Apple Brandy

My brother-in-law makes about 25 liters of plum brandy a year. He uses only pure fruit, fermenting in wooden barrels with wild yeasts. Unfortunately, he has to have someone else distill it for him, at a cost of about €8 a liter. I decided to fix that for him, and bought him a still.

As this will be his Christmas present, I decided I'd give it a run first.

The work of the last few weeks has been apple brandy. I'm not real sure how much longer it will take, or how it will all turn out, but here's the story up until now.

First, I started with 20 kg of windfall (the ones lying on the ground) apples taken from the neighbor.

Then I cut out any bad parts and chopped them up a little. It is better to mash them, but I didn't have a fruit press for that.

Then I dumped in 20 liters of spring water I get from up in the mountains, or right behind the house if it's flowing.

Next I pitched a yeast starter going with purchased wine yeast. You can use baker's yeast, but wine yeasts produce more consistent, flavorful results and tolerate higher alcohol percentages.

The yeast is stirred into the apples and left. The next morning you could tell they were starting to work.

A few days later a nice wort had formed

I stirred the whole concoction daily, and covered it with a towel. It's ready for the next step when the wort falls. It basically just disappears - there one day, gone the next. That took about 2 weeks.

Then we strained the liquid.

Poured it into demijohns.

Pressed the juice out of the remaining bits using nylon leggings - again, no fruit press.

Here's the remains of the apples. Not much.

I wound up with about 35 liters of juice. Not much alcohol in it at this point. I capped the demijohns and monitored them for a few days for fermentation - nothing. The apples I used weren't very sweet, but the juice definitely still had sugar in it and I want enough alcohol to distill, so I added 5 kilos of sugar and moved the demijohns from the cold basement to the office. Then I pitched some more yeast and tossed it in. The juice is still bubbling happily. Once it stops, the fermentation will be done and it's time to distill.