StillSmart

My wife is an enthusiastic wine maker and we normally have a couple of hundred bottles in, some are more than a year old.

She takes real pride in the taste and has got some fruit wines that she is not 100% satisfied with the taste.
Rather than throw them away she has suggested putting them through the airstill - what would I come out with?
And if I put 4L of wine through do I use it as if it were a sugar wash> ie: take off the first 20ml then collect 800ml and water it down to 1200ml or is there a different way?
Sorry never done this with the still before so its new to me

Depending on how much wine you have to run through?.If you have a fair amount I would do several stripping runs and collect everything down to the starting ABV of your wine.Then when you have got 4ltrs of this to fill the still from your stripping runs,do a spirit run.To do this toss the first 20mls then collect until the abv has dropped to 75%,keep this seperate as heads,then collect until the abv drops to 50% (this will be your hearts for drinking.This way you will still have some flavours coming through from your wine,but you will also like commercially distilled brandy/whisky have some of the alcohols that will give you that familiar headache-hangover,thats just the price you have to pay for a bit of flavour)collect from 50% to about 30% tails this you can mix with the heads and run it at a later date.You really need a Parrot to monitor the abv doing this but you can just test each 100mls as it comes out of the still.

I reckon your finished "Brandy" would need a fairly long soak on some toasted French oak chips before its ready to drink,Brupaks sell these most HB shops should be able to get them.Hope this is of some help to you.
Optic

thanks Optic whats a \"parrot\" I just have the John Cleese joke in my head at the moment

Hi hic -- if your wife is fussy, and chucks out stuff that isn\'t quite perfect, you should certainly be able to make something good out of it.
A parrot is a kind of collector that lets you continuously monitor the ABV of the stuff coming off your still. I do it a different way, which still involves double distillation. First distillation as Optic suggests; measure the ABV of the distillate with an alcohol hydrometer, and mix with some more wine to get an ABV of about 25%. When you have 4 litres, back into the still it goes.
For the spirit run, chuck the foreshots then collect in small jars, about 100ml per jar. Number the jars and keep them in order. Cover them loosely and leave to \"air\" for a couple of days.
Then mix by smell and taste. When you taste, dilute first to 40% with water and taste; then dilute and taste again. Heads smell sharp, solventy, like paintstripper, and burn when you drink them. Tails have a much heavier, clogging smell, said to be like wet dog or wet cardboard. Somewhere in the middle will be jars that have neither. Pick out these jars and taste them. Any that have no heads or tails taste are the \"hearts\" (about a third to a half of the total). Then go up towards the heads until you get to the solventy, burning taste -- you don\'t want this. Then go into the tails. These may well taste sweetish to begin with; this is OK provided you like the taste. When the taste gets even slightly bitter, stop -- you don\'t want this either.
Mix all the stuff you have kept and taste again. This should be pleasant and smooth. The stuff you haven\'t used is \"feints\" and can go into the next still run. Most people would dilute their spirit to 40%. What you do next is up to you -- drink it as it is; add some essences to mimic commercial drinks; use it as a base for schnapps or sloe gin (or my favourite, crab apple schnapps); or put it onto oak to make brandy. What works best will depend a bit on the taste. That\'s down to experience; this experience is good fun to acquire.

Ha ha! This is what I do with wines, meads and ciders that I make but don\'t come up to the mark.
I just treat them as sugar wash, dumping the foreshots (20 to 30 ml) but then collect down to about 50 percent. That goes into a carboy and any collected after that just goes back into the wash/wine to be distilled later.
I just keep chucking the \"failures\" in the carboy till its full

ok just put through some rosehip wine 4L as my wife wanted rid of that first - dumped the foreshot and taken off 800ml which was 65% knocked it back to 40% which gave me 1.5L of spirit, it has a slight taste of Rosehip but very subtle, have left the still running to see what happens next and will measure at 100ml intervals.
I think the spirit would lend it's self to adding some fruit in so may split it up into 2x750ml and put different fruit or maybe a pepper in one - will keep you posted.
Am starting to look at fruits etc rather than adding a bought additive in just to make some different flavours.
Plus have just ordered some scotch whisky barrel oak chippings - this hobby is really interesting!!