My first pear brandy

hren · Post by **hren** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:37 am

Hi all. New guy here, been figuring out this whole distilling thing for the past few months. My intro thread is here if anyone's curious - http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 27&t=54913.

In any case, running the second batch of pear brandy through right now. Here's what I did:

Went to my corner store and got just over 30 pounds of a-little-too-ripe bosch pears. Went with bosch based on intuition - I'm planing on oaking this brandy and thought they'd produce a more hearty taste. In any case, I don't really know what I'm doing and had to pick some place to start. Looks like most people use bartlet pears, so maybe it wasn't a right call, or maybe it was.

Ran all of them through a juicer - I have a heavy duty juicer, so that didn't take much more than 15 minutes or so. Didn't bother taking out the pits - there's flavor there, and boiling takes care of cyanide. Threw all of it, pulp, juice, and all into a stock pot and boiled to disinfect. What I got was a real thick pear sauce. I was thinking of throwing all of it into a single 7-gallon fermenter, but wound up splitting between two. Added (tap) water, red star champagne yeast, sealed the lids and went on with life.

For the first few days, the cider smelled awesome. The fermenters live in my living room, so they're easy to monitor. Then I started getting a lot of rotten-egg smell. Did a bunch of panicked reading, opened up the fermenters, threw in some tomato paste. Next day, the stink went away and the really nice pear cider smell returned. I congratulated myself on a good recovery and waited. The ferment was slow - all in all it took almost three weeks to stop bubbling and another couple of days to clear. The cider came out totally dry with a nice pear aroma to it. There's enough of it for 3 runs of my 4-gallon still.

First run was yesterday. I partially packed my column with copper mesh and, after cuts (I just did-em, after lettin' the spirits air out in jars) I got just over a liter of 100-proof. Damn, there was a lot of heads. Even after tossing the first 100ml as foreshots, I got 150 more with that nice floral acetone smell. The stuff I kept and blended tastes pretty nice and smells clean and fruity.

Just threw the tails back into the still and running the second batch. I've packed the column some more - I was aiming for 120 proof or so for ageing. Still learning how to use my equipment. Once done with this run, I still have enough cider for one more.

Worth mentioning that it's looking like a MUCH bigger yield than what I was expecting. Didn't think there was so much sugar in those pears. I was expecting to wind up with maybe 1.5 liters of drinkable stuff, and it looks like I'm getting almost twice that. Crazy.

I was going to age it in glass with one of those french-oak heavy toast infusion spirals, but this is where I don't have any experience. I've read everything there is to read on here about oak and ageing and I'm still confused. I have an experiement running with some grape brandy (made from cheap wine) and all sorts of chips and spirals, but it's too early to really tell.

So I leave you with this. What would you age a pear brandy on? I'm definitely looking to age - I'm not a fan of the white shnapps-like stuff.

Thanks!

NZChris · Post by **NZChris** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:22 am

I'd double distill, then put it on oak at 62.5%. I have done single runs for friends, but never been impressed with the results.

You could try some on pear wood.

hren · Post by **hren** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:32 am

Advice taken.

I've sped up this run to get through it faster, since I'll be double-distilling anyways. I figure at this rate I'll end up with something like 80 proof low wines. Then I should dilute it down to what 40 proof? 60 proof? with tap water and run again. Am I getting this right?

I'm worried that I'll wind up getting too close to neutral and losing all the taste...

hren · Post by **hren** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:39 pm

Ok. Done with second batch, on to batch #3. I threw out the foreshots, and kept the tails in till I got to something like 60-proof this time around, since I'm gonna be re-distilling it anyways. Got about another half-gallon all in.

Don't know if I'll get to the spirit run today - then again, I'm stuck at home with a cold, and not really capable of doing anything productive...

Post by **FullySilenced** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 2:14 pm

Pear smell and taste is in the heads for me... but its always turned out really light flavor wise overall ...

FS

hren · Post by **hren** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 2:35 pm

The low wines (I wound up with about 1 and 1/3 gallons have a nice aroma to them. We'll see what I get when I re-distill.

NZChris · Post by **NZChris** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:13 pm

It seems I'm a bit late. I run most fruit down to where I don't need to dilute with water, sometimes below 30%.

Post by **jedneck** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:21 pm

I did a pear run this year. Started with fresh pressed pear cider and yeast. Did 2 five gallon ferments. Ran the first one and kept a pint of hearts and collecred deeeep into the tails. I macerated dried ginger in the feints from the first run and added it to the second run for a ginger brandy. They are both still ageing on used bourbon oak. Both a coming along nicely and need more time. I find both pear and ginger flavour is towards the heads. I will defanatly be looking for pears again.
Posted wit NZchris

hren · Post by **hren** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:37 pm

Arright, starting the spirit run now. The low wines were at 35 percent or so, diluted them down a bit to below 30 and they're heating up as we speak.

hren · Post by **hren** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 5:27 pm

NZChris wrote:I'd double distill, then put it on oak at 62.5%. I have done single runs for friends, but never been impressed with the results.

You could try some on pear wood.

Just wanted to sat thank you for this advice! I'm getting to the hearts of the spirit run now, and what's coming out is pure magic at 140 proof. Much better than the stuff I had the first time around.

Thank you!

hren · Post by **hren** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:02 pm

Ok. Done blending after giving 'em a few hours to air out. Just under 2.5 liters @ 70%. Two of them are ageing on oak (french, heavy toast) and half a liter's staying white for now till I figure out what to do with it. Tastes absolutely wonderful. Thanks, everyone, for your help. Over and out.

Post by **dstaines** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:15 pm

Hren if you don't want to have to bother with boiling and then cooling them in the future you can try adding sulfi, no tes to the must/mash before you add the yeast. Get some Camden tablets and crush up 1-2 tabs for every two gallons of fruit mash and mix that it. Most bacteria and wild yeast will be surpressed by the sulfites, but modern wine yeasts have been bred to tolerate it for exactly this purpose. Lets them get enough of a head start that they can surpress the nasty beastliest on their own once the colony is established, no boiling necessary.

NZChris · Post by **NZChris** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:44 pm

dstaines wrote:Hren if you don't want to have to bother with boiling and then cooling them in the future you can try adding sulfi, no tes to the must/mash before you add the yeast. Get some Camden tablets and crush up 1-2 tabs for every two gallons of fruit mash and mix that it. Most bacteria and wild yeast will be surpressed by the sulfites, but modern wine yeasts have been bred to tolerate it for exactly this purpose. Lets them get enough of a head start that they can surpress the nasty beastliest on their own once the colony is established, no boiling necessary.

Sulfur is a prick to get rid of and stinks up your brandy something awful. I've never done it, because my research told me not to, so I'm not speaking from experience.

Post by **dstaines** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:57 pm

It can end up in your brandy if not used correctly, and once its there yeah hard to get rid of I imagine. But the sulfites added to the must will gas off over time, by the time its cleared enough to run there shouldn't be much more left than is produced by the yeast themselves naturally. Having copper in the vapor path also reacts with the sulfites and pulls them out, reducing the residual sulfur in the distillate. The still I have was originally all SS, and I can attest that the sulfur carried over tasted truly bad. Since adding a little under a square foot of copper foil to the vapor path everything ive made has tasted very clean

NZChris · Post by **NZChris** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:29 pm

As distillers we are not fermenting in a way that benefits from sulfur addition, so advising newbies to use it may cause them more problems than it solves. If you don't put it in, you don't have to get it out.

If I want a drink with the smell of sulfur, I'll take a bottle of wine and go sit in a geothermal hot spring near Rotorua

Matt86 · Post by **Matt86** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:57 am

Ive distilled wines Ive made with sulphites - never even noticed it.

hren · Post by **hren** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:04 am

I'd love to experiment with a no-boil method. Can't be good for taste, right? Is sulfates pretty much the only option? I do have plenty of copper mesh on the vapor path...

Post by **dstaines** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:11 pm

Yeah I gotta disagree with you there NZChris, respectfully of course. I wouldn't want to boil my fruit mashes to sanitize for several reasons: 1) they are THICK, easy to scorch and a lot of effort to keep it from doing so, 2) it has the potential to change or affect the bright ripe fruit flavor. Think of a fresh peach off the tree vs canned peaches - not the same. 3) It adds 2-3 hours of work that I don't see as necessary, to heat it up gently and then cool it back down to pitching temp. On the other hand, adding sulfites knocks vectors for potential infection and off-flavors back on their heels long enough for the pitched yeast to get establish dominance, without needing to sanitize or sterilize by heat. It also protects against oxidation, which for a whole fruit mash is important because of the need to periodically open the fermenter and knock down the pomace cap. The small amount that's added, as well as the sulfur compounds naturally produced by the yeast, will be cleaned up by distilling with copper in the vapor path. That part I can speak to with direct experience, having distilled sulfited with both with and without copper in the still head. I have had zero issues with sulfur in the brandy since adding just a small amount of copper to my SS still. So by adding sulfites I make my brew-day shorter, preserve the flavor profile that I want, and ensure a healthy ferment with nice clean flavors. Win win win.

Tokoroa_Shiner · Post by **Tokoroa_Shiner** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:29 pm

I don't see any need to boil or add sulphites. Just juice em and add a healthy yeast starter.

Post by **dstaines** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:35 pm

Toko you're right a good sized yeast starter accomplishes the same thing. I only don't do that because I typically use the freeze dried EC1118 which is bred and packaged to be sprinkled into the must dry, and because I already have jar of Camden tablets for making wine. Making a starter is another added step but not a hard one. If I had no sulfites on hand that's what I would do

Post by **Danespirit** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 1:21 pm

I fermented some apples last summer. I just took out the core with kernels and chopped them.
Added a small amount of sugar and use normal bakers yeast.
It fermented nicely away for a little more than a week.
There were a lot of heads as i distilled in my pot, knowing that on forehand i had enough for two charges to distill.
Turned out really nice, with a fine note of apple flavour.
Guess it is not even necessary to cut out the core, but i did it anyway.
Can't remember the SG..and distilled into the tails.
Edit: No cooking and sulfides..but i added a few B vitamin tablets (as i always do), yeast seem to love it.

hren · Post by **hren** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 1:41 pm

Would adding some pectase help with the heads? I got a lot of acetone from my pears and the previous apple run was pretty bad too (though not as bad)

hren · Post by **hren** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 1:45 pm

And by "bad" I mean "awesome" but a frustrating amount of heads.

Post by **dstaines** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 2:14 pm

I didn't think that the pectinase would affect acetone in the heads, if that was the actual culprit. I thought that it would help to reduce methanol though, since my understanding is that much of the methanol in fruit wine and brandy comes from metabolism of the pectin in the skins. I wasn't totally sure though, but I did find this article studying exactly that:

https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/elsevier/in ... qrazZj6lLS" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The result was that treating whole fruit apple mash with pectinase reduced methanol to a statistically significant degree, but had no significant effect on n-propanol, iso-butanol and iso-amyl alcohol. So it does reduce one component of the heads, just not acetone, and doesn't do anything for the fusel alcohols in the tails.

Post by **Danespirit** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 2:38 pm

Nice find dstaines..informative reading.
I am not as experienced in fermentation as many of the masters are in here, but my thoughts were the natural acids in fruits as apples would have the major part in the relativly large amount of heads.
During the distilling process , they will convert to other unwanted chemicals.
By adding sodium bicarbonate, you will neutralize some of those acids, thus reducing the amount of heads.
Still fruit fermentations would be prone to give a larger amount of heads, than a normal sugar wash.
Maybe someone with more insight in fermentation would comment on this?

Matt86 · Post by **Matt86** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 12:11 am

Danespirit wrote:Nice find dstaines..informative reading.
I am not as experienced in fermentation as many of the masters are in here, but my thoughts were the natural acids in fruits as apples would have the major part in the relativly large amount of heads.
During the distilling process , they will convert to other unwanted chemicals.
By adding sodium bicarbonate, you will neutralize some of those acids, thus reducing the amount of heads.
Still fruit fermentations would be prone to give a larger amount of heads, than a normal sugar wash.
Maybe someone with more insight in fermentation would comment on this?

But those esters in the heads are also the source of the fruit flavours and aromas.
Bicarb treatment is supposed to help convert esters back into ethanol - reducing heads. But for a fruit mash that sounds like heresy!

Post by **dstaines** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:15 am

Matt is right, treating low wines from an all fruit mash stripping run with bicarbonate would reduce heads but at the extreme expense of the flavor of the spirit. The best way to reduce heads in brandy making is to make tighter cuts. We're after quality here not quantity

hren · Post by **hren** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 10:59 am

Ok ok. Point taken. I don't really have a good reason to complain about yield anyways. Just the engineer in my trying to over-optimize. What I do need is a bigger boiler. 4 gallons is just not doing it for me. Doing 3 stripping runs at 3.5 gallons each and one spirit run in a single day completely ate up my Sunday. Not the end of the world - I was home sick anyways, but it could have been two runs instead of 4 had my boiler been of a more reasonable size. Off to look for a bigger milk-can. And a hot-plate - a bigger milk-can is not gonna fit between my stovetop and my hood.

NZChris · Post by **NZChris** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 11:22 am

A couple of tricks I use to speed up stripping are to lag the boiler and having a drain valve. The drain valve lets me dump a charge, recharge, and get the heat back on in about seven minutes.

Another stripping trick I can set up is a preheater the same size as the boiler that fits in before the condenser. A single turn of worm through the bottom preheats the next charges and starts them distilling so there is no heatup time and cost for those charges. It could also be configured as a thumper but I haven't got around to it.

Post by **Danespirit** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 1:45 pm

dstaines wrote:Matt is right, treating low wines from an all fruit mash stripping run with bicarbonate would reduce heads but at the extreme expense of the flavor of the spirit. The best way to reduce heads in brandy making is to make tighter cuts. We're after quality here not quantity

No, i was putting a little in before the wash was run, just to adjust the PH (the apples were really sour).
But yes, i see what you mean ..think i will change that practice next summer, when it's time to harvest fruits again.

Home Distiller

My first pear brandy

My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

Re: My first pear brandy

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Re: My first pear brandy