Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

So i was driving through a part of the world that grows a lot of cherries yesterday and all the side stalls advertising fresh cherries got the best of me. I pulled up and bought a 5kg box. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I got them back home and pulled all the stems off. Bit of a sticky job, but didn't take too long.

While I was doing that, my stove was busily inverting 5kg of sugar for me. cheers stove. i also added a few tablespoons of tomato paste and a sprinkle of epsom salts for good measure.

Then i squished the cherries all up with my hands (which was oddly enjoyable) and thought for good measure, i'll hit them with my trusty paint stirrer, but i may have went a bit hard... :angry-banghead:

i went down the local HBS and asked about some EC1118 but the only stuff they had was under a can of lemonade, which was 12 months out of date, so instead I grabbed a packet of SN9 which is a wine yeast that sounds alright. Chucked it on the top at 28 degrees and stirred it in. SG was at 1.08 fingers crossed it's bubbling tomorrow morning. :D

the plan is to run this twice through my pot still, then lightly oak on medium toast french dominoes :)

I wonder if freezing them would help them break down, seems to work for berries.
Sounds like it will be a winner tho.

Yeah, I did consider freezing them first. We'll see how this goes.
I grabbed a SG just before I pitched the yeast and left it in the test tube to see how the wild ones would perform. By the looks of it I should have let nature have its way!

Well, one week on and this has been a fun little experiment. it's been bubbling away fairly consistently all week, and hasn't appeared to have slowed much (with the exception of days 2-4 where it was going like a rum ferment on a 35 degree day! i tried to load a video of it fermenting, with small particles of cherry that had blown up into the airlock! looks like someone's shoved the air compressor in the bottom of it! but yeah, i'm a bit computer illiterate.
Because it went so hard early, i expected it would be all over in 4 or 5 days, but apparently not. it's still popping a bubble about every 2-3 seconds. My shed smells amazing.
It's been really interesting tasting this every few days, going from sickly sweet, to what would make a beautiful cherry cider, and now to a fairly shitty tasting, acidic cheap wine. i'm quite excited about running this... i'm going to hate waiting for it to clear...

Have u run it thru yet?

no i haven't yet, but that's a good point. I was going to give it plenty of time to clear, but if i don't hurry up and do it, i won't get a chance until after the new year. I racked it into another fermenter this morning, FG at 0.990 Eneded up with 23L @ 11.82% ABV. Pretty happy with that result. :dance:
Smells very sweet, but tastes very dry. I quickly sterilized a stubbie and bottled some to keep as a dry sparkling cherry wine!
all the cherry particles were floating on top of the wine, so after i drained it out of the tap i had about 6" of cap that i was about to scoop into my wheelie bin.

because it smelt so nice, i thought i'd chuck a kilo of sugar on top and throw 20l of water in. if it's taken off tonight i might whack in a bit more sugar and see if i can extract some more flavor. we'll wait an see.
i'll strip the first one sunday afternoon i think... :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I see on the homebrew site " Fresh '3rds' Cherries only $1 per kilo (or less with larg " in Victoria
Selling from the farm would seem to have a limited market pity they can not get to the Cities.

Yep well ran it. Smells pretty shit, tastes about the same..oh well, guess I'll run it again then oak it and see what happens...

maddogpearse wrote:Yep well ran it. Smells pretty shit, tastes about the same..oh well, guess I'll run it again then oak it and see what happens...

Not much is great off the still mate, give some a bit of oak and you might be pleasantly surprised :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Tipped genII and low wines from gen1 into the boiler and just flicked it on. Fingers crossed :happy-partydance:

How did it go?

It's only been on oak 10 days. Ask me in 6 months! :D

I was reading a thread on another forum ( yeah I know, I'm a whore :smile: ) about plum brandy and the poster drained the plum residue spread out over fly wire, when it got to the point it wouldn't drain any more he spread it over a linen towel, rolled it up and wrung it out to get every last bit of juice. Now I know the towel trick works brilliantly coz I do that with clothes when we're travelling and they come out nearly dry :handgestures-thumbupleft: so it's probably worth a try

I meant how much did u get, what strength, what oak?

I bought couple of those brew in a bag things. Tip all into spare fermenter, suspend it above for day to drain, let it settle for day or 2 then siphon it off. Worked great with bananas..

Wobblyboot wrote:I meant how much did u get, what strength, what oak?

Oh sorry. About 4L at 66% with 10g/L of medium roast American oak. Would have preferred French but didn't have any. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

It's more then 6 months :) turn out any good?

:text-+1:

How harsh were you on cuts, do cherry's produce more methanol like grapes?

Bosvelk wrote:It's more then 6 months :) turn out any good?

good question. i'd better go pour myself a glass tonight...
i tried some about 3 months ago, it was lots better. Fairly different flavour to anything i've drunk before. only had it neat, but hadn't decided if i liked it. it still had a bit...whats the word.... "smatch of the fire" in it. i'm hoping it will mellow out a bit...

WTDist wrote::text-+1:

How harsh were you on cuts, do cherry's produce more methanol like grapes?

yeah, cherries have got some pectin so i was a bit of a Natzi on cuts, especially on the heads side.

Maddog... i grow cherries (and other stone fruit) not far from you...they are a wonderful fruit. The pits(stones) should be removed from any stone fruit as they may impart an 'almondy' flavour and skew the intended aromas... these have a compound called amygdalin...which breaks down to hydrogen cyanide..not real good for you.They should definitely be removed prior to stillin.
All us old wogs (joke)remove the pits from plums, apricots,peaches and nectarines prior to making up a mash.