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.
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
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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."
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)
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.
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.
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...
🤣 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!
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.
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.
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
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!
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!!!
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
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.
The pot with legs inside the T500 is brilliant. Thank you! I'm working on a brandy / eau de vie pilot project right now and this video is massively helpful.
Stumbled across this while I was going through homebrew videos. Great info, I've been homebrewing beer for a while and have always been interested in distilling. Looks like you have a lot of great learning content here. Subscribed and definitely going to be going through more of these.
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 😁
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.
My buddy used to bring back from shore leave, (from home in NC) peach moonshine, with a peach in the bottom of the mason jar! boy.... was that lightnin SMOOTH!
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
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.
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!
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!
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 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 .
@@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
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.
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!
@StillIt i remember working with some guys over seas and they would always talk about Rakia (not sure the proper spelling) but they always said it was the best thing ever and they always made it year round. can you make a video of a traditional Rakia? ? ?
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.
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.
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.
From a long time brandy, shine apprentice in the Southern U.S., I say........... Well done Mate. Just found your channel & its interesting to see how you do it down under. Cheers Mate!!
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 have watched this video a dozen or more times and I desperately want to make my own. Without being familiar with ferments and distilling, I am intimidated. I absolutely love big peach flavor!
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.
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!
Ive tried dried apricots for a ~4.5 L (~1Gallon) cider and it turned out great. I used 1kg apricots, 250g sultanas, 2 cups white sugar, pectin and topped up with a v nice apple juice. Finely chopped the fruit and simmered in a smoll amount of juice for ~25 minutes. Strain through cheesecloth (just the large bits out) & added to carboy with sugar. When cold, topped up with juice and added yeast and pectin. Took 3weeks to finish. Filtered after brewing Left for 5/6 months and tasted amazing! Quite sharp, rich in flavour I think it was ~8% or less?? lol . Im assuming it would distill very nicely
@@samsmith9764 Thanks for the recipe, I'm not a fan of the dried apricots but that sounds like it could be a real nice and cheap brandy base. It started out when I watched moonshiners some time ago and I heard of the mayhaw berry. I wanted to try them for ages and couldn't get them fresh anywhere online. A bloke reccommended I try the freeze dried berries and just add extra sugar to make up for the juice loss. I'll never look at freeze dried the same again, everything's shineworthy.
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.
Been wondering for a while now. Why not bump up the SG of a fruit mash, with a grain wort? In other words, use the fermentable sugars from corn or grain to add to the fruit instead of table sugar.
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!
I want to try to make a spirit run and add some peach extract into the boiler with all the low wines. Hoping by removing foreshots and 500 ml of heads from each stripping run I will get good flavor carryover on my spirit run as will be less to take out of the spirit run. Love the science behind this hobby
@@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
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 video! Something that will help pull more sugar out is to freeze your fruit before you use it. I make a lot of all fruit wines with strawberries, blackberries and muscadines and this will give your initial sugar reading much better. I cant wait to try making some peach brandy!
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.
Have you seen how they make cheong? You let fruit sit in sugar to extract flavour and you get a syrup and dryer fruit. Wonder if you could use those to make peach brandy and if itd make a difference
We call this Tuica, we don't add yeast, if we make Rachiu from peaches we need brandy, but u need a long fermentation time like 4 weeks for the peach flavor to develop and we don't mix it at all since air is BAD for fermentation.
I have found this video amazing and thorough. I’m in the process of taking 20 pounds of fresh peaches and after the initial steps of cleaning and pitting the peaches I have ended up with almost 3 gallons of mash after I used my immersion mixer on them. My initial hydrometer reading is 1.068. This mash smells and tastes so amazing so I cheated some myself so I used 3 pounds of sugar. Ohhhhh it is smelling great. I got the temperature of the mash to 90 degrees f so now I’m using 10 grams of red star yeast. I’ve ended up with 5 gallons of liquid and the yeast is working great. I appreciate your help with thorough information. I’ll let you know how this turns out. William
Fantastic video, thanks mate! I can now get my hands on the next best thing - fruit pulp, which I want to use to make a brandy very soon. I was second-guessing myself if I should or should not do it, but this video pushed me over the top for sure!
cutting down on the packing with the t500 will get different ABV with the reflux going. No packing is 60%. 2 coils of copper mesh and a hand full of copper saddles gives 80%. all with the reflux on.
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.
Working my way through all your content Jesse,so excuse me if I'm a bit late on board.As an amateur wine maker for 30 odd years,may I make a suggestion?I have made some really good fruit brandies,like Slivovich for example.They will taste much better if you treat the wash like a wine and allow to mature for some time first before running through the still.This allows some more complex flavours to develop which will reflect after distilling.Glad to see you added pectinase,a must for fruits,maybe adjust ph to around the 3.6 mark next time.
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.
Hi Jesse, in fruit brandies do you prefer to run a wash twice (stripping+spirit run) OR run it once with plates? And if with plates, how many (in order to preserve as much flavor as possible)? This comparison would actually be an interesting idea for a video, as to find out the pros and cons of each schenario.
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
Excellent idea - thanks for sharing!
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.
@@excitedbox5705 Yes, sangria is pretty popular in the US as well.
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.
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
I'll have to try that next time I cook! Thanks for the idea
@TrashcatLinol This world needs more wives that are like you! He sounds like a lucky guy!
@@Sniperboy5551They're gay, mate.
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.
Sounds awesome. What kind of toast do you put on the sugar maple wood?
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!
musta been pasteurized honey, ya?
Why add honey when peach juice is a real thing, it's not artificial, and is just as sweet?
@@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.
They laughed at me when I planted two peach trees. Who’s laughing now?
Not them! Not if they want brandy!
I read this comment and laughed so hard I cried ....I planted 2 peach trees myself for this reason😂😂
@@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.
@@jc5445 Best of luck!
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.
You should make amaretto with the pits.
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
Great ideas friend!
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.
I use a 5 gal keg still do you think 3 baskets is too many?
That pot within the still is an ingenious idea. Keen to build and try. Thank you sir.
Can't really take the credit for that. One of the patreons mentioned he was using a malt tube. Got me thinking!
The double boiler is brilliant, dude! I've got to try that out. Awesome video!!!
You forgot to say "hypothetically"...🤪
@@jacobharnoy6396 Good point. We don't all live in New Zealand;-)
Double boiler is brilliant in deed! I have never seen that done before. Poor man’s jacketed boiler. Appreciate your work!
That double boiler idea is genius...
Is the double boiler needed if you have the peaches in a thumper or would that increase the flavour even more hypothetically?
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."
😂😂
lmaoooo
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)
Hi James, does the oak chips character blend well with the apricot brandy? I thought the wood flavor and fruit do not pair well
Nice man! I have 2/3 of this on french oak now
@@geo0salonica I think it pairs nicely, fairly new at distilling but I think it works.
@@StillIt that was some good knife skills
@@StillIt can I ask what you did with the peach pits/kernels?
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.
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.
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...
🤣 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 video. Double Boiler is awesome, inspiring, every distilling kettle should have that option!
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.
Super video, nice add on to the T500. Super Idea.
Been playing around with a false bottom idea but the pot is so much simpler
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.
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
Ohh I've always wondered how they do that
Wow coolest idea to put pot inside of boiler. Going to make myself one of those right away. 👍👍
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!
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!!!
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
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.
How do you use the stones? Genuinely interested.
@@davidclark9619 just followed this recipe.
www.edibleaustin.com/index.php/recipes/recipe/457-stone-fruit-liqueur
The pot with legs inside the T500 is brilliant. Thank you! I'm working on a brandy / eau de vie pilot project right now and this video is massively helpful.
Ive waited so long for you to do this 👌
Any chance of doing calvados/apple brandy 😁
hopefully yes!...I've been doing apple brandy for two years (with different batches)...and still dialing in some details.
Stumbled across this while I was going through homebrew videos. Great info, I've been homebrewing beer for a while and have always been interested in distilling. Looks like you have a lot of great learning content here. Subscribed and definitely going to be going through more of these.
Every time he laughs it's like I'm listening to Ron Swanson laughing
NZ Ron Swanson
I kept trying to place that giggle, but you got it exactly right!
This channel definetely deserves more subs!
Nice name :). Cheers mate
@@StillIt hahaha from one Jesse to another huh :D
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 😁
Bloody brilliant as usual Jess and I love the pot in pot setup will be building one of those fir my t500 shortly.
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.
My buddy used to bring back from shore leave, (from home in NC) peach moonshine, with a peach in the bottom of the mason jar! boy.... was that lightnin SMOOTH!
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 make rakija hole my life, and it is very interesting to see completely different point of view. Greatings from south-east Europe.
Peach brandy or as Russians say peachka
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.
6:06 theoretically, if you light soak the peaches with sugar before adding water itll absorb the oils and flavor.
Instead of the sugar, would it have made more sense to use something like peach jam/preserves to bump up the sugar content?
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!
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!
Wait, really? haha awsesom!e!
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!
Was just thinking the same thing that the inner pot needs some holes or a mesh base.
An interesting video on Grappa: th-cam.com/video/MmGg3tZwDBg/w-d-xo.html
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 .
You too should consider watching some Romanians making palinka which is a Romanian plum only brandy
Nice one Jesse. Love the way you break down you flavour blends with your cuts. Always learn a thing or two.
this is the one of the best brandies alogside apricot and plum in balkans
ja za orahovacu bijem, za orah je sve ostalo brlja.
@@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
@@mezmerizer9422 Ja za lozu bijem.
Don't forget quince brandy. Personally it's my favorite.
Slivovitz baby....... yeah!
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.
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!
I'm in the middle of making my own grog using sugar as the base, hope it all goes well, love from North qld Australia
Peaches come from a can,
They were put there by a man
In a factory downtown
If I had my little way,
I'd eat peaches every day
Still a great time for this old man
@@bradwells8643 old man on the back porch , and that old man is me . 🙂
Classic👍
sun soaking bulges in the shade
karl pilkington over here
@StillIt i remember working with some guys over seas and they would always talk about Rakia (not sure the proper spelling) but they always said it was the best thing ever and they always made it year round. can you make a video of a traditional Rakia? ? ?
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.
This video is great, I really enjoyed it & how he thoroughly explained everything. *subscribed*
I hear that if you freeze the fruit as a whole they will turn to mush pits will fall out and it will break down faster. Has anyone tried that
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.
Thx for working with the T-500
I enjoy mine immensely
Dude, mad cutting skills on the peaches!
Haha cheers man
love the poke towards the aussies, was a good chuckle.
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.
From a long time brandy, shine apprentice in the Southern U.S., I say...........
Well done Mate. Just found your channel & its interesting to see how you do it down under. Cheers Mate!!
Smoothest add Segway ever!
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.
The way you slice the peaches, you're a cook by training. Real pro
The dice was pretty consistent
I have watched this video a dozen or more times and I desperately want to make my own.
Without being familiar with ferments and distilling, I am intimidated.
I absolutely love big peach flavor!
Yo, your beard is approaching god status. Respect
😂😂 thanks man
Ahh Pálinka! Had a Hungarian friend that made some and gave me it as a gift before, I'm not a big drinker anyway, but this stuff hits different!
Stick blender bro. I use one for jakfruit brandy.
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.
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!
You just one me over as a new subscriber, with your great comedic comments! And I love peach brandy. Great info and entertaining 👏 👍 👌 😀
I really want to see more fruit liquor videos.
Whiskey is Awesome, but I get free fresh fruit all year long.
always be mashing funk daddo.
Hi Jesse how do you work out how much foreshots to take off from wash to wash
Cheers. Big fan love your channel
Millions of peaches, peaches for free. Millions of peaches, peaches for me.
Have you tried using freeze dried fruit for a mash? Good way to get bulk fruits out of season
Ive tried dried apricots for a ~4.5 L (~1Gallon) cider and it turned out great.
I used 1kg apricots, 250g sultanas, 2 cups white sugar, pectin and topped up with a v nice apple juice. Finely chopped the fruit and simmered in a smoll amount of juice for ~25 minutes.
Strain through cheesecloth (just the large bits out) & added to carboy with sugar. When cold, topped up with juice and added yeast and pectin. Took 3weeks to finish. Filtered after brewing
Left for 5/6 months and tasted amazing! Quite sharp, rich in flavour I think it was ~8% or less?? lol . Im assuming it would distill very nicely
@@samsmith9764 Thanks for the recipe, I'm not a fan of the dried apricots but that sounds like it could be a real nice and cheap brandy base.
It started out when I watched moonshiners some time ago and I heard of the mayhaw berry. I wanted to try them for ages and couldn't get them fresh anywhere online. A bloke reccommended I try the freeze dried berries and just add extra sugar to make up for the juice loss. I'll never look at freeze dried the same again, everything's shineworthy.
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.
Been wondering for a while now. Why not bump up the SG of a fruit mash, with a grain wort? In other words, use the fermentable sugars from corn or grain to add to the fruit instead of table sugar.
Peaches by president's of the United States of America was going through my head as I watched this 😆
same i loved that reference haha, not sure if thats actually what he was referencing but I can't think of anything else it would be
Hey Raki!!! Thanks for the shout out! That’s my drink!
"Oh look! It's an Australian..." lol!
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!
"I could eat a peach for hours." -Castor Troy
Best movie of his career
No his best movie was fast Times at Ridgemont high
damn right he could
I’m ready “ready for the big ride baby”
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!🤣😂😅🤣😂😆
We make peach rakija here in Croatia, very similar.
Though plum and grappa are more popular.
Are you going to put any of this on wood?
Yeah man, about 2/3 is on french oak. Totally goofed and didn't put that in the edit!
I want to try to make a spirit run and add some peach extract into the boiler with all the low wines. Hoping by removing foreshots and 500 ml of heads from each stripping run I will get good flavor carryover on my spirit run as will be less to take out of the spirit run. Love the science behind this hobby
Well, in central Europe we're doing this with peaches, appricots, apples, pears, plums, just name any fruit and we've done it already. :-D
Friend of mine made one with raspberry once that was the best shit ever
Wanker
Dewberries? Muscadines? Tomatoes?
@@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
@@88predy Same with Hungarians. Pálinka is basically made from any kind of fruit here.
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.
"....turned 44lbs of peaches in brandy! You can too."
Acutely no, I live in Arizona.
oh...you should ask for a tequila video! You likely have blue agave cactus nearby....I think that's the right one for tequila
Great video! Something that will help pull more sugar out is to freeze your fruit before you use it. I make a lot of all fruit wines with strawberries, blackberries and muscadines and this will give your initial sugar reading much better. I cant wait to try making some peach brandy!
Looks like a Viking, Speaks like a Harley, Laughing like a Drunk, Cooking like a Mama
Calculating.......
**
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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.
Have you seen how they make cheong? You let fruit sit in sugar to extract flavour and you get a syrup and dryer fruit. Wonder if you could use those to make peach brandy and if itd make a difference
We call this Tuica, we don't add yeast, if we make Rachiu from peaches we need brandy, but u need a long fermentation time like 4 weeks for the peach flavor to develop and we don't mix it at all since air is BAD for fermentation.
I have found this video amazing and thorough. I’m in the process of taking 20 pounds of fresh peaches and after the initial steps of cleaning and pitting the peaches I have ended up with almost 3 gallons of mash after I used my immersion mixer on them. My initial hydrometer reading is 1.068. This mash smells and tastes so amazing so I cheated some myself so I used 3 pounds of sugar. Ohhhhh it is smelling great. I got the temperature of the mash to 90 degrees f so now I’m using 10 grams of red star yeast. I’ve ended up with 5 gallons of liquid and the yeast is working great. I appreciate your help with thorough information. I’ll let you know how this turns out.
William
Have you ever thought about distilling mead?
Funny you say that......watch this space
I know how to do it hypothetically
Great video! What do you do with the other ‘cuts’? Can you do a video on making Palinka?
Fantastic video, thanks mate! I can now get my hands on the next best thing - fruit pulp, which I want to use to make a brandy very soon. I was second-guessing myself if I should or should not do it, but this video pushed me over the top for sure!
cutting down on the packing with the t500 will get different ABV with the reflux going. No packing is 60%. 2 coils of copper mesh and a hand full of copper saddles gives 80%. all with the reflux on.
This is a great video yet again champ i wonder can you please do a video making cognac i would love to learn how to make that
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.
Working my way through all your content Jesse,so excuse me if I'm a bit late on board.As an amateur wine maker for 30 odd years,may I make a suggestion?I have made some really good fruit brandies,like Slivovich for example.They will taste much better if you treat the wash like a wine and allow to mature for some time first before running through the still.This allows some more complex flavours to develop which will reflect after distilling.Glad to see you added pectinase,a must for fruits,maybe adjust ph to around the 3.6 mark next time.
14:51
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.
Hi Jesse, in fruit brandies do you prefer to run a wash twice (stripping+spirit run) OR run it once with plates?
And if with plates, how many (in order to preserve as much flavor as possible)?
This comparison would actually be an interesting idea for a video, as to find out the pros and cons of each schenario.