Plum Brandy with One Gallon Electric

[arncraft]

SSF: I recently posted the item below at the Home Distiller site (a link there from the SS Home Page). As the SS Home Page says, those folks are patronizing toward anyone talking one gallon electric. I wish I had known of this site before I began, but also from that other site I learned a lot about fermenting and distillation. Do check it out. LOTS of info if you search it through.

When i suggested there that there might be a forum devoted to the electric one gallon distiller, I was quickly given this site URL. Happy Me.
\"I have finished my first effort at distilling and wanted to report it here. Tips and thanks to others.

I had bought a one gallon electric \'water distiller\' to boost cheap 80 proof vodka to make a better limoncello. That seemed to work well, and I wanted to go for plum brandy.

After collecting about all the plums we could use for plum jam and putting them in the freezer (I hate canning in the summer), I stripped the tree of all left, cooked them slightly to make pit removal easier, yielding 33 pounds of plum, about 3.5 gallons. I added 5 pounds of sugar, 3 packets of Star Champagne yeast, and water to bring it up to 5 gallons in a 7 gallon bucket (from a beer making shop).

For a couple days I stirred it frequently but didn\'t seal it up, just leaving the lid loose on top. I did skim some skins of the top. Then re-reading these pages I learned it is anaerobic action that produces alcohol. So then I pressed the lid down and checked it occasionally. (The lid had a bubbler in it, but I never noticed it popping.)

After a week it seemed to have settled down and I added a few tablespoons of sugar to see if the yeast was through. A little action, not much.

I thought it ready for the distiller and put about 3 quarts in. The foreshots came off nicely, then about a half cup of clear alcohol was soon discolored by colored liquid coming through. I had not strained the mash and it was being pushed through the distiller. I stopped it. Cleaned everything up and tried again.

I strained the mash through a double thickness of cotton T-shirt. Was slow, took overnight. Then again run 3 quarts in the still. seems to have come off very nicely. See my pictures.

I dumped the first 40-50 ml, then collected in one cup units. The run was nice and steady, quick drops. I stopped after 4 cups. You can see these in the photos. After they cooled I measured the series at proofs of 115, 90, 50, 20. Some of the subsequent runs were lower. I mixed these to yield about 3 quarts of 68-70 proof plum brandy.

I corked two 375 ml recylcled wine bottles of this clear product. It has slight aroma and slight aftertaste, pleasant not harsh. But it\'s not something others might immediately identify as PLUM brandy. (We don\'t drink much slivovitz in the country) So I decided to add a bit of fruit to color and flavor. Four frozen small plums to a one quart sample. In just one day it absorbed a nice color, aroma, and taste. I\'m unsure which I like better, and will experiment some more.

I may mix and run all the tails less than 20 proof and remainders.

In any case I\'m happy with the product and enjoyed doing it save for a few glitches. It can be done with a one gallon \'water distiller\' and I expect to make some more. (I think we may have some frozen apricots on hand.

Comments/Tips/Questions welcome. --arncraft\" [I will post somephotos, if accepted, asap]

[arncraft]

http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/ac57 ... G_1764.jpg

[Phantom]

You might need to edit that link arncraft, as it\'s currently 4 links all run together - and just defaults to the photobucket home page......
I can\'t remember off the top of my head whether plum brandy/slivovitz is normally clear or whether it\'s aged in a barrel etc.......
Either way, when you\'re actually doing the ferment of the plums you can always put the fruit in a muslin/cotton/whatever cloth and put that in the bucket with the liquid part. Plums are quite high fibre and that can cause a problem when racking/removing the fruit.
If you just split them with a knife to de-stone the fruit and then freeze it first, it breaks down the cells in the fruit allowing more of the flavour/juice to come out.
As to whether that would pass on to the finished product, I don\'t know though normally the distillation process removes most of that.
If you think about it, it\'s partly why the whiskey industry uses pot stills as it shifts more of the non-alcohol elements over to the finished product - which is clear until it\'s spent some time in the barrel...........
Of course, there are stills available commercially that are specifically for use with mash/wash that has been made on the fruit and it\'s all just piled into the still to distil it off (large valves so that the still can be emptied/cleaned properly).
Well done on the experiment though, made for an interesting read.......

[Ronbo]

Hi Arncraft, I,m no expert but I think you need to copy and paste the \'Direct Link\' on your uploaded picture, not the \'HTTP Link\' I also found out that it would be best to resize large pictures to a more manageable 640x480 or similar.

Ronbo.

[Ronbo]

Oh I see what you\'ve done, there are no carriage returns between each picture address.

Apologies!

Ronbo.

[Andy]

Pix fixed for our new friend

[marc83]

Like the labels.Nice touch.

[phlogiston]

I have a Serbian colleague who tells me that most Slivovitz is clear, but you can buy one or two brands that are oak aged. The home distilled variety is clear. Traditionally it\'s made by fermenting the plums only, crushing some of the stones for extra flavour -- no sugar is added. \"Prune plums\" are meant to be the best, although cherry plums are also mentioned. I\'m intending to try a small sample with cherry plums this autumn.

[arncraft]

Andy, Thanks so much for fixing my pics! I'm posting a new pic showing three possibles:


On the left is a 375 ml green bottle with the clear brandy, Next a frosted 375 ml bottle with brandy infused with small (frozen) plums just 2 days, the third is a clear 500 ml bottle infused one week with a couple large Santa Rosa plums. My wife much admires the red bottle. In a few months we will have a taste off with friends.

I was surprised how much I preferred the clean taste of the white stuff. Let's see how it goes in a few months.

[Phantom]

Nice pic there arncraft.
Your original post got me thinking. If you look at the stills sold at Brouwland (expensive though) they\'re quite clever.
The way that they seem to work, dovetails nicely into something that I was reading when I was looking into other commercial sized stills.
There\'s a place in Portugal that makes commercial sized copper stills of various designs, including one that suggests that it\'s got a thicker base to spread the heat and also a 2 inch valve to allow for the cleaning, when fermenting a mash \"of the european style\" that contains pulp/fibre from the fermenting.
I did wonder what it was that they were referring to, and now I\'m guessing that they\'re referring to the likes of plum brandy - where it would be possible to ferment the batch on the fruit to get the maximum flavour out, but then put the whole lot into a still and distil it from there.
The design of the stills at Brouwland mentions that it\'s heated by a water bath, rather than direct head to prevent any burning of the mash/wash - plus looking around the net, it does appear that from the few pics I could find of the scottish distilleries, some of their pot stills are also heated by water or oil baths. I understood (possibly wrongly) that after the mashing process, then drained/strained the mashing liquor off the remaining grains/grist and then only the liquid went into the still - I suppose that might still do that but use water/oil baths to heat the stills to have a more accurate heating control.
Irrespective of that, to have produced a plum brandy like the ones pictured is brilliant. Well done indeed. It hadn\'t occurred to me to try that with it. Maybe it\'ll be time to have a go at it.
Did you just run the still with the \"plum wine\" in it and then water it down before the colouring/flavouring process ? I\'d be very interested to hear......
regards
P

[arncraft]

Phantom, Thanks for your comments and query. (Please forgive my tardy response. Visitors plus I\'m busy fermenting my second batch of plums)

I am uncertain if I want to try a larger still. One advantage of the one gallon still is that you don\'t have to watch it too long at a stretch. If I were doing 5 gallons at once it would be a long time getting up to heat, then careful tending for many hours (I would guess). The one gallon heats for 15 minutes and then is producing. After a couple hours you\'re done.

BUT your comments on a still that might handle more \'fiber\' (skins, pulp) made me think that it might be possible to use some sort of seine, strainer, baffle in the electric stills to prevent this going up to the cooling coil.

As I described above, my first one gallon run was ruined/stopped by \'fiber\'. Then I just strained everything through a double thickness of cotton T-shirt*. (Securely tie a T-shirt, with some slack, over a 5 gallon bucket and gradually pour the fermented plums through) But this took much longer than I expected -- so much pulp in the plums.

If I had a baffle above the plum stuff in the still that might catch the pulp and just let the steam enter the cooling coil. BUT I\'m a little wary. IF the pulp completely blocks the baffle (as it might), I\'d have problems. A close watch might catch this before explosion.

But also a baffle might upset the run. Would the alcohols come off at the same rate in the same time?

SO, I\'m not making an suggestions to other, but your comments have prodded me to think about this.

I think I may try a batch in which I strain through a colander, to get the skins out, but not all the pulp, and then run with a baffle to hold down the pulp in the still.

And for something like this, if taste says it\'s worth doing, the electric still is easy to clean. (I\'ll try to report on any such effort)
About your question: After straining I did run with just the plum \'wine\' but I added no water. I merely mixed the cups with the higher and lower alcohol content to get about 68 proof end product, about 3 liters clear brandy. I sampled a lot of this, but put up two 375ml bottles (the dark green bottles). The to one liter I added several small frozen plums for 2 days. I put this in 375 ml frosted bottles as you can see. I also added several frozen Santa Rosa plums to a jar, leaving them for a week. This is the 500ml bottle with bright red. The small plums seem to have give a pinkish brown tint, but the Santa Rosas a more intense clear red.

So though the plums for this run all came from a tree on our patio (purple leaves, small purple plums), the coloring for one bottle you see came from the larger Santa Rosa plums. My wife much admires this.

I plan to give these a few months on the shelf and have a tasting party this winter.