Newbie stupid question -distilling wines possible?

by **wasabi** » Sat Jun 05, 2010 10:53 pm

I havn\'t bought a still yet, but a local homebrew shop has one and it got me interested.
Thing is, I\'m not really keen on the idea of just making vodkas and adding flavour. I\'m more interested in taking stuff like fruit wines and distilling to make brandies / calvados type drinks (burnt wine). Is this possible to do with this type of tabletop still? Anyone tried it / what are the results like.
Many thanks

by **hoppinmad** » Sun Jun 06, 2010 12:47 am

hi wasabi,

not tried what you\'re suggesting but i did distill some terrible wine that i made into a good spirit. i carbon filtered it after distilling and that removed all flavours good and bad that may have been there. it is certainly possible to do what you\'re suggesting but you will lose more as you will have to throw away more heads and tails than you would if you were carbon filtering. i will probably help you to read goinbroke2\'s posts about his method as he produces corn whisky without bought flavourings, hope this helps,
cheers, hoppin

by **hoppinmad** » Sun Jun 06, 2010 12:54 am

i will probably help you to read

should read \'it will probably help you to read\'
also forgot to say, if you haven\'t tried the still spirits classic brandy you should, i believe this alone would convince you to buy the still, it is sooooo good and i defy any brandy drinker to be able to tell it from shop bought quality brandy.
cheers, hoppin

by **phlogiston** » Sun Jun 06, 2010 3:09 am

You certainly can. I recently made an apple-based wash from all sorts of odds and ends. It's been double-distilled with a smart still, with careful "cuts" on the second run, and flavoured with toasted oak and a sliver of apple. Tasted it today, and it was probably as good as the calvados I had recently on a Brittany Ferry.

by **wasabi** » Mon Jun 07, 2010 1:22 am

Thanks for the replies.
Trying to get this clear in my head so apologies if more daft questions.
If I use the carbon filtering that will remove the flavour as well as the impurities?
So if I don\'t use carbon it is more like a conventional still with the associated impurites/poisoning risks - how do I know what is good and bad?
What kind of quantities am I likely to get? Say I feed a 4.5 litre demijohn of wine into the 4 litre still - how much am I going to get out the other end (roughly)?

by **phlogiston** » Mon Jun 07, 2010 4:29 am

Hi Wasabi
Yes, carbon filtering will remove flavour. You can, as hoppin suggests, add flavouring to the filtered spirit to produce brandy. If you want to do it by distilling wine, you shouldn't filter.
The only poisonous stuff you need to worry about is methanol. If you chuck away the first 50ml or so ("foreshots") when you run the still, you'll be getting rid of nearly all the methanol.
Getting it to taste good is a different matter. This is all down to making the right "cuts" when you distil, and blending. This is a whole topic in itself.
Distilling 4 litres of wine at 12% in the smart still will get you about a litre of spirit at about 45%, but it would be pretty foul to drink. To make decent brandy, you'd probably want to double distil, cut and blend, and you'd end up with 500-750ml (up to a bottle). The other 250-500ml can be put back into the still for another distillation.

by **Andy** » Mon Jun 07, 2010 4:33 am

Hey wasabi, please remember that no question is \"stupid\"

Not asking a question and trying to go at things alone and making a mess of things is a bit silly.

I like this forum just for this reason, nobody will put anybody down for asking.

Knowledge is power and we like to share.

So, ask away.

by **Phantom** » Wed Jun 09, 2010 2:13 am

if you haven\'t tried the still spirits classic brandy you should, i believe this alone would convince you to buy the still, it is sooooo good and i defy any brandy drinker to be able to tell it from shop bought quality brandy

Ah, well you haven\'t had the privilege of tasting "really good" brandies then Hoppin ?
Me? I\'m an Armagnac person, but that\'s not to say that a couple of the vvv dear cognacs have been rubbish (admittedly this was all by accident a good few years ago - these days I\'m pushed to afford a cheapish Janneau at Â£25 to Â£30 a bottle).
Yes, it\'s fair to say that of the ones I\'ve tasted, the SS Classic VSOP is about the best, but it\'s still not much better than any average priced supermarket shit...... Even the most basic of the Hennesey or Martel brands tend to be better....
IMO of course.....
Anyway, can what wasabi was asking be done ? Yes of course it can. If you dig around the net you can find barrels etc and really kick the arse out of it. Me? If I make a batch of wine, mead or cider that doesn\'t come up to scratch when it\'s ready, it goes straight through the still. Yes I\'m very conscientious about heads, but then I collect right down to 40%. No it doesn\'t get filtered, because that removes too much of the flavour etc. It all goes into a DJ with a couple of packs of toasted Oak Chips and then stoppered with cork. That\'s as close as I can get to barrel simulation - but it seems to work.
I don\'t split it out i.e. the different types of original product, it just gets distilled and chucked together. Oh and you do need to leave it for quite a time to take up the colour/flavour from the oak chips........
p.s. Oh and I don\'t tend to fill the still all the way up as it tends to burp/overboil a bit more so I put a max of 3 litres of wine/mead/cider in it.......

by **foRUM warrior** » Wed Jun 09, 2010 5:07 pm

on the subject of barrels and toasting, i saw This store on ebay it sells pre toasted barrels of all sizes, i am going to get one when funds allow

by **hoppinmad** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 1:14 am

Yes, it\'s fair to say that of the ones I\'ve tasted, the SS Classic VSOP is about the best, but it\'s still not much better than any average priced supermarket shit...... Even the most basic of the Hennesey or Martel brands tend to be better....
IMO of course.....

with such a cultured palate makes me wonder why you bother distilling........of course the quality of the end result depends on the quality of the process IMO, personally im partial to henessey XO but not enough to pay 25 times the price that i can make it for. im more than happy with my produce
cheers, hoppin

by **Phantom** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 1:49 am

with such a cultured palate makes me wonder why you bother distilling........of course the quality of the end result depends on the quality of the process IMO, personally im partial to henessey XO but not enough to pay 25 times the price that i can make it for. im more than happy with my produce

No, sorry hoppin, it\'s not a case of "cultured palate" - it was about 20 years ago and being in the right place at the right time, with the right person (who did know a shitload about it - and was prepared to offer a nugget like me a taste of some vvv good stuff).
I just wish they could do a better job with developing the brandy flavours. The whiskey ones, according to a few people I know who\'ve tried them, seem to think that they\'re not brilliant, but certainly not bad - at least a match for the popular blended brands.
If I had the readies, then it\'d just be a case of "what the hell", but I haven\'t, so I keep my eyes open for something reasonable - oh and rather than buy a blended brandy (look them up - most of the big brands just agglomerate/blend) I try to keep up with a few friends who\'ve got places in France and know where to get some good stuff at local French prices.
Or if I see anything that looks reasonable, I\'ll go to about Â£50 a bottle, but only a couple of times a year.
This place has some good ones I\'ve tried a couple of these - but he doesn\'t keep much in the way of "the usual suspects".......