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What SG are you guys starting with? just ordered an 8 gallon stock pot so I can give this a go. The only cheap apples I can find local are store bought Red Delicious, 10lb for $10. Are you pealing them before cooking/mashing?

mekks082 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2020 4:24 pm What SG are you guys starting with?

Whatever SG the juice comes to, usually 1.04 to 1.07 depending on the apples.

mekks082 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2020 4:24 pm The only cheap apples I can find local are store bought Red Delicious, 10lb for $10.

Depending on efficiency of your process you can expect 1 gallon of juice from 13 to 18 pounds of apples. Buying apples is not really the best way to go about it. Now if you feel you must buy them seek out alternate places to get them, I've found them fairly low priced at Mexican grocery stores when I need some to test my apple processing equipment.

mekks082 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2020 4:24 pm Are you pealing them before cooking/mashing?

No peeling! No cooking! No boiling! No mashing! unless you are talking about the act of crushing the apples.
At this point I think some extra reading is in order, not to toot my own horn but I think you should go read this viewtopic.php?f=14&t=68085

Apple is a difficult so to begin with don't sink a ton of money into it til you get the basics figured out, it's nothing like a sugar wash or whiskey Start with store bought juice with no preservatives ( I recommend tree top ), use EC-1118 yeast and remember the flavor is in the heads and may take 6 months to a year to even show itself.

cayars wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2020 8:24 am I'd just look at the freeze distillation as a strip run that left you with more flavor. I've never heard of an apple brandy with too much flavor. Usually the opposite in fact.

Took your advice and I'm running the apple jack in a spirit run. Man is it intense!
I'm pretty sure I'm through the heads. I can't detect acetone but the aroma is so strong I can barely hold my nose over it.

I watered down a sample from the late heads / early hearts to tone down the heat, and left it to air for a few minutes. I'm getting a ton of apple skin (and anise?) and something that is clearly very apple.

FWIW, it is nothing like the artificial "green apple" profile you get in commercial alca-pop drinks or apple flavored whisky put out by the likes of Crown.

It's going to be interesting to see what it's like after a day gassing off.

Edit: Damn I'm getting a lot of sulfur coming through. And a lingering copper taste in the heads which is probably copper sulfate.

Into the hearts now and I'm getting strong candy apple tones. The metallic aftertaste is almost gone, and the sulfur smell is still detectable.

The problem with freeze distillation is everything is more intense, sulfur as well.
If you have some copper in your system, that will usually take care of it for you. Do you have copper in your still at all?

Yes, all the piping is copper.

Edit: Well I'm done running and I found the culprit. I have an iron bulkhead fitting in the top of the boiler that connects to my copper riser. The riser is full of black gunk which I'm pretty sure is Iron Oxide.

I ran a corn stripping run yesterday without an issue. But I'm thinking the acids in the cider reacted with the fitting.

What the heck you doing with an iron bulkhead fitting? You want your still to be SS or copper.
I'd definitely get that changed out to a SS bulkhead as well as any other questionable materials (if present). Low pH, heat and high ABV alcohol combined can do lots of nasty things to many materials so always use materials deemed safe!

If you're using a SS boiler you can add copper scraps and/or copper scrubbies in there as well.

But now you have some spirits that are sulfur ridden. There are a few things you can do to try and clean this up. The easiest way might be as simple as putting some copper scrubbies in your collection jars with the spirits in them and let them set a while. Check them in a couple of days. Let us know if this works as there are more advanced methods without rerunning them to remove this.

Thanks cayars I'll try that.

There is a steel plate holding everything together which is the main culprit as it sits inside the lid and bolts to the iron base flange on the outside. I live in the middle of nowhere so parts are really hard to come by. I'll fabricate a copper plate out of a section of flattened copper pipe and that should fix the boiler issue (should have thought of that before lol). Maybe I should solder a copper insert into the plate so the whole thing is copper.

Well everything looks good from the outside: But inside is a different story: And these are the metal items that have caused my off flavors. All this corrosion happened in just one spirit run:

Wouldn't you know it, the only copper pipe I can get here is 1''. And the mounting holes for the bulkhead are 80mm outside to outside. A flattened section of 1'' tube will be 3.141'' across. I doubt I'm going to be able to fabricate these plates in one piece :-(

OK I let it gass off for a day, and let it sit on some copper scrap for 4 hours. No sulfur or metallic aftertaste is detectable which is great news!

I took the following cuts:
#1:150 proof
#2: 148 proof
#3: 140 proof
#4: 130 proof
#5: 120 proof
#6: 100 proof
#7: 70 proof
#8: 40 proof

I'm surprised at how fast the alcohol dropped off and how long it stayed up high for that matter. I don't normally get that.

I excluded #1 as it was too headsy, and #8 because it was too funky. I added all the rest except for about 1/4 of #7 which also went to the feints jar.

My final product is sitting at 120 proof and will be aged on a bit of new toasted, un-charred apple wood.

I watered a bit down to drinking strength and I'm pretty excited! Thanks for your help again Cayars!!

I'm glad the sulfur smell/taste was taken care of. Thought the copper scraps would help with that.
BTW, you can throw those scraps in the boiler to get some copper in there. They can make a bit of noise, but other than that will help get some copper in there.

Check out this thread by OtisT on some of his different fruit wood experiments.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=72255&p=7576306&hil ... e#p7576306

I can concur with his RAW APPLE WOOD use as well. I'd suggest putting 3/4 of it on raw apple wood and 1/4 on the toasted apple wood depending on the toast. How did you toast it? What degree and for how long?

I toasted it in the oven, wrapped in tinfoil bundles. 415F for 3 hours.

I hand split the wood so the pieces aren't uniform. The thicker staves were in the middle of the bunch, while the thinner ones were on the outside.
As a result, the thin staves are more deeply toasted than the thicker staves so I have a bit of a selection.

I haven't tried that, but I've done 400 for 1 hour and 1.5 hours for apple wood. Both toasted and charred after toasting.
Keep in mind this is just my personal opinion but I preferred the 1 hour over 1.5 hour so I doubt I'd like the 3 hour toast. This is just speculation as I've never tried this so keep that in mind.

But I still prefer the raw apple wood for delicate spirits over any toast or char. Others may disagree and that's a good thing but I've found my results to match OtisT's results. I'd defer to him on "wooding" as he probably have more experience and I'm sort of following his foot steps but I've done this myself and agree with him. I've tested many of his experiments and found similar results and haven't really commented but generally agree with his results. I probably should comment in his thread with positive reinforcement but haven't done so yet. Maybe after a couple of more tests so I'm sure of my results...

I presently have apple brandy on raw apple, 400F toasted apple, 400F then charred apple. I prefer the raw apple if that's worth anything.
If you want to "wood" on toasted or charred apple, sample it weekly/monthly and adjust as needed to not over wood it.

OK that apple jack brandy has been on wood for a week and I can already tell it's going to be the best I've made. By a long shot.
So I tested my 12 gallon batch and the S.g is below 1.000 so I siphoned off 5 gallons to jack outside over the next week weather permitting.

The 5 gallons I put aside for wine is still at 1.020. I'm thinking that might not make it to the wine bottle lol.

Very nice! Love hearing success stories like this.

cayars wrote: ↑Wed Feb 05, 2020 3:27 pm Very nice! Love hearing success stories like this.

Bud, that brandy is massive apple with this crazy toffied candy-apple finish that lasts for ages. I have no idea how it happened. The still is different, the apples are different, the fermentation process is different and the yeast I used is different.

I tried my 12 month old calvados I made the other day. I used to think it was liquid gold. Now I'm sort of embarrassed because I foisted that crap on people

So the next batch I'm jacking was fermented on juice and not pulp like the last one. We'll soon see if that is a factor.

Jacking vs a strip run helps you hold a lot more flavor which is why I like to do it.

-20C/-4F outside. Colder then the average chest freezer. It's applejack time!

Edit: well it got down to -30C / -22F last night. So the applejack is sitting at around 30% abv. It's going to be cold again tonight so I'm racking more cider off and doing another batch.

I put the last of my cider outside tonight to begin the jacking process. I takes a night to really chill down, and will be ready for jacking when the next cold spell arrives.

I use my 5 gallon pail press to strain out the ice and it collects into a lower pail that I separate with spacers. This means I can jack 5 gallons of cider at a time, and usually put the concentrate through enough cycles that ice no longer forms.

After a cold night, I break up the ice in the pail, and then pour it into the strainer where it sits all day. In the evening, I transfer the strainer to an empty pail, and bring it into the unheated garage overnight where it sits at around freezing point. I tilt the strainer as I find it drains better that way, and in the morning I am usually left with a strainer full of almost white snow.

It's amazing how my stockpile of cider has shrunk down to a little less than one carboy of dark amber liquid. I could almost run it in one still charge.

Rather than start a new thread I may just aswell add to this one.

Yesterday I went and bought 3 buckets of apples @ $8 each so 3 different varieties and no idea as I'm no green thumb. Anyway got them home and thought well do I built a cider press or just give it a go in my corona mill. Well I did use the corona mill and it did take a few hours to process. Used 96 apples and got close to 8 litres of pure juice. The SG was 1065 so I thought well as I want to make a cider I may aswell aim for a 5% one rahter than the shed bombs I've made in the past where 6 stubbies will put you on the floor literately.

So this morning put around 8 litres of rainwater in my fermenter and added the 8 litres of apple juice which got the SG to 1035, now as the fermenter was only 1/2 full I inverted 2kg's of sugar and added that. Topped it up to the full 30 litres and the SG came out to 1041 which was what I was aiming for. I rehydrated some EC1118 yeast and as I had a packet of DAP left over from a previous cider run put that in. I connected the 2 temp gauges and setup the 100 watt light to warm up the fermenter to 28C which is where it will stay for the duration of the ferment. Now I just use a micromite and a 10 amp 240 volt relay to control the light depending on the 2 temps. One temp sensor is at the base and the other is close to the top of the fermenter.

I have found keeping the temp constant thru the ferment makes a nice cider and as it can get cool over night that simple setup I made does the job nicely.

Cheers Bryan

OK well I ran the first batch of apple jack I made from pressed juice (not pulp) and using my modified pot head.
Happy to say there is no iron flavor or corrosion or black gunk

But... I can already tell that this batch isn't going to be as flavorful as the batch I made by fermenting on the pulp. It looks like fermenting on the pulp is the way to go if you have some method of removing it or your still is OK with running it.

I took the wood out of my first batch of apple brandy that was fermented on pulp as I'm happy with the amount of character the apple wood has given to the brandy and I don't want to overdo it.

I added the wood to the apple brandy I'm making from fermented juice, and finished off running the apple jack. I have a little left over that I'll add to the feints when I get a chance.

All up, I have a gallon of apple brandy made from juice sitting at 65/66 abv. I might water it down a tad to 63 abv what do y'all think?

I noticed apple wood isn't as tannic as oak. The other apple brandy is at 63, and it's drawing vanillins out of the wood which is nice.

As we head into apple season, I'm thinking I could blend some apple brandy with some of my Odin's Rye Bread recipe???

rubberduck71 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:38 am As we head into apple season, I'm thinking I could blend some apple brandy with some of my Odin's Rye Bread recipe???

Apple rye?

Sounds interesting.

Geoff

This year I'm going to try fermenting on pulp and skipping the press completely. My still doesn't do chunky wash so I'm going to try and freeze the fermented juice out of the pulp.

Now that it's cold enough outside I'm going to begin the process using a 5 gallon pail I drilled holes in so I can transfer the frozen mush into it and allow the wine to drain off.

Here is the pulp after it has been in the strainer at 3 degrees Celsius for 24 hours. Not too bad.

The collected liquid is cloudy, but free from chunks. I'll post a photo of the next batch when I put it in the strainer.

Usually I transfer the material when it is partially frozen, but I ran into an issue with this one because it's a solid block. These 5 gallon pails are tapered slightly which means it doesn't fit in the strainer upside down!

From my first pail of mush, it looks like I got half a pail of liquid which is reasonably close to the amount of volume I would expect from pressing.
There is quite a bit of ice in with the pulp if you look carefully, and when I tasted it, it was pretty close to plain frozen water.

I'm hoping the second batch doesn't collapse all over the garage floor as it thaws. You can see in the photo the white stuff on top. That was originally the bottom of the pail and what you are seeing is the liquid draining down through the ice and pulp lattice, leaving white ice behind.

OK the second batch has slowly made its way into the strainer phew! This is what the first cycle liquid looks like. It's hard to tell here but it's an intense yellow color compared to what I'm used to. Almost like antifreeze lol! BTW, that is an ice cap you see, not pulp.

The second cycle begins. Things are much clearer, and the ice crystals have formed nice large flakes: