Home Distiller

1/2 fill a 23L bucket with topped, tailed and sliced Feijoas; about 2 standard plastic supermarket bags full (pre-cutting), and pour 2.5 Kg sugar over them

Sit for 24-48 hours until the sugar has draw out the juice and formed a syrup pour 4L of hot (NOT BOILING) water over the fruit and stir to dissolve any remaining sugar.

Top up to a couple of inches from the top and pitch with EC-1118.

Work out to dry punching the cap every few days - took about 2 weeks in my cold kitchen

Strained into another clean bucket and let settle for 24 hours.

Ran it slow and as de-tuned and slow as i can with my bought 'reflux' still.

Now, Here's where it gets interesting:
- run started really slow in drips not a broken stream
- within 40-50ml i couldn't smell or taste heads and it had a POWERFUL feijoa taste
- THE ENTIRE RUN tasted brilliantly of Feijoas! (drips on my finger every 1/2 hour or so)
- I stopped at around 88C and while i could taste it was into tails, i would still have drunk it - it tasted good! And i have a thing about nasty tails tastes so that really surprised me.
- when i emptied my still 36 hours later the dunder smelt like feijoa heaven - just about everything i run has funky smelling leftovers (with swmbo hates!) but this was great. When I do my 1.5 spirit run today I'm going to keep some feijoa dunder and use it to start two new barrels with the very last feijoas of the season.

I have never, bar none, had a run that tasted and smelled so good, right across the run before and after.
Normally when i do a strip run i wouldn't stick my nose in the gallon jug i collect in for love nor money, but this one is something else

I'll report back in a few days after my spirit run, but if any of you guys have access to these fruit give them a go!

Sounds awesome!

We don't have Feijoas here, but we do have our local strain of guayavas (guavas) year round and quite reasonably priced. I'm going to have to give your recipe a go with those, because I just love our local guayavas.

Yeah, back when I made up a bunch of plum brandy, I found the vast majority of the flavor in the tails, and I ran them out to about 20%, if I remember correctly. But it was like pure fruit flavor there, really nice.

Thanks for the recipe.

Good to hear Bob!

I did my spirit run yesterday.

Set aside about 150-200 ml fores to start my fire
200ml heads - feints
1.7L Hearts
1L tails for feints

Proofed my hearts to 40% and ended up with 2.87L of Beautiful white-dog feijoa schnaps. AMAZING fruity flavour.

Going to keep some of the dunder from this run to re-run all the feints i've been collecting with.

Nice work frozenthunderbolt god that was good timing Is it up there with 42below ? So you keeped skin on ?

Daza

Havn't tried 42 below feijoa - stronger taste though i think.

It's bloody good if i do say so myself.

Most of the skin on most of the fruit i took one curving slice off that removed the top and bottom and one strip off the side. then cut them into 3-4 bits.

Figured the tannin didnt matter in the wash as i was distilling it so it wouldn't carry over.

If making wine for drinking not distilling i remove all trace of the skin.

NIce If you had been on the job a few years ago Bacardi might of offered you 35 millon

recipe sounds real good.

Kiwikeg wrote:recipe sounds real good.

Cheers Kiwi!
Give it a go next season and if you like it give it a hat tip for tried and true - i really think its a winner
I've found that maximum fruit flavour comes out at about 30-36%abv (it is 'hot' but not 'heads hot' at higher percentages)
For those that don't drink neat spirits, it is very nice mixed with cold apple juice and a twist of lime, or with dry lemonade (I don't like things too sweet). I suspect it would also make for a different and good mohito - i can imagine mint pairing nicely with it.

I will definitely have to give this a go. I have a huge feijoa tree in my back yard. I get about 2 large grocery bags of fruit dropping every week during season.

Tokoroa_Shiner wrote:I will definitely have to give this a go. I have a huge feijoa tree in my back yard. I get about 2 large grocery bags of fruit dropping every week during season.

Glad to hear it - you wont regret it!

Did 2 feijoa washes this season. Ran both through my bubbler on 4 plates, came out very fejoia flavored
Its very nice when mixed with shweeps classic dry lemonade.

I scooped out the flesh of about 3 new world bags full last night. Got about 5kg of flesh. In the freezer till I get more. Does the skin add any undesirable flavours? I've got lots more and wonder if I should not worry about scooping them. ( I get about a bag full every day in season)

I've never made it myself, but a workmate, who made a very nice drop, told me he leaves the skins in for a few days, but not for the whole ferment, saying that some time on the skin adds good flavour, but too much overpowers it. Mind you, he was making wine, not schnapps.

Scoop or dont scoop? there's a shipload of flavor either way.
Frozenthunderbolt I believe in the OP top, tailed and sliced.
which is how I did this seasons washes.
But if I was freezing them for later use I would definitely scoop before freezing....

Scoop it is then. Haha

Kiwikeg wrote:Did 2 feijoa washes this season. Ran both through my bubbler on 4 plates, came out very fejoia flavored
Its very nice when mixed with shweeps classic dry lemonade.

That's the one - best way to drink it unless you are using it to fortify feijoa wine.

NZChris wrote:I've never made it myself, but a workmate, who made a very nice drop, told me he leaves the skins in for a few days, but not for the whole ferment, saying that some time on the skin adds good flavour, but too much overpowers it. Mind you, he was making wine, not schnapps.

For wine, that is spot on.
For the spirits i feel that the skins give it more feijoa flavour (i wouldn't drink the 'wine' that I make to distill this).
For freezing, I would suggest top, tail and slice, then freeze the slices.

From your description of the strip run it sounds like the Cognac method of stripping to 30% in the collection jar, then a spirit run to aging strength could be worth a try. The method retains a lot of flavour.

A pomace ferment using the backset might make a fortifying spirit good enough for the wine.

Something I've just tried with grapes, is adding grappa to unfermented fresh juice, to make a sweet desert wine, Jeropiga at 18%. That could be worth an experiment with feijoas.

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone with too many feijoas and our trees are only producing enough for the family.

Well if it adds more feijoa flavour to the end spirit then I may just top tail and slice them. I've got more to pick up later on. Figure I may as well use them for something other then filling the bin

It's awesome; falling in love with it all over again as I did my first run of it for the year last weekend

I now have ~20kg of feijoa pulp sitting in my freezer. Just waiting till I can get a still sorted. Hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks I can start on my build

I haven't done this with feijoas, but it works with other fruit.

Do whatever it takes to free as much juice from the cells as possible, then freeze it.

Thaw it dripping through a coffee filter, keeping about a third. The rest is great for the kids & spouses on a hot summer day.

Add brandy made from the same fruit. Add simple syrup to sweeten if you prefer.

Just doing a wash at the moment, I scooped, froze, threw in fermenter with 1.5kg of lme and some vinters harvest SN9 & CY17. It had been going about a week, so I strained off the pulp today. Tastes good, if you can imagine it without the yeast, fruity. Not to sure how I will run it yet. I will probably strip it, do another ferment, strip that then do a maceration in the low wines, then spirit run it, detuned column or pot, toe-may-toe. Too-mar-too......

Do it as a 1.5 run. Strip one wash, then add everything back to the empty still and fill to your mark with more wash to dilute it.

Nice, I can't think of any reason I shouldn't give that a go.

Thanks FTB.

It's that season again. This season it is FTB, just as his opening post says, but 50ltr. Also have a freezer full for another few washes

Nice. My tree was cut right back to make way for a new fence. So no fruit for me this year :-(

I have just started a 20l wash.
2 litres of raw sugar
2 litres of molasses
+-2 kgs of feijoas topped and tailed (half sliced half blended).

Cant wait to try it!

Haha, I scorched the shit out of my first one!

I have a theory I'm testing this season: that the flavour and aroma that is carried over in distillation actually comes from the skins.
I've done up a bucket with minimal skin and a little sugar as if I were making wine, and another that is just Skins water and sugar.

I'm going to run them both once and do a side beside test. I know that tannins from the skin won't carry over (which is what makes wine with too much skin in it undrinkable)