Hello from South Africa and some brandy questions

[chrisbo]

Goeie dag aan almal.........Gday to all

New to the distilling art but have some experience with wine making. I am constructing 2 still heads that will be interchangeable from a double boiler pot (40 l in a 60 l pot) on propane burners that will also me self made. The first will be a pot still with a libieg and the second most likely a Boka for now, may change that later to a VM design.

Have read a lot so far and will continue to do so. Thanks in advance for all the advice I got from all the posts I read so far.

My main aim is brandy. Some really flavorful stuff.

And with this statement then some questions if I may?

Classical method as practiced all over is to take a reasonable quality young wine and use a pot still to make a brandy from that. From the home brewers/distillers perspective my question is the following.

What is the difference in quality of the end product if most variables are kept the same as much as possible and the only change is the wine, a young wine or and aged wine? (Young implying fermentation is completed and fine has been racked at least once, while aged means same as before but also left to age for 6 months or more)

Or am I chasing down a somewhat redundant path? Should I rather prepare a neutral and steep the fruit in that and then re-distill and age (or even use as is without re-distilling). Will the quality and flavor of this be similar or even better as the classical method?

[baysidebogan]

G`day, welcome to the forum. :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Sorry, cant help with your questions regarding Brandy, but there are others that might be able to

[Kimbo]

Hi Chrisbo, welcome to the forum.
All i can say is " you'll only get out of it what you put into it" ;-)
that said, not many of us have been down the Brandy path, so I think a little experimentation is on the cards... just do small batches and let us know how you go mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[hillzabilly]

Welcome.Iam from the copper belt ,my advice is try both do learn about adding feints from previous batches no one here done well without putting a few batches thru ,oaking cuts stills wine type all effect the outcome ,keep good records dont change to much at once and enjoy the ride.ach mun Hillzabilly

[Sam.]

Welcome mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Not sure what the difference would be between aged and young wine, but if it is the same wine to start with my guess would be not a great deal unless there is a massive taste difference between them to start :-B

[MacStill]

This link has some pretty good info about distilling wine ;-)

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5422&hilit=oxidation

[chrisbo]

Thanks for the advice so far. Experimentation seems to be the way to go. This will take some time. I will do my best to report back on the results as it becomes available.

[tillius]

Welcome.. I'm very much too new to give any advice, but welcome.