Home Distiller

Hey all,
I haven't posted in a long time, nor have I distilled anything since the end of 2023. I've been mostly brewing beer.
I also make wine, and I have approx 12-13 five gallon carboys of wine of various ages (2019-2023). I've been lazy about taking care of this, we don't actually drink much wine (bring it to parties and give as gifts), and my 2018 stuff had lasted until now. On most of the carboys, the airlocks had either gone dry or been knocked off the carboy completely (probably by our cats), possibly months ago. None smell rotten, but very oxidized, nothing I can serve people.

So today I bottled around 60 bottles of wine from carboys that still tasted good, but I have around around 10 carboys that are not usable for wine. These are Syrah, Dornfelder (both red), Riesling, Muscat (both white).

Rather than just dumping them, I figure I may as well distill them and see how it turns out. I have a 50L still, so I'm thinking of doing this in 5 batches.

Would you keep the varieties separate?
Anyone have any concerns? I'll be sure to do a vinegar run since I haven't run the still in a little over a year.

Thanks in advance.

I can't smell them from here, but I would probably keep the worst and the best separate for the stripping runs and decide on what goes into the spirit runs later.

I wouldn't bother with a vinegar run unless there was a really good reason for one.

When wine really goes bad, it turns to vinegar.
If none of your carboys have turned sour, and there is ethanol in there, then get it out. To save headache, you should just mix it all together and distill the mix, probably twice. High test neutral spirit is a handy thing to keep in the cupboard.

I made more wine than I could deal with in 2023; it wasn't particularly great, largely because I was forced to pick the grapes too soon. I still have a dozen bottles of that vintage that frankly, doesn't taste so good. Stale wine or ho-hum wine is still very handy for cooking however. Wine livens up dishes like Mulligan stew, Goulash, Slumgullion, spaghetti sauce and Beef Bourguignon (this prefers burgundy though).

Historically wormwood, mugwort and dozens of other unmentionable herbs and weeds were routinely used to preserve wine; keeping it from spoiling. This vermouth (wermut) was considered medicinal too.

So I recently “doctored up” a bottle of 2023 wine with spices (mugwort, coriander, sarsaparilla, mint and wormwood) (nuked the spices in wine – to almost a boil in a microwave, capped it and let it sit for a few days. Shook the container frequently and left the container to set in the sunlight - to help leach out the chemicals from the spices.

The wine strained, was eventually dumped into my “Wermut jug”. [[Everything that is red or potent but not that good by itself, might go into the Wermut jug. Just last week, out of curiosity I purchased a locally produced, craft-distilled, dark purple vodka that had been flavored with blueberrys and lavender. It was absolutely horrible vodka; so most of it went to fortify what was already in the medicine jug]]. The composition of the contents in the Wermut jug vary from month to month. What pours out right now might curl your lip for a moment. But soon you can find yourself nipping at it in comfortable contemplation, just as you would a good whisky or brandy.

> Speaking of turning wine into vinegar, you might do a little experimenting with that. You could let nature take its course, or for expedience you could purchase some “Mother of Vinegar”. (A bacterial culture for making vinegar).

https://www.liveeatlearn.com/types-of-vinegar/

Definitely keep the best and the worst separate, one might make a passable brandy if you get lucky.

Any that have gone to vinegar I'd definitely keep to one side.
I have ongoing red wine vinegar and cider vinegar jugs that just get topped up with fresh young wine each year to keep them going, awesome for cooking.
A big foreshot cut will capture anything that was left in the still from your last run a while back.

Thanks all,
None have gone to vinegar that I know of (haven't checked all 10).
I do like the idea of making some vinegar though, I also have a couple 1-gallon jugs of the same wine, I think I'll try to turn one of those into a cooking vinegar (it's been on my todo list to do this with apple cider for a long time).

I've done this and just mixed them all together. Or at least stripped multiple batches to low wines then mixed for the spirit run. If I need to top up one of the stripping runs i'll get a cheap wine kit or two and ferment it with an SG in the 1.070 range.

If you've sulfited the wines you may need to remediate with a small dose of H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) which also oxidizes the wine but the brandy is good.

Cheers,
jonny