Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

[NZChris]

Tread them and make brandy or wine, or both, followed by grappa.

[PalCabral]

You need a lot of grape skins to make a bottle of Grappa/Bagaceira.

[cranky]

I've been working on packing things up lately, which includes way more alcohol than I ever thought I would have

In the apple department so far I have 6 bottles of 2018 apple brandy, that isn't very good, 13 bottles of 2019 apple brandy that I like even less than the 2018. I've never been happy with those two years. I also have 12 bottles of 2021 brandy that I think is much better but may need another year or so before I'm happy but I think it's much better. I just emptied the barrel on the 2023 ( or is it 22? I'll have to look that up some time.) It's actually pretty good and looks like there is well over 4 gallons at barrel strength, which I haven't checked yet.

I was looking into the freezer yesterday and realized I have everything I need for a batch of Scumble. I had 6 liters of apple juice that was frozen the day it was pressed and plenty of hard cider, so I set about jacking the frozen juice and have so far reduced 6 liters down to about 3.5l. That's currently back into the freezer for a second round. when it's down to around 2-2.5l I plan on doing the math to temper the brandy from the barrel and see about bottling up a batch. I guess I'll post the details of that on the Scumble thread.

While doing all of this I have also found a pint of white blackberry brandy that is more than 10 years old and some grape that I know is also quite dated. I think there might be some more fruit based stuff that has been in the attic for quite some time as well as numerous other things that have as much as 10 years on wood in the attic.

Honestly, I think this could be enough likker that I doubt I could drink it all in 50 years. As I've been bottling I've been setting aside 2 of each vintage in Monkey Shoulder bottles to give to members as gifts if I run into them in the future, but I'm not sure if or when that will happen

And that's about it for my little world...besides telling ya'll about cutting down the apple bush in my front yard That's just too painful to talk about.

[cranky]

Today I finally finished hacking the apple juice which left me with about 2 liters of nicely concentrated juice For Scumble. I also put aside a couple of bottles of the '23 brandy before measuring what was left.

What was left was a scosh over 3 gallons at 140 proof. According to the calculator on the parent site I'll need 2.25 gallons to get it down to 80 proof. which will equal 5.25 gallons of final product, which should last me a while

[NZChris]

The calculator is wrong. If you add the calculated amount of water, you will get less than 5.25 gallons and the proof will be over 80. To get 80 proof, you have to make it up to 5.25 gallons with however much water it takes.

There has been a better calculator posted here somewhere, an app called Distillers Calculators. It calculates 2.33 gallons to add.

[higgins]

I use a phone app called 'Alco Calculator'. You can find it on Play Store. It agrees with NZChris for the amount to add.

It takes a while to get used to it ... most of the complaints on Google reviews have to do with language barriers (app developed in Russia, but has English version) and metric only, but I don't have any problem with it, and I highly recommend it.

[cranky]

Thank you for that info Chris and Higgins

[Crow River]

That alco calculator app looks the business, cheers!

Recently was given 15kg of parsnips, and after roasting a few decided to make wine and brandy. Wine is a handy one, as after boiling and straining the chopped parsnips, while the 'juice' / must gets pectolased the boiled parsnips can be used to make parsnip soup, which is what I did: tasty.

So got 6 litres of wine must steeping with pectolase, and 15 litres of brandy wash doing the same. I kept the boiled parsnips in the brandy wash, for extra flavour - also there's only so many parsnips my family can eat... These will both be topped up with sugar water once the pectolase has done its job: 3 litres and 10 litres respectively. The wine will also get some raisins, lemon juice and zest, and tannin; the brandy will probably just get lemon juice. In a few weeks I should be good for a stripping run on the brandy.

I've also got two small batches of banana brandy on the go just now. It's a great off season brew as supermarkets often sell over-ripe bananas off for pennies. One batch used peeled bananas, mashed in a food processor. The second I kept the peel on, sliced the bananas and added pectolase after boiling them. These are small batches, just a couple of gallons each, testing out different approaches and recipes. Will be interesting to see what the difference in flavour might be.