Apple brandy from apple pomice

[r055c0]

After a long day of picking, washing, chopping, scratting and pressing apples for a mates yearly batch of cider I found myself with about 80kg of left over apple pomice (the left overs in the press once the juice has been squeezed out of the apples). It smells really amazing, more like apple lollies than the fruit, and I didn't want it to just get composted so I've dragged out home with me, added a heap of water and put in some potassium metabisulphite to kill off the wild yeasts. My plan is to check the gravity tomorrow and adjust up to about 1.080 with sugar them pitch some yeast along with some yeast nutrients and then double distil in my pot still once it's done fermenting to make a sort of apple brandy.

Does anyone have any advice for me on this? I was planning to use bakers yeast but have seen a bit on here about avoiding that for fruit so will switch to a champagne yeast. Any thoughts on adding the fruit pulp to the still (much like when making grappa)?

[r055c0]

I'm thinking I might switch out the champagne yeast for a red wine yeast, means I can buy a 500g block and save some cash as I'll be doing wine in a couple of weeks :)

[WalterWhite]

Sounds good mate ... I wouldn't want to pass up the opportunity to give it a go! I've heard most people using ec1118 with fruit washes. Winequip sell 500g blocks for $34 so pretty cheap. Let us know how it goes!!

[r055c0]

Measured the gravity when I got home, it's on about 1.020, not bad considering how dry it felt after being pressed. I added 11kg of sugar which brought the SG up to 1.055.not quite the 1.080 I was originally thinking of but as I've got about 150L to 200L of the stuff (inc pulp) I figured that's probably plenty.
For the yeast I'm using EZFerm 44, mainly because that's what I'm using for the wine this year so a 500g block made good fiscal sense.
Really hoping I can capture some of that Apple aroma and flavour the final product, it smells insane :)

[r055c0]

The pulp / sugar / water mix has reached a final gravity of 1.000 so I thought I'd have a go at a stripping run on a portion of it. I added about 15L of pulp & juice to the still (leaving about 25cm of head space to avoid clogging) and turned it on.

I noticed the still made a huffing sound while the distillate was coming out, a bit of googling suggested this might be due to the vapour cooling and condensing too rapidly and that made sense as it wasn't coming out as quickly as I'd normally expect and the water running through my cooling jacket was around 15C.

I also noticed the temperature at the top of the column was fluctuating quite a lot, generally this remains steady / increases slowly during the course of a stripping run. At one point it stopped going up and began to fall rapidly, losing about 10C in less than a minute. I quickly turned the heater off as I was worried this was due to a clog (no more vapour rising up = temp drop) and allowed the still to cool for an hour before opening it up. I couldn't see any clog, but I noticed the boil had reached the lid so I'll be dropping the amount of pulp to juice on the next run. When doing this with grapes I didn't have an issue at all but the grapes were bigger and heavier so I'm guessing that helped, the apple pulp has been blitzed in the breville mix master so it's quite fine compared to the grapes.

Leaving the pulp in the still appears to have really protected the delicate aromas of the apples (in the same way the grapes protected the grappa), I only collected about 600ml at about 35% before I turned the still off but what I got smells like a mix of fresh apples and the sweeter smell of cooked apples. Haven't had a taste as I didn't remove heads.

Does anyone have advice on the reason the column may have cooled so quickly? When I opened the still there was still plenty of juice in the mix and it didn't smell burned (actually it smelled quite pleasant, not what I normally find when opening the still after a run) so I'm guessing it hasn't boiled dry at the bottom (will tip it out and check tomorrow morning)

[scythe]

So you have a power controller on your boiler?
Urn type meaning it still uses its original simmerstat type heating controller?

You shouldnt get much in the way of blockages and solids tend not to evaporate and then condense further up the vapour path.

Huffing... usually from hot vapour making it too far into the PC before condensing back into liquid.


What temp did it drop from?
Sudden loss of output is usually a vapour leak.

25cm is alot of headroom.
You must of had a very vigorous boil happening.

Maybe try adding some pectinaze next time to your ferment, it breaks down the cell walls and releases juices and sugars for the yeast to eat increasing yield of ethanol.

[WalterWhite]

I haven't seen your set up but it certainly sounds like you need a power controller

[r055c0]

No power controller, just using the urn they sell at Keg King. Looks like I need to invest in a power controller before I make the jump to a Boka :)

The temp dropped from 94C, I usually collect from 88 to 95 on a stripping run, my probe is at the top of the column but there is a bit of gear up there so I'm not convinced those temps are accurate, I use it more to check for temp stability than actual temp

[r055c0]

After 8 or 9 (or a million, seriously I have no idea) stripping runs I finally made it through all the pulp / cider and knocked out a spirit run tonight. I'd just like to point out that as I didn't want to have too much pulp in each stripping run I hand squozed (like squeezed but better) each and every bit of pulp, I'm not 100% sure but this may mean what I've made is "bespoke".
I'm not familiar with apple brandy so instead of doing cuts and taste testing I decided just to collect from 75 to 55%, ended up with 8L at 70% so plenty to play with. I've oaked with mix of american oak, charred american oak and heavily toasted american oak (2:1:2). Split into two 4L batches, will age for 6 months before deciding on the next step (ie adding apple pie spices, diluting a bit and aging longer etc)
Bloody glad it's over to be honest, pretty sure I've incorporated apple DNA into the skin on my hands.

On a side note as I've spent too many hours in the garage getting through this I've had a bit of time to do some youtubing and binge on distilling videos. Wow, there is such an amazing amount of misinformation out there, it's incredible that more people don't poison themselves / blow themselves up / burn the shit out of themselves...

[maddogpearse]

i reckon you could tip a bit of that into a fermenter of semi-fermented cider to create a fortified apple cider! :D
i also reckon french oak might have been nice for this style of drink...
frementing fruits is the go i rekcon! they just smell so pretty! good on ya Rossco!
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