Keep in mind, and as will become glaringly obvious, I am very much a novice distiller. However, it was late summer, and not even the birds were eating the apples, due to having plenty of other food sources, because of the fairly wet, green summer. Anyway, I collected as many apples as I could with what little spare time I had. Now, two mistakes I made here. Firstly, I should have started collecting earlier, and gotten more apples. Secondly, I didn't record how many apples I collected. I want to say somewhere close to 200kg (440 pounds), but I could be way off. I have one apple tree on my property, my parents have one on theirs, and a nearby vineyard I'm friendly with has a patch of two or three real big trees. The first two trees, I plucked mostly off of the branches, and any damage from wildlife was fresh and easy to cut around come processing time. The apples I collected from the vineyard, for whatever reason, had mostly started to fall off the trees, so the majority I collected were from the ground. I reckon these trees had already been collected from, but who knows. Long story short, most of the apples had that deep sugary smell, heading towards what you would call rotten (but not unpleasant), as opposed to a fresh "appley" smell.
Next, was to get to juicin'. I'd bought a stainless steel juice press off of ebay, and to be honest I had no clue what I was doing. I just dumped the apples in whole, twisted down on the press, and fuck-all happened. I cursed dodgy Chinese manufacturers and gave up. But, with a healthy reminder to myself that I am an idiot, I did a few minutes of research and used the thing as intended. Firstly, I cut up the apples into quarters / eighths, discarding any yucky bits to the chickens. Secondly, I put the pieces into a bucket and mashed down upon them with a semi-clean wooden fence post. Thirdly, lining the press with a muslin cloth, I then filled it with my apple mush and lo-and-behold, I twisted down and a healthy amount of fresh smelling juice sprung forth. Rinse and repeat, for about two solid evening of manual labour, I was rewarded with a bit under 25 liters (6.6 gallons) of juice.
Now, I distinctly remember taking a gravity reading here, but I can't for the life of me find where I recorded it. Lesson learned! I am somewhat confident it was about 1.066. I added a packet of EC-1118 yeast, and left it. I knew enough to know that this fermentation was not going to happen in a hurry, so I left it undisturbed for three weeks. The first time I checked, it was 1.03. I checked a week later, 1.03. Convincing myself it had stalled, I ordered two more packets of EC-1118. When they arrived, I activated them and prepared to pour them into the fermenter. Luckily, I checked the gravity again and it read 0.95. I used the yeast for something else, and stuck to protocol for once, leaving the fermenter alone for another month.
The stripping run was fairly uneventful. It was however, sinking in that I did not have enough juice to begin with. I ran my 25L pot still until the distillate was cloudy, discarding about 100ml of foreshots. I ended up with about 3 liters (0.8 gallons?). Due to life reasons, these low wines sat on the shelf for another month and a bit.
Now, I knew this spirit run good potentially be a little dicey. 3 liters in a 25 liter boiler is not ideal. My elements are covered so I wasn't too worried about that, however it does make my still very top-heavy. So I strapped it to the roof beams best I could, and used some clamps to make sure it didn't topple over as the boiler emptied. Turns out she was solid, and did not fall over. I discarded fuck-all foreshots, as I'm told this is where the flavour hides. I took conservative cuts, about 200ml each. I ran her down to about 65-70% ABV, I knew there was barely anything left in the boiler at this point, and it wasn't worth the risk for what little tails I would get. I left the jars air overnight (possibly two), and starting in the middle, I tasted, took notes, and blended the night away.
From my notes, I noted baked apple (shocker), "good" apple, "nice applyness", "a bit weird" and "this should mellow". My tasting and blending skills have a lot of room for improvement, obviously. Not being totally off-put by any of the jars, I kept everything, and mixed them all together. I put a piece of very lightly toasted French Oak, from a red wine barrel, into the jar. This is it about two weeks later;
Planning on tasting it again at Christmas. I you've made it this far, I really appreciate you reading and not judging my stupidity too harshly. Any comments or advice are totally welcome. Cheers!