Hey, first time post to this forum, but not my first time running a still..
I've recently been challenged to make some alcohol with some pistachio nuts I got from a mates orchard. But, looking around it doesn't look like it's been done before , closest being this guy trying to do peanuts:
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the process, how to begin, whether the skins/husks would have any use in the process, maybe if anyone's tried some nut liqueur before so I can know what sort of flavour to aim for... Anything really...
So maybe 8% sugar content, which is of course very low. Maybe an extra percent locked in the starch if you can break that down.. my first thought from that would be to boil the nuts in water for a while to help break them down, then ferment it off with a neutral sugar like dextrose to get some alcohol to form.
After distillation maybe leave some whole nuts in the distillate for a couple weeks to infuse, strain, and thicken it up with some glucose and sugar
Make a cream liqueur. Look up recipes for Pistachio milk. Dilute the pistachio milk with clarified clover honey and alcohol. The final liqueur will be a light green or yellow color, opaque, and go quite well in lighter coffees (save the thicker cream liqueurs for black).
The still is not a liar. Mash and ferment quality is 99.9% of your performance.
So it's been 3 weeks or so, and here's how my crack's gone so far. Not too bad actually.
I've left some raw, and some roasted crushed nuts in different bottles to infuse. The colours are pretty good, the roasted nuts have a sort of opaque thick pale honey/mustard/lemon colour, nowhere near as visually appealing as the raw nuts. They were quite interesting to watch. To start with they had a reddish pink colour, almost exactly like guava juice, but that has since mellowed out to become a beautiful rich dark golden colour, almost similar a good bourbon.
The roasted nuts have a strong roasted pistachio aroma, and the raw nuts have a more creamy, sort of less nutty, quite subtle smell.
Now that's all well and good you say, but how does it taste? Well, they're definitely not ready yet is the first thing I'm gonna say. But they're doing alright.
To start with I screwed up by using some sub par alcohol, from near the end of a run, so there was a bit of an off flavour to start with. But the good news is that the nuts seem to have taken that offness away quite well. In return, well, the nuts have given me pretty much exactly what I expected. The roasted nuts mix tastes like roasted nuts, and the raw nuts mix tastes like raw nuts. I'd have to say the roasted nuts taste better to me, but that's not to say the raw nuts don't taste alright.
Anyway, I reckons they need a bit more time, so I'll probably give them another month or so, then filter the crap out and see that I've ended up with.
And I'm almost certain MDH is bang on the money with a bit of honey. I've never been a fan of cream liqueurs (dairy and alcohol, surely that's a golden recipe to go meet ralph, if you know what I mean) but just a straight creme liqueur could be just right.
I made a mushroom brandy once. The mushroom only added to taste and was not fermented. UJSSM with mushrooms instead of grains. I think something like this should be possible with grinded pistachio nuts, right?
Odin.
"Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself." by Buddhist filosofer Daisaku Ikeda.
We planted a male pistachio tree back about 10 or 12 years ago. Can't remember. But after it survived a couple years we then planted a female pistachio downwind some 30 feet away. Years have come and gone, a few random nuts showing the last couple years. This year the female produced in earnest for the very first time. After researching pistachios a little, it seems that they usually mature around September.
Naturally they will al be eaten, except a lucky handful maybe, to flavor some experimental 'pistachio cream liqueur' as MDH suggested here, 12 years ago in this thread.
1161774 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 09, 2012 12:52 am
So it's been 3 weeks or so, and here's how my crack's gone so far. Not too bad actually.
I've left some raw, and some roasted crushed nuts in different bottles to infuse. The colours are pretty good, the roasted nuts have a sort of opaque thick pale honey/mustard/lemon colour, nowhere near as visually appealing as the raw nuts. They were quite interesting to watch. To start with they had a reddish pink colour, almost exactly like guava juice, but that has since mellowed out to become a beautiful rich dark golden colour, almost similar a good bourbon.
The roasted nuts have a strong roasted pistachio aroma, and the raw nuts have a more creamy, sort of less nutty, quite subtle smell.
Now that's all well and good you say, but how does it taste? Well, they're definitely not ready yet is the first thing I'm gonna say. But they're doing alright.
To start with I screwed up by using some sub par alcohol, from near the end of a run, so there was a bit of an off flavour to start with. But the good news is that the nuts seem to have taken that offness away quite well. In return, well, the nuts have given me pretty much exactly what I expected. The roasted nuts mix tastes like roasted nuts, and the raw nuts mix tastes like raw nuts. I'd have to say the roasted nuts taste better to me, but that's not to say the raw nuts don't taste alright.
Anyway, I reckons they need a bit more time, so I'll probably give them another month or so, then filter the crap out and see that I've ended up with.
And I'm almost certain MDH is bang on the money with a bit of honey. I've never been a fan of cream liqueurs (dairy and alcohol, surely that's a golden recipe to go meet ralph, if you know what I mean) but just a straight creme liqueur could be just right.
Sounds like it turned out pretty decent anyway, but if you want to experiment more, do some googling on "Nocino" as I think that process would be the closest to what your trying to do.
, closest being this guy trying to do peanuts:
