Apple flavoring

[otoothlessone]

Hey all, Not sure if this should go here or not but I need someplace to confess my sins. I should say I started my little project before joining. Have learned a lot since then. I picked a bunch of apples a couple weeks ago, not sure how much ended up being two and a half five gallon buckets. Put them and twenty five pounds of sugar in my barrel added 140 degree water, stirred a lot let it set overnight to cool down added my EC 118 yeast and it took off like crazy. so far so good I distilled it when cap fell actually not to terrible, Did the first batch with just clear wash while I was running I was reading and learned it is ok to run with pulp the second batch way better with pulp. I'm sure by this point it would be faster to list the things I did right rather than wrong. I have the stupidist question that is driving me crazy. I get no apple flavor, smell or slightest hint of apple in any way. Did I just make sugar shine? Read threw post I should say I sliced apples and rough chopped them in food processor Thanks for patience

[Fiddleford]

Cranky has alot of hidden knowledge throughout the fruit threads on apples
Unfortunately I can't direct you to the threads but they should be easy to find
When dealing with apples its not easy to get the flavor to come through when adding sugar from what I'm told
Best what I hear is to pulp the apple press the juices ferment the juice and distill that, maybe use a thumper to put the pulp into?
Spend a few hour (or days) in the fruit section

I feel for best results with a brandy it should not contain added sugar

[still_stirrin]

...Cranky has alot of hidden knowledge throughout the fruit threads on apples. Unfortunately, I can't direct you to the threads but they should be easy to find...

I think this is what you’re talking about: Cranky’s thread
ss

[cranky]

I get no apple flavor, smell or slightest hint of apple in any way.

This sort of thing comes up a lot. 2.5 buckets of apples contains about 58 pounds of apples, using 23 pounds of apples per bucket and 16 pounds of apples per gallon of juice, which is a standard figure. That gives you about 3.65 gallons of pure apple juice in the mix. Now for the record I get somewhere between 20 & 24 pounds to a bucket and as much as 2 gallons of juice per bucket, depending on the apples. so in all you had approximately 3 to 5 gallons of apple juice in your mix at 6 to 8%. So even figuring on the highest figure I came up with the most alcohol from apples in that mix is 1500ml. Of that 1500ml maybe 500ml contained apple flavor. I'm guessing based on 25#s of sugar that your total collection was somewhere around 3 gallons (11,356ml). So maybe 5 to 10% of the total collection had apple flavor.

Apple flavor is very elusive to begin with start adding sugar, water or any competing flavors and it's very difficult to get apple flavor. Now add to that that the apple flavor comes over in the heads and it's easy to miss it when you make cuts. Then there is the tendency for the flavor not to show itself for months after distilling and things get even tougher.

[otoothlessone]

Thank you very much for that Cranky. I will get back to reading and doing more research before the next batch. That formula you explained helps tremendously. I have some apple juice leftover from last year was going to try cutting a little with that, not trying to make anything in particular just felt like a splash of warm apple cider might taste good while I watch the geese head south and cuss what comes after. Thanks