sugar wash type of affect with the concentrate making even more of the sharp stabbing heads.

I learned a ton from this first run and I got lucky and was given 160 lbs of apples(red delicious and Granny Smith) and 120 lbs of Williams pears so I have them mashed up running two ferments for an apple and a pear slivovitz(made in the style of palinka to try and impress my Hungarian father in law). I can’t wait to learn more from these two spirits too.

[zach]

It might be tough to please a Hungarian as there are so many delicious palinka's (apricot, cherry, pear, peach, apple and plum). Many small producers in eastern Europe have a still that can accommodate pulp in the boiler which I believe makes a better product.