Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

twobottles wrote:Ripe quince juice has a lovely aroma indeed and tastes a little similar to pineapple juice. Somebody who isnt me has fifty or so trees and collects the juice to flavour cider. Im sure I remember him telling me something about a method of removing the pectin before fermentation, a french method of cider production. Might just have things jumbled in my head but I think that you add something which turns it into a jelly then you either scoop it off the top or syphon the juice from below..... Anyone?

I remembered reading about this French method you had mentioned mate and came across this while doing some research and it reminded me of your post. So I thought this would be useful info if anyone wants to have a crack at it. It's called Keeving and it's been around for a long time and apparently an experimental art, but is very effective at removing the pectin in high pectin fruits and thus, producing less methanol.

http://www.cider.org.uk/keeving.html

Mr Four Square wrote:Mine is still fermenting away 6 weeks later. It hasn't formed a cap , just the chipped fruit floating on the surface. Happy enough to let it keep going till the airlock stops. What recipe/ ratios did you use Zaximus?

Your Dunjaveca sounds fantastic ! Did it pass the taste test with the uncle ?

6 weeks? What temp have you got it at? Mine went for a month but I also agitated it usually twice a day. I cooked my fruit and then ran the cooked fruit through my juicer (should have just juiced or mashed) and then cooked the pulp for about an hour to extract the rest of the sugar and nutrients. Then poured into equal parts into 2 x 30L fermenters and added enough sugar to bring SG to 1.085. Waited to cool and then added pre-pitched EC1118 into each fermenter. I took one fermenter off at 1.005 and the last one at 1.002'ish.

This time I'm thinking I might give the Keeving idea a go. But I'm not going to cook the fruit, simply will blanch it first just to kill any who's yeast and bacteria and then grate it so that it's a fine pulp that I can still separate with a fine cloth strainer. Problem with cooking it is that it becomes so fine that you can't strain it easily. Spent a few hours with the last lot using a catering filter strainer, pain I'm the ass.

And tomorrow's the day I bring some of this to my uncle.... can't wait, hope he likes it :pray:

Urrazeb wrote:

Zaximus wrote:...

I have a hot water urn as a boiler with a bloody thermostat (pain in the ass actually) and if I don't ride the temp controller, it keeps boiling then cutting out. So I strapped my probe thermometer to the top of the copper column and rode the thermostat on/off to keep the temp correct and steady for the various stages of the distillation...

Fark that! :laughing-rolling: 8-}

Get ya self a proper boiler or run the thing on gas mate, it shouldn't be that hard! :text-lol:

Mate believe me I know, makes it a pretty tiring process actually...but all is not lost, check out http://www.aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8145 :happy-partydance:

Zaximus wrote:
6 weeks? What temp have you got it at? Mine went for a month but I also agitated it usually twice a day. I cooked my fruit and then ran the cooked fruit through my juicer (should have just juiced or mashed) and then cooked the pulp for about an hour to extract the rest of the sugar and nutrients. Then poured into equal parts into 2 x 30L fermenters and added enough sugar to bring SG to 1.085. Waited to cool and then added pre-pitched EC1118 into each fermenter. I took one fermenter off at 1.005 and the last one at 1.002ish

Yeh I know 6 weeks and counting is a bit of a wait but if it's still fermenting it's just a matter of time.It's sitting on a heat pad. Crikey Z that sounds like lots of hard work. Maybe when we hear how Dunjaveca is made it will involve all those steps. I just chopped my fruit up with a blade on a drill, added sugar, water and EC 1118 and locked the lid.

That's how I ran last years wash and that stilled out very niiice ( my wiiife) :greetings- :romance-kisscheek:

Mr Four Square wrote:
That's how I ran last years wash and that stilled out very niiice ( my wiiife) :greetings- :romance-kisscheek:

4 square we don't even know each other mate, I'm not sure why you're referring to me as your wife farken :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:

I'm sure yours has turned out brilliantly in the past and will again though 4 square. Everything I read about fruit ferments, particularly using champagne yeast, says a long and slow ferment develops the flavor and doesn't stress the yeast. I think mine fermented quicker cos it was so finely mashed. Can't wait to hear how yours turns out though. We're pioneers on this forum doing quince spirits. Not many of us :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Yeh man ! We are up to page 3 :dance:

I got into stilling learning from a Macedonian man. Plums were his thing. When he died we stilled all his wash barrels out to make slivovitz for his wake. There was one barrel of quince which we all agreed was something special and that set me off trying to make it myself. Without anything else to go on I just followed Crow's plum wash recipe. My guess is they use shed loads of quinces and water. So the sugar might be a reasonable compromise without an orchard. Then again maybe they cook them before the wash? I'm sure they do it differently in Europe which is what we are hoping to learn here. All we need is one talkative old uncle and we are away. Maybe the Dunjaveca will loosen his tongue ! :teasing-tease:

Thanks for sharing your experience with brandy/sliv etc guys, it's priceless information.

If you can share a bottle with an uncle or grandfather and pry some old-school tips out of them, we'll be all ears! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Edit: posted a link and info already in the thread....lesson learnt read all the thread before posting !!!!!! 8-}

Thanks for your story 4 Square. Sounds like the blokes mash was brilliant. And thanks for the comments Zak. Appreciate it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

So had a great day at my uncle's place today and he loves the quince I brought him. Said it needs to mature some, which I told him first up anyhow. He did say it was nice and clean though and the bouquet was superb so needles to say I was pretty pleased with myself :dance:

He actually surprised me though as he said he never used to add yeast to a ferment. Always relied on the wild yeast already on the fruit. But he did say that the wild yeast on the fruit in Bosnia was very different to the yeast here though. Reckons he's had more problems with infections in the fermenter here than in Bosnia. He still let's the wild yeast do their thing with grape ferments but with plums he uses EC1118.

He double distills all his spirits also and goes at an absolute snails pace both runs. He's been doing a lot of cognac style grappa and I must say his 8yo is farken smashing ^:)^

When I explained how I'd been mashing my quince he recommended I just use a grater instead of mashing and cooking. Said just to use a fine grater and reckoned not to use sugar at all. He's anti sugar in any fruit spirit and said it goes against the principle of fermenting fruit for its unique characteristics. He said main thing with fruit is cooler longer ferments as it really brings the flavour out. And if you want to use sugar then use it on a second ferment with the spent pulp from the main first ferment and bring up to SG your happy with. Said it would bring a very similar characteristic to the resultant spirit but not be as high grade as your first ferment. So in this case you would give yourself top shelf and mid shelf spirit all from the same lot of fruit. This was a typical thing back home to make things go further. Interesting concept.

So I might give my upcoming lot a go without sugar then and see how I go.

So here goes with last quince wash for the season....to be honest, glad it's the last as its a lot of work cleaning all this fruit. It's fine in Croatia as there are a tonne of people to help with all the cleaning, cutting, crushing, etc. But here, it's hard to convince mates to help out... although they never complain about drink the hooch you make. :doh: :wtf:

So 60kg of quince will be ready to ferment tomorrow, woohoo :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Hail Zaximus ! What news from the Adriatic?

I ran my 50 litre Quince wash. Stripped it down to 10 litres. Chucked in some Q feints from last season and diluted it all to under 30% ABV. Slow stilled that and collected around 4 litres in the cuts jars .

Damn! It all smells drinkable ! From start to finish there is barely a whiff of either heads or tails. The last jar is still 70% so I probably moved on to the feints jar too quickly.. There's a little bit of tails when I dilute and taste but I reckon I can run the cut pretty wide with this one.

Not sure what ABV to bottle this at?

45 % is as low as I like to go otherwise it goes down too easy. 65% and you know you have drunk something.

I'll get a little bit of toasted oak into this and see how it shapes up.

Hey man. I'm glad to hear it's turned out well for you that's awesome. 45% ay...that's some strong shit. I know what you mean though it does go down to easy otherwise and toy end up shit faced before you realise.

I ended up doing my stripping and spirit runs but have been working pretty hard and haven't got around to posting. I'm not on the Adriatic yet either still in Oz. But the spirit run went well though mate. Ran 90 litres of mash from 4 fermenters and got 8 litres at 65%. And I agree it smells absolutely amazing at most stages of the run. But that's why I find airing it overnight is important because then you get the true fractions coming through. Especially when diluting while tasting. I found that the heads were pretty strong smelling both fruit and acetone smell and so I was pretty conservative with it and kept only the true hearts cuts.

I did make a mistake though as I added too much Oak chips and gave it a deep colour. I could only get chips at short notice and I should have added less and soaked the chips before hand to impart less colour. It's very lovely though but just quite dark. I'm away on a project until the end of the month so can't wait to try it when I get home. Got a Mac Whiskey aging also which I ran before going away so can't wait to have a few well deserved drinks.

Still haven't made my cuts yet. I've got 20 x 200 mm jars waiting round for me to call who's in and who's out.
How do people mainly do cutting? By taste or by smell?

There was really no pronounced heads or tails scent at either end. I can spot H&T a mile away with plums but this all smells pretty good. :roll:

I go mostly by smell, plenty go by taste, most use a combination. Fruit washes can be a bit tricky, the late heads and some of the tails will smell absolutely delicious, but may not taste nice haha

Zak Griffin wrote:I go mostly by smell, plenty go by taste, most use a combination. Fruit washes can be a bit tricky, the late heads and some of the tails will smell absolutely delicious, but may not taste nice haha

Yeh I think that is what I'm up against here. It all smells good. Gonna have to get my taste buds out ... 20 test pots diluted sipped ... spat ... notes

I have a glass of water at the ready for swishing between taste/smell of each jar, a separate glass of water to dilute the product with, a tall shot glass for mixing a teaspoon of product and a little water into, and then of course I pick out each test jar starting from the middle.

I then add a teaspoon of product, slightly less than a teaspoon of water and swish around vigorously in the shot glass. I then have a strong sniff of it before I take a sip and swish around in my mouth. I try to take in a little air through it in my mouth because that makes you recognise other flavours, just like wine tasting. Seems to work for me and makes me really notice the off flavours more easily. Then of course I have a swish with a mouthful of water before going on to the next jar.

So far so good, but that's just what I do. I've tried straight from the jar, I've tried just going by smell, but as you say, fruit product just smells really good at many points in the fractions so for me going by smell alone hasn't been a good road to travel, i.e. :puke-huge:

Yep sounds like what will be going on at my dining room table tonight.

Done it. Tried not to be greedy.

4 liters at 40%.
From 20 kgs of fruit run through twice so it's a love job !

I realized once I'd diluted down that I should have left it up round 65 % as I plan to give it a bit of lightly toasted oak.
x_x Le buggeur.

Is that a saveable stuff up?

Hi Guys,


Started a Quince wash earlier in the week - used the recipe put up earlier - 10kg Quince - 5 kg sugar and threw in a bit of lemon juice cause I could :-D

I have made a heap of pear cider from my sons Pear tree and have learnt a couple of things from doing it.

1/. I always wash the pears in a mild bleach solution because of the birds s@@# thats is on them !

2/. I use a garden mulcher to chip the pears up - nice coarse chip - I tried a liquidiser once , never again.


After pouring boiling water over the mix and leaving for a couple of hours ( dont like that wild yeast, never got a good result yet !) I then strained off and put the mulch through my fruit press that I used on the pears. ( basically a hacked keg with a hole in the bottom - i put a bit of bar through the handles and use a hydralic press to compress it) works fine.

Its now bubbling away like mad - a continuos stream of bubbles within 3 hours and after 4 days its a strem of bubbles every 1 second. :clap:

Hope it comes out as good as you guys reckon !


Toyoda.