Apricot brandy: 2 recipes at home
On the Internet, you can find many recipes that suggest using cognac or brandy as a basis for making apricot brandy, but this is fundamentally wrong.
Real fruit brandy is made only by fermenting apricot juice followed by distillation.
Also made from apricots: brew and moonshine, liquor, liqueurs, tinctures, wine, syrup
Tips before you start
Apricot should be ripe and sweet (this is important).
You do not need to wash the apricot, otherwise you will wash away the wild yeast.
The brew should be placed in a warm and bright place, but make sure that the brew is not exposed to direct sunlight.
If you make brandy with a minimal amount of sugar, expect that from 60 liters of brag and 1 kg of sugar, the final product will be about 4-5 liters, with a strength of 40%.
Apricot brandy recipe
Ingredients
Ripe apricots - 12 liter bucket
Sugar syrup - 1 kg of sugar per 1 liter of water
Water - according to the method
Sugar - according to the method
Wine yeast (if you washed the apricots) - dilute according to the instructions on the package
Method of preparation
Peel the apricots, cut off the spoiled areas, cut out the worminess and remove the seeds.
Press the resulting mass with your hands or a wooden pestle until smooth.
Pour three liters of water, pour sugar syrup, cover tightly with gauze and send to a warm place for a couple of days.
If you washed the apricots before peeling, you will have to add yeast. Vzboltai advises using wine yeast, as other yeasts, such as baker's or turbo yeast, can give a strong moonshine flavor instead of the rich taste of the original product, or vice versa, too clean a taste due to rapid fermentation, again without the taste of apricots.
After two or three days, when our main mass ferments, you can add another 9 liters of water and 2 kg of sugar. Put under the water seal and leave until the wort is completely fermented (the process is completed when the "bubbling" disappears).
Now gently pour off the wort and carefully squeeze the pulp into a distillation cube. For the first time we drive at maximum speed dry, that is, until there is alcohol in the jet.
The second distillation is fractional. Carefully - we take away the heads a little.
We select the body to strength in a stream of 45-50 degrees. You can collect the tails in a separate container and add them to the next run.
Dilute the resulting distillate to 40-45 degrees.
As a result, after two runs and sorting, we will have about 3 liters of flavored brandy.
Shake advises to let the brandy rest in glassware for at least 3 weeks. During this time, the alcohol stabilizes to taste, the whole flavor will be revealed.
As a separate experiment, you can add oak chips or dies to give the drink a more complete look.
An alternative recipe for apricot brandy
Ingredients
Apricots - 6 kg
Water - according to the method
Sugar - by the method
The method of preparation
Do not wash the apricots, sort them out from rot, free them from the pit.
Then, in a large bowl, mash everything with clean hands to a porridge, you can also use a pestle.
Add 1 liter of warm water for better fermentation. Cover with a cloth, tie it up (to prevent the penetration of offenders - midges and other flying-crawling brethren).
Leave for 3 days, stirring 2 times a day, wait until it plays on its own sugar.
Pour 9 liters of warm sugar syrup into a 20 liter container (1 to 1 ratio). And - on the water seal. It should start bubbling by the evening.
As soon as the apricot settles and the bubbling under the water seal stops, it is necessary to carefully drain the liquid from the sediment and send it for distillation.
Update: 04.09.2019
Category: Brandy and Cognac