Better fruit taste

Grogs,
Have you made fruit shine is the past? If so what was your procedure?

Fruit flavor will definitely be lost during distillation. I don’t make a ton of fruit or brandy as I’m more into single malts these days. I know a few folks with save some of the wine (they don’t distill it) and they will add that back to the shine after it has been distilled. You could also take some of the same fruit blent it and strain it and add the fruit juice to the shine. You could even add a few chunks to the shine and just add it to the mason jar. I’m sure someone who makes brandy more than I can add some more info for ya.

I make mostly fruit brandys. Here is my recipe and full process:

First, select the best, ripest fruit. The better the fruit, the better the wine, the better the brandy. Cut out any brown spots or other discoloration. If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t ferment it. It takes about seven pounds of cleaned fruit to make a gallon of puree. I cut my fruit up into chunks and fill my Ninja blender up, add some pectin and puree it. I let it set out for 24 hours for the pectin to work, then I freeze it. This is a two-pronged approach to extracting all the juices and sugars from the pulp. Pectin breaks down the fibers in the cell walls and frees up juice. Freezing expands the water in the fruit, which ruptures the cell walls and frees up juice. Freezing also allows me to procrastinate on an Olympic level. I’ll give you this recipe in ratios so you can make as much or as little as you want.
The recipe is one part fruit puree to two parts water and 2.5 pounds of cane sugar per gallon of mash. I have eight gallon fermenters and do six in each. I put two gallons of fruit puree, add 12.5 pounds of sugar and stir it in, then get a gallon of water up to 200°F and stir it in until all sugar is dissolved and let it set for 30 minutes. Then I top it up to six gallons with cool water. I let it cool down to 80°F and pitch my yeast. I use Lalvin K1-V1116 for fruits. I don’t use yeast nutrients or tannins. The fermentation goes fourteen days and gives you an ABV of about 16- 18%. When the fermentation is finished, let it settle for a week and siphon it off into clean, sanitized fermenters and let it settle for a month, siphon it off, then another month and siphon. Now your wine is perfectly or almost perfectly clarified and ready to run. I do twelve gallon batches, which ends up being about ten gallons of wine. I reserve a gallon and a half of the wine and run the rest. I get about a gallon and a half of 120- 140 proof booze from that. I blend all of the booze together in a carboy and age it with un-toasted white oak chips for two to three months. Then I siphon off the reserved wine one last time and blend it with the aged booze. Then I drink it. Yes, that is about five to six months total time from blender to belly. It’s well worth it, though. You can cut the time down by settling for just a week and running it. But you do have to settle the wine you reserve before you blend it, because it will end up with yeast sediment on the bottom of the bottles. This will make it taste like shit over time. And you don’t have to blend it. You can just run the whole batch of wine and have straight booze if you want. But if you do the long process, you’ll be blown away by the flavor.

I was wondering if putting fruit in the thumper is a way of flavoring the spirit as it is distilled? I use apples from my apple tree to make an apple mash, but the pot still strips a lot of the flavor. I have a herbal basket to hold fruit at the top of the pot still as well, but the flavor still gets striped. My thought is if I use the fruit as much as possible threw out the entire process. The fruit is Racked/strained from the mash after fermentation, before going in the still. So I put the Racked/strained fruit in the herbal basket and was thinking adding it into the thumper would help as well? Any thoughts?

Yes-this will work. You are not going to get an intense flavor but it will add a bit. I have added fruit with some heads tails and a gallon of the fruit wash to a a thumper on a few batches of brandy with good luck.
If you are looking for a true intense apple flavor you are probably best off adding the flavor after distilling- either adding apple juice or adding back some wine ( hard cider) to the finished product.
If you have had any commercial brandy you get most of the apple flavor in the nose

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i have made some tasy peach shine.I use 2 boxes of super ripe peaches blended with 4 lb of sugar add 4 lb of sugar boil to 100′ let cool
then add a pack of champaine yeast put it in a 5 gal carboy for 2 weeks.
i run it fast through me still (5 gal) i use the copper mesh in the column. tossing out the first 4 table spoons of methanol.
then once i extract all the booze i dump 1/2 of the remaining mash toss the booze back into the mash and run the temp at 150′ and re extract the booze and i do this 2 more times. My shine is very mellow and i put it in a glass jug for a few weeks with oak chips
cut it to 80′ proof with distilled water so it dont burn your stomach then i mix up a mix of peach juice / kearns nectar and a cup of peach shine in a mason jar with sliced peaches put it in the fridge for a week and it one very tasty flavorful smooth drink
no harsh shine after taste