Good morning, afternoon evening

[Ghotia]

Hello,
Every so often I have googled a question on distillation and come to this site so I thought that I should try to join the forum.

I live in New Zealand and started distilling about six months ago because people kept giving me fruit. I have made (hard) cider for years because it hasn't been possible to get good cider in NZ until very recently. This year in particular people kept giving me apples, then other fruit. I have also infused fruit liqueurs for a number of years, particularly a plum one which I think I have got right, but buying vodka was becoming expensive.
So
I put a toe in the water and bought an Still Spirits air still. After feeling pleased with the turbo yeast vodka I produced I read on here that I should forget that and use the Birdwatcher's recipe. As a result I made something better, more easily, so thank you for that.
I made a rather nice gin with native leaves which has proved very popular with my friends (I seem to be getting more of those recently!) but wanted to stretch myself a bit. I found a Turbo500 condenser being sold cheap in a pawn shop then bought a boiler and an alembic dome. I realise that these are not the best pieces of equipment in the world but they are considerably cheaper than better stills and I am still cautious about spending too much money on what could be a passing phase. Now that I have the Turbo 500 stuff I don't think that it will be.

So what have I produced, you may be asking yourself, if you have managed to wade through this drivel.

The gin is going well. My wife is a professional landscape architect who specialises in design with natives so I am getting help from her about suitable local botanicals. Māori friends are also helping with flavours and uses of natives. One thing that I have discovered is that dried jackfruit, which isn't a native of NZ, seems to stretch out the other flavours. I have no idea what is going on chemically.
I have made a fair bit of apple brandy and am learning how to oak that. One friend particularly likes that, though I am not sure about it. There is plenty of room for improvement. Other distillations have included ouzo but I prefer a star anise and fennel concoction I put together. I am currently fermenting some pears that will be distilled and making a sugar wash will lots of raisins to use to make some recipes from a book on absinthe that I have been lent.

The infusions have included quince. This is a marmite product, people either love it or hate it. I will sweeten some with juice extracted from the fruit used in the infusion that had sugar added to it. I have done pear infusions, one in which I put far too much cinnamon, and peach infusions. I experiment with the herbs and spices in these things, some of which are successful and some less so. I am rather chuffed (pleased) that people seem to think that I am quite good at this. I seem to have a good sense of what will work and what won't. However, I am fully aware that I am a novice and that my learning curve has a long way to go before it starts to flatten out. As a result it is unlikely that I will be contributing to this forum for a while. I haven't reached the point of even knowing what questions to ask, let alone whether they are sensible ones.

Thank you for your patience if you have read all this.