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Hello all, just stepped in to tell you a short story about my best so far plum brandy (śliwowica, śliwka = plum).
Story:
Since last year (2014) was a hell of a year when it comes to plums (Prunus domestica italica) I've decide on making a brandy. All the plum trees in the garden was almost blue/purple from all the fruits my wife took best one to make jam and dried fruits (for baking and making kompot no, not the stuff with heroine ). I with my 3yo doughtier we were picking plums that were lying on the ground. Surely there were not best fruit for eating, a lot of wasps was flying around. Plum picking went fast in about 40 min I was packed with almost 30 kg of fruit.
Fermentation:
I've got a 45 liter HDPE barrel, I crushed plums with a fat stick (and pick few stones that I saw - most of the stones I've left in wash). Plums was very juicy and sweet, juice was dripping from my fingers when I was picking them. I've added just 0.5L of water - just enough to dissolve wine yeast. Fermentation took about a week. Plums broke down and form a cap on the top. I've used a big wine nylon bag to get as much juice as possible. I've put juice to glass 25L carboy for 2 days and racked 22L to pot still.
Distillation:
I've run it very slowly on a pot still. I was collecting to small jars (200ml in a jar). Air the jars out with coffee filter on top for a day or two. First stuff came out @ almost 60% ABV las jar was like 20%. After blending I've got 1.2L of 45% stuff that I've like. I've got like two bottles 1 is 0.5L and second is 0.7L. In Poland Śliwowica is dank from a shot glass - we are not aging it on oak - just let it sit in a bottle for half a year (longer=better), shaking it and opening once in a while.
Drinking:
Yesterday I've took first bottle to drinking we had a family gathering and it was a really great time - so every one was testing plum brandy. Smell was a bit fruity with a pinch of grass, stuff was 45% (90 proof) but was smooth like water with a great aftertaste of sweet plums. It went down so easy I was surprised it contains more then 40% alcohol (stronger then store bought vodka) it was just warming up the stomach. I drink lot of plum brandy but this one is a destroyer - absolutely the best stuff I've ever made. To bad I didn't make any photos during whole process but this year I will do that for sure.

Kaziel, almost didnt recognize you with the new avatar. Sounds like a good brandy. Hope you made some wine as plum is one of my favorites. Did you take the heart cut for your 1.2L or blend the total collection? At 22L there could not have been much more output than that is why I ask.
GA Flatwoods

That's awesome!!

Sounds fantastic! And a perfect name, too

Hello GA yeah after 4 years I've change my old picture. I've checked in my note book and actually I've collected totally 1.7L but don't know the proof on each jar. I didn't use water when mixing/blending. If my calcs are correct and after assuming 1.7L was 45% that gives me 0.77 at 100% ABV so 22L was 3.5% abv and that seems ok to me fermentation was done i cold basement and final mash was very fruity and clean probably due to low ABV. On apples and plums mix I'm hitting almost 6%.
First jar had a mix of heads and beautiful plum smell but i didn't use it. Last jar was taily and from the second I've used like half - you can call it late heads if you wish. Overall product was leaning more to tails but just a bit. After opening it last weekend you can hardly smell tails and surely there was none in taste. I use to make plum wine a while back - it wasn't me favorite. I prefer sour cherries or red/white currants for wines or maybe gooseberries. Plums will be just for brandy from now on. Maybe this year I'll try to make a batch of rye/plums any good info about mixing grains/fruit together?

Sounds great ain't never had any thang made with plum been wantin to try something gonna plant a couple trees here soon.You ever
run sum cherry and blend with that?

I don't have fair number of cherry tress to make a wash - I've had to cut some of them due to disease in 2012. This year I would definitely go for apple brandy and plums. I will buy some rye malt online and mix that with other with apples or plums - probably apples since I've got plenty of them.

Kaziel, you didn't mentioned you made low wines from the mash first and then distilled it to śliwowica. "First stuff came out @ almost 60% ABV " How? 60% is used to be deep hearts with fruit brandies on a pot still, final blended product is usually 65-68% before diluting with water.
Also your mash abv seems to be very low, maybe one week was not quite enough to ferment it out fully, especially under 20°C. Did you use pectinase?

No I did not use pectinase. As I mentioned earlier my wash was 3.5 maybe 4% maybe a bit more. It was distilled once in goose neck type still.Most of the run was like 53-48%. My wine yeast can ferment in 9deg C so i think they did the job right, anyway didn't want to wait any longer but I'm pretty sure wash was dry - I can only distill during some weekends so I've run it other ways I would have to wait like a month longer to make brandy. Paulinka not sure where you at man but my fruit washes hit 5% - maybe there was some sugar left in fruit pulp after squishing.

Get some pectinase it will help you get a better yield,I use it in all my wines.

W Pappy wrote:Get some pectinase it will help you get a better yield,I use it in all my wines.

Yes I'm aware of that fact - but I live in a middle of nowhere and only can order that on-line. I probably have one in my basement but it is outdated .

Pectinase breaks pectin down into methanol so the flavors that come over early end up in the heads jar instead of in your final blend .... unless you leave them in and don't mind the headaches.

NZChris wrote:Pectinase breaks pectin down into methanol so the flavors that come over early end up in the heads jar instead of in your final blend .... unless you leave them in and don't mind the headaches.

Pectinase does not convert all hemicellulose to methylated sugars, only a few % of them. And how much is 0,1% x 2? Next to nothing. Also, it is impossible to "take out" methanol as it is smeared all along through deep tails, even if most of it swims out with the heads. Fear from methanol-poisoning is highly overreacted these days, do you know what is the acceptable level of methanol-content in Hungarian fruit-brandy, pálinka?
1000-1350 g/hl abs ethanol. Which means that in a bottle of pálinka you will probably have 0.2 g methanol maximum. Most of the time less. It will not give you headaches, it will not make you blind etc. Because of the relative high amount of ethyl consumed by side it will not give any noticeable effect at all, even your liver won't notice it. In fact, if a pálinka does not has the fruit-specific methyl-content it shows that may be laced with grain- or sugar-spirit, and this is how pálinka-forgers get caught.

What gives headaches is a bad cut with heads, and it is not methylalcohol, it is ethylacetates, acetaldehydes etc. Also, fusel oils in tails makes an upset stomach. This is why we make cuts.

Long story short, IMHO pectinase is much more useful than it's harmful. Otherwise it would not be available and used all around, would it?

That's good to know Paulinka, especially as I might be doing a large ferment of high pectin fruit in a couple of weeks.

Well hell fellas I don"t know about all that fancy stuff, all I can say is. I use it and the stuff I make seems fine to me.

Paulinka wrote:...the acceptable level of methanol-content in Hungarian fruit-brandy, pálinka? 1000-1350 g/hl abs ethanol. Which means that in a bottle of pálinka you will probably have 0.2 g methanol maximum...

I think you missed decimal point.
1000g/hl
10g/l
2g/200ml

It means 2g of methanol in 0,5l bottke of 40% palinka. May be only 100...135g of methanol is allowed in 1hl of ethanol (as in other Central Europe countries)?

In the European Union there are methanol limits depending on the fruit.
Williams pear brandy and quince brandy are allowed to have a high methanol concentration. It's 1350g/hl pure alk. So a 0.7l bottle 40% abv is allowed to have 3.8g methanol.
In wodka only 10g/hl is allowed. That means 0.7l 40% is allowed to have 0.03g methanol.

Plum brandy: 1200g/hl
All other fruit brandies (including Obstler, Grappa, Palinka...): 1000g/hl

I found this interesting so not that I disagreed with you der wo but was interested in the process so I did a Google search in how they determine the methanol levels in alcohol. Pretty interesting read and your numbers seem to be true for the EU.