Making schnapps
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I have a french recipe for making schnapps with fruit. French family uses a boiler style still with a vessel and H20 surrounding it.
The still that I just purchased does not have a vessel in surrounding water.
it is part pot still and part reflux still. It’s 100% copper. Does anyone know the process for schnapps vs moonshine? thanks for any help or advice. -
I make a lot of Brandy-which is pretty similar to schnpps from my understanding- I think schnapps might be proofed lower than brandy for bottling.
In my view the primary difference between schnapps and brandy is in how it is aged. Both are produced by distilling a fruit wine of one sort or another, but brandies are aged in oak barrels which imparts the amber color and the oak lavors while schnapps are kept white. I use a clawhammer still which makes excellent brandy.This ismy standard brandy recipe for any fruit
My basic fruit recipe is one part fruit juice or puree to two parts good water, 2- 2.5 lbs lbs cane sugar per gallon of mash, and Lalvin K1-V1116 wine yeast.
I obliterate my fruit in my 1000 watt blender. With apples, you need to add water or good apple cider about a third of the way up the pitcher to loosen up the apples. Strain out the pulp and throw it in a pot, cover with about a third of the water you need and bring it to a boil and cut the heat after a minute. This will extract the remainder of the juice. Put the sugar in the fermenter and strain this into it, stirring in all the sugar until completely dissolved. Dump in the rest of the water, let it cool to 80°, then pitch your yeast.
Do not add yeast nutrient. It speeds up the fermentation. The longer the fermentation, the better the flavor development. It should go 14 days and give you 18% ABV. Age it in un-charred white oak chips for two months, then blend it with the wine you reserved. Or to make Snapps don’t use the oak and drink it clear.With any copper still or any still for that matter (which is direct fired)- you are not going to want to put the fruit directly into the still- you just want distill the wine. You are pretty much making a wine , then distill the wine. If you add anything besides the wine it will scorch on the copper which tastes terrible and is a real pain to clean.
The process for distilling moonshine, brandy, whiskey, fuel, schnapps, gin, vodka is the same. Obviously if making gin you will need a gin basket, vodka needs to be ran a few times- but the process is the same. Make a mash- distill it- age it (or don’t)
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the recipe that I have calls for washing and taking pits out and putting in a barrel with the right amount of sugar water and do not disturb for several weeks.
Are they adding yeast? It sounds like they might be using natural yeast that is already on the fruit. This can work well, or not so well- just depending on what yeast strain is on the fruit. You might want to start the first batch with a wine yeast just to make sure you get a good fermentation on your first couple batches. Once you have the process dialed in you might want to try playing with the natural yeast fermentation.
After that fermentation is done would the first step be to put all that mash in the claw hammer still?
After fermentation is finished I would use an auto-siphon to transfer the wine from the fermenter into clean bucket. If you have a lot of solids in the mash you might have to strain the wash with some cheesecloth or mesh bag.
once you have only liquid you can dump that into the still.
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I always apply the flour paste when the boiler is at 130f
I always turn the condensing water on around 150f
Just crank the heat on the higest setting until it starts producing , and then dial it back until you have 1-3 drips a second. I like to have less than a full stream- I like to see the individual drips.what temp are you fermenting? are you open fermenting? did you add yeast or are you trying natural fermentation?
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