I do an additional step. I dehydrate slices of some of the peaches and save them. Once the spirit is made, a few of those slices get added back and sit in the spirit for a few days ( depending on taste). This brings more peach flavour back in to supplement the “character” of the distilled spirit
Honestly, if you really want good peach flavor in a spirit, making a schnapps by soaking peaches in a neutral spirit like vodka is a better option than a brandy, and that's closer to what you are doing with soaking dehydrated fruit. You get direct peach flavor and sugars for a more pleasant liquor. It seems like grain spirits are much easier to control for weird flavors and adding the fruit afterwards is easier.
That is quite popular in Germany for Iced cocktails in the summer as well but with Orange or Citrus slices. Then there is the Spanish red wine + vodka and fruit drinks for parties. Like a more refined fruit punch / alcoholic fruit salad.
Ever do this with the germ from inside the peach pit? It's heavily contended as a 'must' by peach jam and preserves makers (some). Has a slight cyanide/almond flavour. You could try your brandy with a drop of a good almond extract to see if you like the neighbourhood before you commit.
@@edwardseaton2902 Unfortunately, we got a year's worth of rain in the month of May. My peach trees don't look like they made it. I guess I'll plant new ones next year if they don't come back.
Meee too, I used 50lbs of peaches, I let them rippen for 2 weeks and then ran them through my juicer. I then mixed it with 5lbs of honey. Fermented with a Rum yeast. Ran it on a single run only keeping the hearts and put every else thing in my fients tank. I then aged it on sugar maple wood. Friends think it’s my finest product.
I was going to suggest boiling the peaches down by half to get peach syrup for the extra gravity points. But the above comment is 100% better. I make mead and Honey is the substance god created to make into alcohol. So I second this....use honey!
@@Baronstone Goof question, I’ve done peaches before and I’ve done Mead. They were really good, and I had been mixing them together for awhile. So I decided to just mix them both and distill it. Really nice.
I just made peach brandy about 3 weeks ago by using Welch's Peach Medley from the dollar store because it had zero preservatives. Also amounted to zero headaches.
I love that stuff! I used to make a bomb stir fry with it using it in place of chicken broth in my recipe. My husband ADORES peaches, and it's his favorite stir fry for it. If my bro decides to get rid of his distilling equipment, I'll have to see if he'll sell it to me. I can maybe make my hubby his favorite liquor, too XD
When you dropped the peach pit reminds me of The History of the World part 1, when he mel brooks drops the tablet . "God has given you the 15... The 10 commandments."
Awesome video as always. I have found over the years that when making fruit mashes, it has to be cooked. If you use fresh fruit, you get just that in your finished product. Fresh fruit on the nose and not much flavor. If you cook the fruit, you get more of a “pie” flavor which I prefer. I also use a gin basket with some of bigger chunks of fruit to bump that flavor up a bit. Throw a Madagascar vanilla bean in there and you have a clear peach pie... 😉 cheers
I am an absolute newbie and wondered how to get a strong, almost syrupy flavor. Back in the 1980's and 90's the was a peach candy, a hard candy with a liquid Inside. I've always thought that...that in a brandy would be delicious. Anyhow, I wondered about a puree, cooking and reducing the pulp volume, would it increase the fruitiness of the final product or would I have to cut and proof the brandy with juice after? Any help would be appreciated.
for the flavor you need to put a bottle on a tree when the fruit is small so the fruit grows into the bottle, then when the fruit ripens you cut it off from the tree straight into the bottle and pour the corresponding rakija (brandy) into that bottle and age it for at least 2 months, can be done with almost any fruit but pears are the best, that's how we do it in the balkans
Love the way you present! I used to read books that explained how to make your own liquors, and even though they explained the process well, I still felt afraid to try. I even remember visiting a cousin's winery, and seeing all the pieces that go into the process and the strict safety standards... I feel like if I binged your channel for a day or two, I could fill in the missing gaps and make it work. I have my own land and plans to put in a garden that I hope produces more than we can use. Being able to make alcohol after the rest of preservation techniques have been exhausted will be extremely resourceful. Plus, I love dandelion spirits, and the only way I'll get to enjoy them regularly is by making my own.
Peaches taste a lot more sweet when given some time in the box. Fresh from the shop, they are often hard and hardly sweet. But they get softer, juicier and a lot sweeter within a week. I don't know if there is more sugar created in the fruit or if it is only liberated from the structure. But the effect is enormous...
Cheers from Czech Republic, here we use this similiar method for anything from plums to pears and apples. Instead of cutting them you can just mash them in barrel with a bat, ad bit of yeasts and just close the barrel for few weeks (btw: its good to make some one way air escape on top. Otherwise you would have plums all over your basement :D). After that you filter out bigger particles and send it trough destalition process. Ps.: you can put bottle over growing plum, peach, apple or pear, that way you can put whole piece of that fruit in the bottle to make it look and taste even better
Just finished aging an apricot brandy with medium roast oak chips and charred cherry wood. Turned out amazing!! I used the same yeast I think that is key. Enjoyed your video. I think brandy is making a comeback (hopefully)
I don't know if you still have jars 12 and 13. But an experiment you can try to get rid of that astringency (if it's caused by tannins) is to put about a 1/2 teaspoon of gelatin in them, stir/shake it every few hours, or when you pass by the jar, then let it sit overnight. In the morning, filter it through a coffee filter, or cheese cloth. Gelatin is made from collagen, collagen is made up of proteins, and tannins bind to proteins and are forced to precipitate out of solution, wherein you can filter them out.
If you were to do a stone fruit spirit like this again you could try US-05 yeast, the peach/nectarine aroma it gives off in fermentation would be well suited.
I love my peach brandy ! Oaked for just long enough to give it a yellow color, then proofed to 80. I add a few peach slices to a pint jar and give it a week to absorb the extra flavor. Awesome !! Just be careful when you eat the peaches 😁
That's funny, the very first thing I thought of when you said the gravity was below your liking was, _"Why doesn't he just add some sugar to it? The yeast won't give a shit where the sugar comes from and it won't be enough to alter the flavor.."_ Not a walk of shame in my opinion.
Extremely important to remember that fructose is fructose, sucrose is sucrose, glucose is glucose, no matter the source. All individual sugars are the same across the planet whether produced by a plant, an animal, a bacteria, or a manufacturing plant in Saskatchewan, are exactly the same molecule.
@@mezmerizer9422 Orahovača je liker, a ne rakija. Baza za Orahovaču je Loza ili Komovica u koju se dodaju šećer i plodovi mladih oraha. To nikako nije čisto piće niti destilat oraha kako se misli
🤣 3:08 best part of the video! Now back to brandy! Great recipe and great improv to take the alcohol and flavour from the pulp. There absolutely no problem to add sugar to get to the right sweetness it is a common think even in the Balkans where I am from. In the Balkans, the real thing it is made only with fruits that fall from the tree when you shake it. If trees full of fruit are not available and fruits have to be bought then some added sugar is perfectly fine as long as it is white (fully refined) so it doesn't impair any flavour. Great dedication in cutting out every single pit out, that is what could be called a 100% hand crafted spirit! There is another method (the one I use when I make fruit brandy or Rakia, the generic term used in the Balkans) and that is that I simmer the fruits for a while until the pits come apart (like a slow cooked roast until the meat falls of the bones) then add the sugar at the end after a gravity reading. Boiling the fruits with the pits gives a unique character found only in very few places even in the Balkans. This is s secret passed on in my family. There is a catch though: if you boil them too much you get too much bitterness and the whole batch is ruined. You need to now exactly when to stop based on continuous tasting similar to when you do the cuts. Next level is Slivovitz!
Great that you choose to use the T500 in some of your videos. It's maybe not the very best, but it must be the most accessible still. I feel you had some reservations, particularly about the T500 when you met with George and Bearded and Bored. Great that you didn't let this stop you getting one and using it. Love the videos, great work, great content.
I made some plum wine and I had great luck with washing and freezing the plums first. The plums came from the tree in my backyard and I didn't thin enough down so I ended up with a lot of small plums. They tasted fine but weren't great for eating since the stone took up soe much room inside. All told I ended up with about 7lbs (3.2kg) of usable fruit. Freeze them and then thaw them out on your kitchen counter. The plums turn to mush, but you can put on some rubber or nitrile gloves and squish them by hand and pull the stone and any stem out. Makes processing the fruit really fast. You may need to add some extra pectic enzyme if you leave it frozen for more than a couple months, fyl. It would probably make a decent brandy if I had any left, lol. My wife loves the stuff though, especially with a splash of lime juice to add some tartness. I back-sweetened the wine and it came out almost like a dessert wine.
Just did this myself yesterday. Next time freeze the fruit after you process the this shatters the cell walls and releases more juice. Also, use the stones to make amaretto.
Nice one mate, I like the fact that you are using the T 500, many of us out here have them and aren't really sure how to use them and this helps a lot, nice tip there too using that pot on legs inside the boiler. Chur bro.
I did George's canned peach recipe last month. It is a huge hit with family and friends. I want to try a half canned half fresh as soon as the peaches come into season. Great tips.
The ‘chunky stuff pot’ is a game changer. I put all this time into assembling a double boiler and all I had to do was that!?! Can’t wait to do a run will solids. You the man!
I'm a commercial fruit wine producer in California. There are four things I'd recommend to improve the final product. 1) Definitely make sure the fruit is ripe. You mentioned that before, but for those reading it's absolutely crucial. 2) Don't cut up the peaches so finely. The yeast and pectin will make a mash out of the fruit after enough time. The more you cut up those skins the more astringency you'll get. 3) Ferment the fruit at low temperatures 45-55 degrees Fahrenheit (not always practical on a hobby level). 4) Press the peaches after a day or two of fermentation and let the fermentation continue until dry (needs to be in a closed top vessel otherwise the protective fruit cap won't ward of the oxygen). A lot of that astringency that came in on the tails would have been avoided if this took place (also not practical on a hobby level. Cheers! -Alan
BTW....adding the sugar isn't cheating with making fruit wine because your first step is to create a juice that has the same properties a wine grape juice/must. Wine grapes have 25% sugar by volume so when you have a peach that only has 12-14% sugar you've got to add sugar to create the right profile. There's still plenty of aromatic and flavor compounds that are the real hero of the fruit brandy/ eau de vie and of fruit wine. You just have to keep them in solution by maintaining your volatile aromatic compounds through low temperature fermentation.
Brandy is made out of Wine (which is made out of grapes only) what you have is called Rakia, the peach version is called breskavica in Balkans or raki rodakinou in greece or praskovena in Bulgaria.
Actually got an ad for a pot still company on this video. Cool that the hobby is big enough for ads like that to be happening. As always, love the content!
Peach and blackberry are my favorites, strawberry/ watermelon is also a winner. A few of the fleshy peach pits are a great addition to the gin basket to infuse the peach flavor back into your distillate. Raw sugar is a good addition to up your potential abv and doesn't effect your flavor at all. Cheers, Mate!!!
There are 2 broad variety of peaches, Freestone and Cling. Just as the name implies, Freestone peaches are such that the stone isn't connected so to speak with the flesh of the peach and pops right out. Clings conversely so. Loved the video, ty. Also, if you chop the peaches like you did in this video and you don't run them through a food processor, freeze them all regardless prior to fermenting. The freezing will break down the cell walls of the flesh and when you thaw they will nice and soft. Cheers!
My brother has a couple Freestone Peach trees. His this year, were QUITE tasty, but tiny. I ate them just like a cherry. Pop them in my mouth, and spit the stone out. (We also have an uncle, last name Freestone.) steve
I read that when you use pectin, the amount of methanol increases. "Also, it has been severally reported that microbial fermentation of substrates rich in pectin can result in the formation of methanol" (Nakagawa et al. 2000; Mendonca et al. 2011; Siragusa et al. 1988). Info from NCBI, "Methanol contamination in traditionally fermented alcoholic beverages: the microbial dimension"
As for the "essence of peach" in a drink... Try a Peach Nehi soda. The flavor is close, but as my mom told me, the carbonation gives you the feel of the peach fuzz in your mouth.
Another great vid, and I know the intent, but IMO it seemed a bit too rushed. Great tips on letting the pectic enzyme work overnight before pitching. Also, great reminder of making the tinctures with all the cuts you think you want and then modifying it. Glad to hear Nord VPN is keeping you safe too!
@@mnamous9823 dewberries and muscandines yes, and it's great tomatoes... don't ask about this one... I saw it made as an experiment... it was horrible. But nonetheless I saw every fruit that is growing here made into alcohol. Even rose hips, wild strawberries, mirabells, gooseberries... hell, even some vegetables :-D carrots or pumpkins, sugar beets, potatoes. Czechs and Slovaks have been making these for many many decades :-D
When I make a must/wash, I don't air-rate it. It just helps the sourkruat bacteria out. I heat it hot enough to kill Bacteria off. 150F works because it takes so long to cool off. When it gets down to 100F I add the yeast. Next morning the it is fermenting like you cant believe. I just use bakers yeast. I also use yeast nutrient. I get complete fermentation in of 12-14% 8 to 14 days. The trick is to get the alcohol level up to 6% really fast to inhibit the Bacteria growth. Otherwise you end up with a yucky acidic apple juice smell and taste of the wash/must.
I think you should consider watching some Hungarian videos regarding the making of pálinka (Hungarian brandy) just the observation of some techniques could potentially help you out fair deal in the preparation of your fruit mash .
Great video, Jesse! Save that leggy kettle, mate, for making Grappa! Water and some feints (or wine if you haven’t got feints) go in the big kettle, the grape skins and wee stems (pomace) goes in the inner leggy kettle along with some water so the pomace stews and doesn’t cook. My inner kettle has holes in its bottom so the pomace stays wet. The Grappa is amazing!
I live in Maine and have spent almost half of my 45 years raking blueberries always wanted to make blueberries brandy My best day raking blueberries in my youth was 154 five gallon buckets at about 25 pounds per bucket
I got about 40lbs of peaches that were done for at a store. Real soft and mushy. I was able to mash them by hand to remove the pits. Boiled them, added sugar (so it’s not really a brandy), pitched my yeast and using my reflux I was getting 180+ proof. Making some peach cobbler sipping drink just in time for the holidays.
My grandfather made some peach brandy in the 80s. We had a orchard so we had lots of peaches. He cooked the mash, let it cool, pitched it and let it go. 3/4 of it was distilled in a moonshine still and what was left was bottled as wine. Both were fantastic. His thinking was that the cooking would up the sugar content.
Yes, I just did it with my batch. They pretty much turned into pure. Pretty sure this resulted in a higher SG as the sugars inside the peach were released.
This works well if you have harder peaches that aren't quite ripe yet.. the sugars are there and the pectic enzymes are a must but cooking them first and adding sugar while they're cooking is also a great method. I had a little bit of vanilla in here too at this point. I peel my peaches so that tannin that he didn't like and had to do an additional run on isn't there.
The winemakers dosage of pectic enzyme is around 6 grams per 100 litres. With stone fruit wines a dosage of 9 grams per 100 litres seems to give better results. With the spirit run, if the low wines need to be diluted, some of the backsets from the last stripping run and be used to boost the congeners. With the wine yeasts, Laffort brand suggests adding an equal volume of the wash/must to the hydrated yeast (after the yeast has hydrated for 20 minutes). Let the mixture rest for about 10 minutes before adding the mixture to the wash/must.
I know I'm 3 months late, but I saw the thumbnail and immediately thought of the peaches song in my head and chuckled. Then I hit play and heard you say the song lyrics right from the jump and validated a couple things. Most every person under 30 has no clue what you were talking about and we are old, and that you are alright and my kind of weird so I needed to subscribe.
Peaches are either Freestone or Cling varieties. My first job was picking peaches and my hometown is The Peach Bowl of the World. Harvest is a few weeks away.
I've had some peach Brandy my old neighbor made. It was damn tasty, and rather strong. My dad had a friend that made apple and blackberry Brandy pretty often.
I am going to make a bastard wine. Apricots and local honey. I am in the Okanagan valley British Columbia Canada and we have tons of orchards and beekeepers here. No distilling, just enough sugar from honey that it gets up to the 17% ish point that kills the yeast. So sort of an Apricot mead.
High west distillery in Park City Utah has one of the best beach vodkas I’ve ever had. All natural. No burn. Tastes like you’re biting into a peach. Love these vids.
great! more t500 inspiration please :D :D all the fancy big still stuff is cool but for the smaller hobbists its way cool to see something like this in a of the shelf small still! thanks you make this hobby great!
We make plums, apples, pears, cherries, ..... You wait for the fruit to ripen, grind it, mix it every 2 days, make sure it doesn't mold, distill it 3 times, put it in a cool and dark place for 6 weeks then dilute with distilled water.
You have successfully made Rakia. Such Brandies are made at home all over the Balkans and a lot of people are very proud of their homemade rakia quality.
If you bring the cut/stoned fruit up to a boil after chopping it breaks the fruit down so you don't have to chop so fine.1 peach cut into 8 chunks. It also releases the sugar and flavors trapped in the fruit. Saves hours off the processing and at least a few days off the ferment.
Next time you prepare peaches try doing a single continuous cut along the edge of the pit(down The Valley of the fruit. You can then twist the peach halves and it doesn’t waste any flesh. Also much faster.
For three future you can pull the stone out with a pair of needle nose pliars. Where the stem comes out there's a valley sink the pliers just above the stem and opposite of the valley and grab the stone, twist and then pull it'll come right out. There will be less waist and time spent on possessing. The firmer the peach the easier the stone comes out without crushing the peach.
I Would have put the peeches thru a Juicer and Thrown the Juice and pulp in to a Pre made Wash for making High yield alcohol. adding dried slices sound magic and a piece o star anise. They say adding 2 or 3 of the apricot seeds into the jam as you bottle it makes for a better jam and yes you gotto cook them in the jam as reducing it so fermenting the peach seeds with the mash and keeping them after the hard flesh is stripped off and putting 3 or 4 0r 5 in the bottle might help while it ages for 3 monthe in the bottle b4 you turn it into a liquer with some sugar and glycerine and ccorn syrup.
Hello. I am Czech, and here, this would be called broskvovice. We call this style of alcohol "pálenka" and can be made with any fruit, but the most traditional is plums or pears, it was traditionally made at home, start to finish (usually because people had a bunch of fruit trees at home and a lot of it would rot before they could eat it) but with the laws today, most people only ferment their fruit at home and then bring it to a professional distillery. It's also a thing in other countries, like Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia and a bunch of others I won't bother listing.
Just saw this video pop up in my recommended. Read the title, and immediately subscribed to the channel😂 This is what the recommended tab was meant for!
Using a food processer or blender to reduce the peaches to mush works great. This way there are no chunks in the fermenter which really don't ferment much. I've never found any fruit sweet enough to have a specific gravity high enough where sugar didn't need to be added. It is always disappointing to discover that no matter what one does with fruit, the flavor in the final spirits is never truly like the real flavor of the fruit used. I liked your idea of using the standoff pot in the still to prevent scorching. Thanks!
