Making Brandy v2.0
My last post on brandy was made just over five years ago. Today I brushed off the still and tried to use it again.
It was hard. Firstly because I’d only done a one-day course and I’d forgotten most of it in the intervening five years, and secondly because the course was for beginners and my insistence on doing everything naturally is definitely not ‘beginner level’
To me, if you want to drink brandy then you go to the shop and buy some. If you want to make it yourself then you should be doing the whole thing from scratch. Making ethanol and adding ‘brandy flavouring’ just defeats the point.
I tackled plum brandy, also known as Slivovitz. The first step was gathering plums (about 20kg). I had to remove the stones and generally pulverise the fruit which took quite a few hours and resulted in some pretty horrible looking pulp.
I cheated slightly at this point and added a couple things to help. These aren’t strictly necessary but shift the odds in your favour:
Campden tablets (discourage wild yeast), and wine yeast (predictable)
Pectin (Encourages plums to break down so you don’t need too much)
I didn’t add sugar as that felt too much like cheating. I also didn’t have a pH meter, but it tasted very acidic to me.
This was mixed up in a food processor and left for about three weeks. In hindsight three weeks was probably too long, and also I think I should have activated the yeast before adding it. After three weeks the resulting mix (called a mash) tasted wickedly acidic and also had a mild mould growing all over it. I decided to turn a blind eye and simply proceed
Processing the mix in the still didn’t go well. Our shiny new induction hob didn’t work with copper, and our old camping burner was barely hot enough to boil the mash. It did produce alcohol but it literally took all day to produce 1.5L. Further, the final mix was about 10 percent alcohol (like a weak wine).
I’m not really sure which of my mistakes was the fatal one or if they’re all cumulative, but it was a fun experience to learn from.