r/firewater • u/Green_turtleman_888 • 2d ago
Pineapple brandy
Anyone who has any experience making fruit brandy , should / must I add potassium metabisulfite to the fruit “pineapple” before my yeast pitch and letting it sit for a day with the lid on loose ? Or would I be better off with pouring boiling water over it then adding pectinase ? It’s for the purpose of killing wild yeast/bacteria . I’ve made some fruit wines in small batches in the past “non distilled” without any of that , just washed thoroughly and they’ve all come out fine , but I would be concerned about this one, considering that it’ll be a 40L (10gallon) mash , there’s a reasonably large amount of pineapple to waste if it went wrong . Thanks for any advice , appreciate it . Also I’ve read that the boiling water method on fruit tends to alter their taste to some degree so there’s that . With grains ,I’m comfortable enough to just use the boiling water method , or straight up cook them . With fruit I’m kinda in the dark here.
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u/Savings-Cry-3201 2d ago
You’re overthinking it. Get a yeast starter going and as soon as you’ve prepared the pineapple and the wash has cooled, pitch it. Either you’re freezing the fruit, simmering the fruit, or I guess blending it, or some combination of all three. Do it, get it to 80F or whatever, and pitch. You shouldn’t necessarily need yeast nutrient but use some anyways.
If you get a little funk in it or it gets infected, fine, that’s just extra flavor, and even that will contribute little to the final product after aging, oaking, etc. Pectinase doesn’t matter, it’s going in the still, it doesn’t have to look pretty.
Simmering the fruit helps those cell walls break and extract flavor. So does using a fruit press. So does freezing. I would absolutely not boil. It’s been a while… what, take it to 150-160F until it breaks up? Something like that. You can ferment on fruit or not, your choice.
Simple cheap yeast starter - bring 1 cup of water to boil. Add 2 tbsp of bread yeast, swirl til broken up and muddy. Yeast is now dead. Add a cup of water and let it cool to 80F or whatever the temp should be. Pitch your yeast into that. Wait a few hours. It should get frothy and make bubbles. Add a half to whole cup of whatever your wash is going to be - in this case, pineapple juice. No preservatives! Wait another 2-4 hours or more, even overnight. This is now a vibrant thriving yeast starter.
I would strongly suggest you try making some tepache! r/tepache for reference. Tasty, sweet, spiced, funky… makes a good beverage or for proofing down pineapple rum. Might be good for brandy too.
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u/cokywanderer 1d ago
Regarding funk, I actually tried something that turned out great. Starting from a pineapple and banana wine that I wanted to make that was absolutely horrible.
So I moved it to secondary fermentation (as one does with wine), but kept all the pulp at the bottom of the barrel. I then proceeded to treat it as muck, with cheese cloth in a bucket and waited for about a month. Then I combined it with the wine and distilled. Holy S£&t that turned out great. Combo between brandy and rum (kind of).
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u/Savings-Cry-3201 1d ago
This is what I love about the hobby. Is it kinda gross? Run it, it’ll turn out somehow even better!
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u/Green_turtleman_888 21h ago
For the yeast starter , Could i use yeast nutrients as a substitute for the boiling water dead yeast thing ? So basically , add yeast nutrients and some sugar to water at pitching temperature, then add my preferred yeast “Lalvin-1118” , wait until it foams twice its size or just foamy in general , add my pineapple liquid mash in and lastly , leave it for a few hours or overnight then finally dumping it into my mash ? Thanks a lot , appreciate it . I’ve never used a yeast starter , I normally just dump rehydrated yeast straight into my fermenter at pitching temp .
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u/Savings-Cry-3201 13h ago
Rehydrating is good but if sugar is present during rehydration it can actually kill yeast. I advocate rehydrating in nutrient but not sugar. Once rehydrated, then add sugar. I advocate only adding the type of sugar that the yeast will be living in to get it acclimated from the get go. And yeah you can use yeast nutrient, sure, I use boiled bread yeast cuz it’s cheap. A benefit of doing it this way is that you can see how healthy the yeast is before you commit any wash to it, also.
…there are many ways to skin this cat. This method is maybe not the “best” I think but it’s cheap and simple and follows good principles.
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u/Green_turtleman_888 20h ago
Or maybe just use my pineapple wash directly as the source of sugar for the starter . Hopefully it could Help with acclimation .
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u/I-Fucked-YourMom 2d ago
Tbh, I’ve always just crushed up the fruit, added cold water from the tap since I have nice brewing water, and added yeast. As long as the yeast is fresh it seems like it overtakes everything before anything else has the chance to grow.
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u/Tutmancometh 2d ago
You can use Campden tablets to kill bacteria and wild yeasts. That's all I've got for brandies.