Plum Brandy

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Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Fri Jan 04, 2013 9:02 pm

Ok I know there are two threads on this already but this is not a true slivovich any more so here's whats so far happening
I got all the cherry plums of the ground as birds had destroyed the crop. The Cherry Plums are not quite ripe as in more tart than usual so I put in say 20kg of mulched plums to 8 kgs sugar in around 75ltrs> the ferment took off like crazy and the photo I'll post is before pitching the the Croatian ppl next door said it will take a month or so so I thought fuck that for a bad joke and hydrated some white wine yeast , mean while I checked the ph level , Far Canal it was 2.3 some big handfuls of lime later it was 4.5 ish and i pitched the wine yeast and let the cage fight begin. Afterwards I thought maybe theirs takes so long because they don't adjust the pH . I did have every intention to use this method from this link but got freaked out by the times I was told to expect I might just try I 25ltr traditional one for a side by side comparison
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 38&t=30692
Ok below are links to other plum wash threads on the forum
viewtopic.php?f=51&t=2968
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2635
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2636
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby stilltryin » Fri Jan 04, 2013 9:30 pm

iIwas looking at all the plums laying in our back yard today and wished I had a still :sad:

It`s a shame they`re going to waste...ah well, hopefully next year :D

It will be interesting to see how yours turns out Crow,good luck with it :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Fri Jan 04, 2013 9:54 pm

do the wash mate it will keep for months and ya might have knocked up a pot still by then. mine took be 2 hrs to make and cost me a whopping 50 bucks ;-)
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby emptyglass » Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:07 am

Ok crow, I'll say it now, you can tell me if I'm wrong later, but I reckon you won't get bugger all hearts if you cut it, and it you don't, you'll regret it in the morning. All the info I have, they all say don't add sugar. The goal is to get enough fruit to do the job.
But since the rosella's cleaned up my crop this year, save me a shot or 2.(EDIT: not the bloody heads, either!)

Stilltryin, don't waste em mate. Get a drum/bucket/bin and collect them. fill the vessel and get as much good fruit as you can. don't use shit, bird pecked, rotted, worm infested or mouldy fruit. The stuff that fell to the ground yesterday is the stuff you want, it has maximum sugar.
Put them in the drum and cover with water. You have got about 4 weeks max to work out what to do next, thats about as long as you would want to leave them before mashing.
You need to leave them for quite a while to do thier stuff by then you will have a still I'm sure.
A new still needs something to run, and you will have something for nearly nothing by then using those plums
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:38 am

I've said it before and I'll say it again yes if ya live in some little hamlet in Transylvania and ya going to still it the way great great gandads great grandad did ya spot on dead right The traditional way to do this is to remove a percentage of the fores and nothing else so you are going to be drinking late fores all the heads and all the tails. No matter what ya do there is going to be some methanol in there thats just the nature of fermenting with pectin present and anything that will slightly increase that will likely produce even more. However I have no intention of drinking stuff like that, Ive drank enough of that shit already to last a life time or to. I was talking to(picking plums next to) the croate fella yesterday that will make it like that he will run it down to 15% and drink the lot its the way his great uncle showed him so its the way ya do it. I might get a high % of faints for sure but I can tell you if I did cuts without sugar i doubt I would get 200mils of heart from these sour plumbs and even the eastern Europeans add sugar when fermenting with summer plumbs (cherry plumbs) for this reason as for doing it grappa style umm thanks but no thanks . This is the reason I didn't add this to one of the other threads because I'm not hoping to get some 40% ABV silivich / grappa with an undetermened quality
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby MacStill » Sat Jan 05, 2013 1:01 am

run through a bubbler your going to get a nice plumb brandy style of drink, a little extra refluxing to start and an early tails cut will see you doing this again :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby emptyglass » Sat Jan 05, 2013 1:50 am

Its all cool mate, its good your giving it a bash. Cherry plums should still be fine, the tart might make it better.

Like Mac said, if you were to run it through a bubbler, its a different world. The traditional style described to me by my chezch mates dad calls for a pot still style distillation, a real brandy still would change it all. Just not keen on the sugar addition.
Jeez mate, you need a bubbler.

You could put sugar with oats if you wanted.
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Sat Jan 05, 2013 2:44 am

WineGlass wrote:You could put sugar with oats if you wanted.

you mean like my recapitulated whiskey wash :laughing-rolling: yeah i got 70 ltrs to run plus quite a lot of low wines maybe 20 ltrs ;-) , yeah I know all about the euro mob and there traditions and god help ya if ya say there might be a better or easier way
Edit I should add that the Croatian lad said he was adding sugar (like I said they call em summer plums over yonder and they are sour as sobs, the tin lids eat them but buggered if I can enjoy them
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Plum Brandy

Postby BackyardBrewer » Sat Jan 05, 2013 8:07 am

McStill wrote:run through a bubbler your going to get a nice plumb brandy style of drink, a little extra refluxing to start and an early tails cut will see you doing this again :handgestures-thumbupleft:


So the bubbler will remove the need for a second run is that right? No stripping run required but all the fruit flavour?
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby MacStill » Sat Jan 05, 2013 8:38 am

BackyardBrewer wrote:
So the bubbler will remove the need for a second run is that right? No stripping run required but all the fruit flavour?


Yep :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Tue Jan 08, 2013 1:37 am

I put down a second smaller batch all traditional wild yeast is doing its stuff but I reckon the yield will be piss poor, this story about more faints from sugar than from fruit is making less and less sense the longer I think about it too actually looking at it scientifically it should be very much the other way (by lots) :-B stone fruit being very high in pectin
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby Hill » Fri Feb 08, 2013 9:38 am

Hey Crow hows this one going? My mate wholesales fruit so he is gunna get us 20kg of plumbs for nothing, i'm thinking ill cut in thirds and throw it all including the stone into a boil pot, then thinking will boil, cool and pitch wine yeast. gunna run it through my bubbler when its done.

any thoughts?
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby BackyardBrewer » Fri Feb 08, 2013 10:01 am

Hill wrote:Hey Crow hows this one going? My mate wholesales fruit so he is gunna get us 20kg of plumbs for nothing, i'm thinking ill cut in thirds and throw it all including the stone into a boil pot, then thinking will boil, cool and pitch wine yeast. gunna run it through my bubbler when its done.

any thoughts?


I boiled my first batch of apricots and everyone shouted me down and said "Do Not Boil".

I added the next batch pulped with hand blender not boiled.

I kept about 1/3 of the stones and boiled them (I read that they can go moldy) and added them. I don't think you add all the stones ut you certainly don't boil.
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:12 pm

No boiling and all the stones are in there. Three lots are finished,( jeez the cap looks toxic) and the 200 ltr one is making me nervous as the head space has home from 8" to less than 2" and rising :-|
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby Hill » Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:15 pm

how long do you think a 25L batch will take to ferment Crow? and do you think 10kg per 25L batch is enough?
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:49 pm

Prolly a week or so and 10 kg will be plenty. Rule of thumb is 5 kg fruit 5 kg sugar to 25 ltr of water, more fruit would only be better as far as flavor goes although racking will be a bit more involved
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby Hill » Fri Feb 08, 2013 1:09 pm

Thanks Crow, ill go the 10kg, iv got the racking sussed from when i did a UJSM the other day, I got a massive sieve and sat it on top of the boiler then just poured it out bit by bit :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby blond.chap » Mon Feb 11, 2013 9:40 am

Just thought I'd add my results, recipe was:
~40L plums, mashed up (seeds intact)
~5kg sugar
Handful of lime
Water to make up 50L wash total
Bakers yeast (won't use this next time).

Added ingredients together and stirred about once every 2 days for 2 weeks (temperature through the ferment was 18-30degC). Then filtered all the solids with a piece of sheet material.
Left to clear for another 2 days (could have done with longer but I got impatient).

Distilled through 4 plates (though 1 of them wasn't working properly), result was a pretty disappointing 600-700mL of hearts (about another 300mL of feints). Not sure exactly what went wrong, didn't check the pH so it may have been too acidic and needed longer to ferment out.

The flavour wasn't really strong enough for my tastes, so I dropped some plums in for a few hours and threw a burnt stick in there for good measure:
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby crow » Mon Feb 11, 2013 11:17 am

Yeah the ph is very low on plum washes . The Croatians ect will give it 2 months to ferment but that's using wild yeast . Flavour was light hey hmm :think: what ABV were you pulling it of by . I had a bit of a play around here from 70 to 90% and found mid 80s gave me pleasant robust flavour . Once you got up to 90+ % to much flavour was getting stripped, below say 82 and it became cloudy and Sharp
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Re: Plum Brandy

Postby blond.chap » Mon Feb 11, 2013 11:34 am

Bugger, that's the problem with the flavour then, it was coming off at around 91% Couple of lessons learnt then.

Do you age it on oak? I was struggling to work out what is normal for brandy/plum brandy.
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