Juice concentrates for brandy making

[MooseMan]

So I'm finally getting around to looking at Brandy making.

Reason being, I'm now able to get my hands on several different fruit juice concentrates in pretty big volumes.
These are mostly 6x concentrated juices at 65brix so I won't need to add any sugar, I'll be quite heavily diluting!

I'm ok with wine making as I've been making all types of wine for many years.

But are there any pointers that the brandy guys could offer, on the best process for creating a wine deliberately intended to be distilled to brandy?

Then further to that, when it comes to distilling the wine, are there any nice tricks I should be aware of?
Likewise aging, I'm intending to age in glass with fruit wood turned to charcoal, but if this is not a great idea please tell me I'm being dumb.

I'm excited to get started and I've already got a few batches of wine going.

[jonnys_spirit]

Sounds cool! I’ve made brandy from wine grapes and wine kit concentrated juice. I’ll set the sg to the 1.070 range and ferment/distill/cut like normal and usually try to reserve some of the ferment to top up the spirit run.

Are the concentrates you’re using shippable? If reasonable, I’d love to order.

Cheers,
-j

[higgins]

...
I'm intending to age in glass with fruit wood turned to charcoal, but if this is not a great idea please tell me I'm being dumb.
...

Hey MooseMan,
Take a visit to a topic by OtisT on using fruit wood for aging. It's an interesting read, and may change your mind on the fruitwood charcoal.

I'm sitting on 2 batches of new make (Bourbon, Am Single Malt) and need to make 2 more Badmo barrels. I'm going to sandwich a ~1.25"/3.2cm wide piece of 6 yr old air dried cherry heartwood between two ~3.5"/9cm wide toasted/charred white oak for the ASM barrel head. The cherry strip will be shielded during the charring process.

[shadylane]

Maybe try using some Fermaid K for nutrients and ec1118 yeast.
Often juice concentrates have added sugar and by the time it's watered down to the right SG the natural nutrients have been watered down too.

[NZChris]

You could put down a small batch first to check how well it ferments.

I would add water to the SG you would expect in the fruit, ferment, then double distil as for brandy, only removing a foreshot if it is quite nasty.

[shadylane]

The forshot and heads cut can be difficult when making brandy because that's also where much of the fruit charactor is.

[MooseMan]

Golden info thanks gents, please keep it coming!
I've put on a couple already at 1095 using my favourite "flavour producing" yeast GV11. I'm going to get some 1118 too. I'm using small DAP additions for nutes and a tiny pinch of gypsum.

I can afford to really experiment with this due to the volumes I'm getting so I'm open to all wisdom.

[shadylane]

Fermenting @ 1.095 is going to be difficult if not impossible, all kinds of problems are going to appear.
I'd recommend an OG of no more than 1.060 so the fruit concentrate will finish dry and not stall.

[MooseMan]

Fermenting @ 1.095 is going to be difficult if not impossible, all kinds of problems are going to appear.
I'd recommend an OG of no more than 1.060 so the fruit concentrate will finish dry and not stall.

I appreciate that 1.095 is a high SG in distilling terms, but I've been making wines for many years at this SG with no issues.
However, I've always had fruit solids in the must, for the first week or more, which admittedly may make a difference. With the concentrates there will be no solids.
They are already fermenting now, so I'll keep an eye on things.

Ideally I want to run the ferments at 22-23 brix with no need to add sugar, just water down the concentrate and add yeast and nutes, to get max flavour.

[MooseMan]

...
I'm intending to age in glass with fruit wood turned to charcoal, but if this is not a great idea please tell me I'm being dumb.
...

Hey MooseMan,
Take a visit to a topic by OtisT on using fruit wood for aging. It's an interesting read, and may change your mind on the fruitwood charcoal.

I'm sitting on 2 batches of new make (Bourbon, Am Single Malt) and need to make 2 more Badmo barrels. I'm going to sandwich a ~1.25"/3.2cm wide piece of 6 yr old air dried cherry heartwood between two ~3.5"/9cm wide toasted/charred white oak for the ASM barrel head. The cherry strip will be shielded during the charring process.

Thanks for the reminder on this thread Higgins!

I'm definitely going to do some aging experiments with fruit woods, both toasted and turned to charcoal, since I don't really drink brandy I'll be leaving it so to age for a good while!

Interesting take by sandwiching fruit wood between oak!

[NZChris]

I’ve only used Brix that high for wine. I like my brandies to finish relatively quickly and stripped earlier than I do for rums and whiskies where I do want added flavors from bacteria etc..

[Rusty Ole Bucket]

Reason being, I'm now able to get my hands on several different fruit juice concentrates in pretty big volumes.
These are mostly 6x concentrated juices at 65brix so I won't need to add any sugar, I'll be quite heavily diluting!

Hey Moose, I'm very interested in brandy myself, it's one of the main reasons I wanted a steam set up and completely rebuilt my still. I've found sourcing juice or enough fruit is the biggest hurdle to get past (well money fixes everything but... ). My strawberry farmer friend never got the late season culls that usually happen. The weather stayed cool late into the season and she was able to sell everything right up to the finish. I've got a line on watermelons, but that won't be till late summer and probably a once a year sorta deal. The local farmers market never has anything in enough volume to matter unless you want to pay retail. I'd love to get my hands on some peach concentrate or puree, it's peach brandy that sent me down this road in the first place and to go out and buy enough peaches to make a decent size batch isn't something that comes cheap. Peach country is only about 6 or 7 hours from me. I'm considering a run over there this summer to see what I can find, but there again, that's only a once a year proposition.

I'm not asking for names or anything, but what's the situation where you're able to get the juice in large quantities? It might be a source that we've never thought about and something to pursue around the local area. It would be cool to have a juice source here close.


Rusty

[MooseMan]

I’ve only used Brix that high for wine. I like my brandies to finish relatively quickly and stripped earlier than I do for rums and whiskies where I do want added flavors from bacteria etc..

That's a good point Chris.
I'm hoping the high ABV will keep it free of nasties until I run it though.
I sugar feed a lot of my normal hedgerow reds to yeast failure, so that they keep.

[MooseMan]

Reason being, I'm now able to get my hands on several different fruit juice concentrates in pretty big volumes.
These are mostly 6x concentrated juices at 65brix so I won't need to add any sugar, I'll be quite heavily diluting!

Hey Moose, I'm very interested in brandy myself, it's one of the main reasons I wanted a steam set up and completely rebuilt my still. I've found sourcing juice or enough fruit is the biggest hurdle to get past (well money fixes everything but... ). My strawberry farmer friend never got the late season culls that usually happen. The weather stayed cool late into the season and she was able to sell everything right up to the finish. I've got a line on watermelons, but that won't be till late summer and probably a once a year sorta deal. The local farmers market never has anything in enough volume to matter unless you want to pay retail. I'd love to get my hands on some peach concentrate or puree, it's peach brandy that sent me down this road in the first place and to go out and buy enough peaches to make a decent size batch isn't something that comes cheap. Peach country is only about 6 or 7 hours from me. I'm considering a run over there this summer to see what I can find, but there again, that's only a once a year proposition.

I'm not asking for names or anything, but what's the situation where you're able to get the juice in large quantities? It might be a source that we've never thought about and something to pursue around the local area. It would be cool to have a juice source here close.


Rusty

Rusty I can't say on the forum sorry, but it's not from somewhere anyone can buy it in any case.

[Rusty Ole Bucket]

Rusty I can't say on the forum sorry, but it's not from somewhere anyone can buy it in any case.

I understand, thanks anyway Moose.

Rusty

[shadylane]

I appreciate that 1.095 is a high SG in distilling terms, but I've been making wines for many years at this SG with no issues.
However, I've always had fruit solids in the must, for the first week or more, which admittedly may make a difference. With the concentrates there will be no solids.
They are already fermenting now, so I'll keep an eye on things.

Ideally I want to run the ferments at 22-23 brix with no need to add sugar, just water down the concentrate and add yeast and nutes, to get max flavour.

My 2 cents.
What works for making wine from concentrate, isn't the best for brandy. A high alcohol wine needs left over sugar for taste.
A brandy ferment needs to consume all the sugar and will taste flat and sour before stripping.
Time to rethink what's needed. The concentrate probably already has added sugar.
Water it down to no more than 1.060, add a balanced mixture of nutrients and use a clean fermenting yeast.
My preference for brandy is to use crushed fruit with only the seeds removed and ferment on the pulp.
Usually the natural SG of fruit is low and added sugar is needed to raise the ABV.
I think there's a better way.
Ferment the fruit pulp as is and add extra alcohol before stripping to extract the fruit character that makes a great brandy.

You're using fruit concentrate, make the best of it, water it down no more than needed to make the yeast happy.
A OG of 1.095 with concentrate isn't going to work out good, the yeast will struggle and stall before finishing.
Don't try for a high OG, that's easy but going down the wrong path, instead try for a lower FG.

[NZChris]

Wine ain’t brandy. You may want a wine to stall to leave some sweetness, but that’s not a good thing for brandy.

There are other wine tricks that you shouldn’t use too, like sulfiting.

There are plenty of tricks that you can do with brandies from a pot stills, like stopping a fermentation with fortification.

Look up Jeropiga, the juice isn’t fermented at all, just having brandy added to prevent fermentation, retaining all of the natural sugars.

I have one that is created by adding heart cut distilled from some of the juice to concentrate made from the rest of the same juice.

[MooseMan]

Thanks for this guys, this is why I asked, never too old or too experienced to learn something.

The concentrates definitely have no added sugar, as they all have a different concentration level and a different brix, I guess depending how well each juice type processes.
Some are clarified, some not, and one of them is white grape that's been deionised so it's totally colourless, but has all of the nutrients remaining, so each wine has had some of that added as a nutrient base too.

Appreciate the clarification though, and I do agree now it's been pointed out, I need to be thinking about this from a brandy point of view not wine.
The next round I'll go lower SG and get them bone dry, flat and sour.

I'm totally planning to experiment using the brandy I'll make, to fortify some of the juices, as the flavour level will be off the charts with some of them.

I opened the passion fruit on the weekend and the aroma just blew me away.

[jonnys_spirit]

One thing i've found helpful is to include pressed fruit pomace in the vapor path to infuse some flavor similar to a Gin infusion. I do that with pressed grape skins from wine making.

Cheers,
jonny

[MooseMan]

One thing i've found helpful is to include pressed fruit pomace in the vapor path to infuse some flavor similar to a Gin infusion. I do that with pressed grape skins from wine making.

Cheers,
jonny

Oh really.
Similar to a vapour infusion when gin making?
I like the hell out of that idea Jonny!

So many options with that idea! Nice one.

[Rusty Ole Bucket]

One thing i've found helpful is to include pressed fruit pomace in the vapor path to infuse some flavor similar to a Gin infusion. I do that with pressed grape skins from wine making.

Cheers,
jonny

Oh really.
Similar to a vapour infusion when gin making?
I like the hell out of that idea Jonny!

So many options with that idea! Nice one.

To that end, and especially since you're working with juice, I've had good luck transferring flavor using juice and fruit nectar in the thumper. Back last fall when I was running SSS every weekend, I was experimenting with adding flavor. I was dumping a couple gallons of Jumex nextar into the thumper and every time it brought the flavor through. I tried mango, peach and strawberry, they all worked great.

Since you're using juice, maybe you can run your spirit runs through some that's not fermented, it should add a lot of flavor back.

Rusty

[jonnys_spirit]

One thing i've found helpful is to include pressed fruit pomace in the vapor path to infuse some flavor similar to a Gin infusion. I do that with pressed grape skins from wine making.

Cheers,
jonny

Oh really.
Similar to a vapour infusion when gin making?
I like the hell out of that idea Jonny!

So many options with that idea! Nice one.

To that end, and especially since you're working with juice, I've had good luck transferring flavor using juice and fruit nectar in the thumper. Back last fall when I was running SSS every weekend, I was experimenting with adding flavor. I was dumping a couple gallons of Jumex nextar into the thumper and every time it brought the flavor through. I tried mango, peach and strawberry, they all worked great.

Since you're using juice, maybe you can run your spirit runs through some that's not fermented, it should add a lot of flavor back.

Rusty

I haven't tried juice in a thumper but have heard folks talk about "Shooting The Thumper" where during the hearts portion of the run, one might add flavored juice to the thumper in order to enhance or infuse the flavoring into the hearts cut.

What I have done is to perform a spirit run where I cut it a bit wide - with the intent of running it one more time with the fruit pomace in the vapor path where I will do a small heads/tails cut and infuse the skins flavor contribution into the hearts. Since I save the skins to be used like this, I also macerate some in the base spirit (which is ideally made from grape juice / wine, but also perhaps bumped with sugar to meet a certain desired volume).

I believe this is how the german "Geist" brandies are made. Himbeergeist, Kirschwasser, etc... Clean neutral re-run with fruit in the vapor path - similar to a gin.

Cheers,
jonny

[MooseMan]

Guys this shit is golden and it's exactly why I started the thread since I'm a brandy ignoramus.

I've already copied and pasted most of it into the notes app on my phone so I don't lose the gems.