Mirabelle and Apriplum Eau-de-vie (or Pálinka)

[PalCabral]

About 15-20 years ago I planted a mirabelle plum tree and an apricot tree in my garden. Mirabelles are small cherry sized plums that can be red or yellow. In France, especially Lorraine and Alsace, are famous for their delicate mirabelle brandy, Eau-de-vie Mirabelle. It's one of my favorite drinks. The one I have give sweet red fruits, which I suspect are of the Mirabelle de Nancy variety. As with many plum trees, some years the tree is so full of plums the branches hang down to the grass below, or even break from the weight.

The apricot tree was killed by the roaming deer in the winter, they gnawed off all the shoots and twigs, and it was a pitiful sight when spring came. I left for a year or two in its' sad state but something started growing from the old stem. A new tree grew up and with it came yellow mirabelle plums. Guess of my surprise. But these plums were not sweet, sour until the day they fall off the tree, then there could be some tart sweetness in them. For long I thought they might be of the mirabelle de Metz variety but since I have realized they are apriplums, a plum-apricot hybrid.

For years my secret project was to distill these wonderful plums and make an eau-de-vie or a pálinka, the Hungarian spirit, out of them. This time has come now that I finally have a still.

The red mirabelles always ripen earlier than the yellow ones, about two three weeks, so my plan was to collect and ferment the reds first, then the yellows. I spread out tarps on the grass below the two trees and collected fallen fruit 2-3 times a day. Then I got my stick out, and banged the branches creating a rain of plums. Unfortunately, the harvest this year was below the normal and the fruit that we had was bursting with sugar, such that they were ripped open and exposed to all kinds of gods creatures. I picked in total 17kg/37lb of red mirabelles.

The yellow always gives a lot of fruit but the only ones worth using are the ones that fall, which will be ripe. The skin is thicker on these plums so they don't burst that easily and wont attract as many bugs and whatnot. I picked 36kg/79lb of apriplums.

While the yellows are still in the freezer the reds have been fermented already. This is what I did.

Preprocessing:
I put all the 17kg of mirabelles into a bucket. They had been frozen, so I added 3L of hot water and allowed them to thaw for a couple of hours. During thawing I mixed in 1 gram of sodium metabisulfite (campden) with the fruit. After two hours, I ran the paint mixer through it, ripping the plums apart as much as I could. Then I added 6L of hot water and mixed in 5 grams of Pectinase enzyme. Then I allowed the plums and the pectinase to their thing for 24 hours.

The next day, I split the plums into two fermentation buckets, slush, plums and stones and all. That gave me two buckets filled to the 12L mark. For each bucket I added the following:

Ingredients:
8L/2g of water
1/2 tsp of Wyeast wine nutrients (contains b vitamins and DAP)
5g/0,2oz of EC-1118 yeast dehydrated in 25cl water at 30C/86F
2 tbsp of mussel shells in a hopsbag

I gave the mix a good aeration before adding the yeast.

After 24 hours I added 1kg/2,2lb of granulated sugar
After 48 hours I added another 1kg/2,2lb of granulated sugar

Visible fermentation ended after 7-10 days, but I left the must on the pulp for another 10 days. The FG was 1.000.

Distillation:
For a long time I was divided about distilling on the pulp or filter it. But the fragrance of the fermented mirabelles was fanstastic and I decided to filter the pulp out. I found my old brew bag and used it as a sieve - it was perfect. I guess I put about 17L/4.5g into the boiler.

I also added 21 stones from the plums, intact.

I heated up using both electric element and gas. Once the temp was up at 50C I turned the electric element off and ran low and slow on the gas burner at about 1.8L per hour. I ended up with 5L/1.3g of low wines at 26% ABV. They smell heavenly. I retrospect, I could probably used the electric elements and ran harder, but I didn't want to risk anything.

I also realized that my FG must have been around 11% ABV after fermentation. I added 2kg/4.4lb of sugar to the ferment, guessing I would land at 8% ABV but it looks like the red mirabelles were thick of sugar.

Now I have one more stripp to do of red mirabelles and 36kg/79lb of yellow apriplums to ferment. Busy days ahead.

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