Blackberry Brandy

[Rooster64]

I did not use pectic enzyme and I used EC 1118!

[Schmicter]

I found using pectinase the second biggest mistake when dealing with fruit spirit (bakers yeast was the biggest)

I am wondering why bakers yeast would be a big mistake with fruit washes

[thecroweater]

It has been my personal experience that bakers yeast causes esters that conflict with and would be completely unwanted in any fruit brandy. I have made the mistake of thinking in will be ok and a double run will not carry them over. I now know that the more times you run it the more the fruit flavour is stripped making these "off" flavours even more pronounced and adding this ruined brandy to much more good brandy will do nothing but cause you to increase the amount of ruined brandy (I could not even fix it with double runs through a reflux still and that's after triple runs through a pot , I didn't bother with plates:evil:

[Schmicter]

After all the runs and still you didn't get something very neutral and only the yeasts could be the culprit?
Admittedly I am a novice and don't possess a refined taste yet for brandies but do like them and would be interested to try whatever you might recommend.

[thecroweater]

Maybe not, but the same stuff for with ec1118 was fine. A mate got the same result with plums so based on this and many other reports I have made this assumption
I used bakers yeast yrs ago to make wine and that turned out god awful

[MDH]

Best be usin' wild yeast...

I'm fermenting a small five pound batch of raspberries right now. I start the ferment by putting a pound of raspberries and a tiny amount of yeast nutrients in a small ziplock bag, crushing them within the bag then pushing the air out. Yeast are anaerobic. Other fungi and bacteria are typically not. That's my starter. I add it to the rest of the raspberries, airlock it and forget about it for several weeks.

It smells far more distinctly like raspberries than like yeast.

[Rooster64]

When I strained everything I ended up with close to 12 gallons so I decided to do three runs. In the first I added a half gallon of feints from my earlier apple juice run. In the next two I added the feints from the previous run. I started Friday night and basically ran all weekend. Each run was very consistent, starting at about 155. I collect in 150ml increments. I threw out the first 300ml, collected 600ml of heads, and started keeping at 132 down to about 90 each run. I ended up with 1.5 gallons of 112 and about a pint which I microwaved with frozen berries. Beautiful color and taste. Got the berries soaking in sugar right now. It tastes real good with just the berry maceration. The white dog is very smooth, but almost no blackberry taste. I'm gonna flavor some more with berries for sure, but not sure what to do with the rest.

[canadianmoonshiner]

Blackberry wine is so wonderful it's a shame to distil, yet that's what got me started in this godamed hobby. Obsessed with picking, too much for pie/jelly, too much wine (for a casual drinker) how to make it smaller & last forever? Thank you all moonshiners for showing the way! 14 years, 35 flavors later & on a 4 year sabbatical I'm still obsessed trying to make this legal (house hunting & found one on agri zone & another on ind zone so fate working). My first & dumbest mistake was pectic enzyme not PECTIN, NOOB!

[canadianmoonshiner]

Just read the 2-up post about microwaving berries. I'll share my trick that may apply to fruit but more for wood(tried oak & cedar) extract. If you have a rice cooker (asian type), put wood chips in a mason jar with 40% clean spirit, secure the lid loosely as if making jam. heat with water in the steamer 15-20 minutes. You'll learn a lesson about low boiling points in a vacuum (freaky to hold a jar of alcohol that's boiling while cool) & get some great extract that can be added very sparingly. I made one pint jars of both oak & cedar & still have a lot after flavoring many gallons. Safer than a microwave I think.

[cubanredneck]

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