German Apple Schnapps

[wolbi74]

HI guys,

Growing up in Cologne, Germany,we obliged the ritual of drinking uncopious amounts of berentzen apple schnapps during the karnival season!
Couldnt find anything on the web apart from steeping apples in neutral or wheat vodka. I steeped 1.5kg of roughly chopped apples & 500ml sugar syrup & 5 liters of 80% neutral run through pot stil head!
It was ok... I had a bottle of the original stuff and it has quite an apple punch smell- sweet & sticky & gold coloured, so I reduced 3 liters of apple juice to just before it starts to caramelise, added that to the liquer... :happy-partydance:
OMG- better than the original 20% mine was at 40% and way smooother!!

[TheMechwarrior]

I don't know how to make Schnapps mate but my first thought would be to make apple wine and then ferment it.

[Brendan]

I did some trials on this earlier on in the year.

By fermenting pure apple juice, and distilling in the plated column setup with 5 plates, I was able to get pretty close to from what I can gather is a traditional schnapps. Unfortunately, it's not well suited to the tastes we're used to here, as the schnapps we get are sweetened and quite often artificially flavoured.

It did smell awesome, and benefitted a lot from sitting in glass for 6 months...but the taste when diluted would not be enjoyed by many here :)

I'm still soaking fruits in mine (put an apple and a peach down last night), which becomes a nice fruit-infused vodka, which some might even call schnapps.

[TheMechwarrior]

I did some trials on this earlier on in the year.

By fermenting pure apple juice, and distilling in the plated column setup with 5 plates, I was able to get pretty close to from what I can gather is a traditional schnapps. Unfortunately, it's not well suited to the tastes we're used to here, as the schnapps we get are sweetened and quite often artificially flavoured.

It did smell awesome, and benefitted a lot from sitting in glass for 6 months...but the taste when diluted would not be enjoyed by many here :)

I'm still soaking fruits in mine (put an apple and a peach down last night), which becomes a nice fruit-infused vodka, which some might even call schnapps.

Brendan,

I found the same thing with my banana run.
It has a great banana nose but on the palate it's dry and the banana flavour only late on the palate after swallowing.
I have this still sitting on oak, I think I might macerate with some slightly overripe bananas for a couple of weeks and see what that does to the profile, I don't want to add sugar.

The apple Schnapps could possibly benefit from a similar treatment of placing some sliced sweet apple like golden delicious in for a maceration period?

Cheers,

Mech.

[Brendan]

Hey Mech,

Yeah that is exactly what I have done, and am still doing.

I had exactly the same as you mentioned with my un-flavoured stuff. I guess on oak it would become brandy...but yeah the apple was beautiful on the nose, but dry and late on tasting like you mentioned.

I did a variety of macerations as you may see in my Apple Schnapps thread, which I'll have to update. After maceration, I tried a series of sugar syrup additions and it just didn't work out well. I mean if you want a liqueur, sure.

So now I have been macerating for a week at 93%, then dilute down to 40% for a nice subtle flavour-infused vodka :handgestures-thumbupleft: With your banana, I would suggest being careful with the time frame, you may find a few weeks far too long if macerating at a high abv.