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Recommended Setup for Gin Distillation from Fermented Apple Cider

edited February 2016 in General

At this point in time I have a 50L keg boiler and 4" SD column with 3 bubble plates, dephlegmator, condenser and SD parrot. I also have a Gin basket (made up by others).

It is the ultimate intention to upscale to far larger size and make a commercial distilling business. But for the time being I am fast getting a lot of learning experience out of all.

So to assist in getting knowledge of those with the experience and also those whom have been distilling from fermented apple cider I comment and ask as follows.

Present process:

  1. Strip 7.5% abv apple cider with bubble plates
  2. Spirit run .... the stripped product with bubble plates
  3. Gin Run with gin basket doing vapour infusion and without bubble plates
  4. Blend down to approx. 43%.

My intended tasting Gin is along the lines of the Bombay style.

So to others whom have distilled Gin from apple juice I ask:

  1. What process do you follow?
  2. For your size, quantity of bubble / ProCap plates used?
  3. Do you add in / do extra spirit runs or do you do less?
  4. Do you ever worry about sulphites from the apple fermentation? You get natural sulphites from apple but also it is common to add sulphur at start to control desired fermentation.

Part of my desire to work on is ... the angle of Gin distillation from apple. Here I am trying hard to get an apple flavour of sorts into the final product. Reading some other literature, instead of adding water to cover the element for the gin run, you add unfermented apple juice.

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Comments

  • edited February 2016

    No idea, but the first question that pops into my head is whether there would be much of the fruit left after the 3rd distillation, two of which are running plated. Almost wonder if it might be effective to add additional cider in the final distillation, along with the cleaner distillate. You would reintroduce the need for wider cuts on the gin run, but that might just be the price to pay? Or maybe a crazy technique where you try to grab the late heads during the strip run, keep those separate, and reintroduce that into the gin run.

  • No there is not much or almost none of the original apple flavour. But this is why we intend to use plain apple juice at the end Gin run just to cover the element before we add spirit from the two prior runs.

    For the interim and not to say that we would do it going forward, I am not proposing to use the fermented apple cider as a liquid cover for the element .... or do you feel that either fermented apple cider or plain apple juice could be used.

  • edited February 2016

    I would imagine that the ester composition of the cider is going to be much more complex than straight juice.

    Another option would be to really try to push the ester composition of the cider - in hopes that more carries through. This is all pure speculation on my part.

    Cider Handbook 2014-2015 - Scott Laboratories (PDF)

  • Why use plates on your stripping run? It's a stripping run. Blast away.

    Avoid sulfites like the plague. They carry over to the spirit and are very nasty in the spirit. If you dose the apple cider with enough clean yeast, and distill the ferment right away after the fermentation stops you should not need to use sulfite. It is a disinfectant.

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • edited February 2016

    Leaving plates out of the stripping run. There does not seem any definitive answer then why and when to use plates.

    As I have understood to date, you get higher purity and also higher alcohol content when plates are used so why remove especially for the stripping run. For info without plates at strip I started with approx 40% ABV and alternatively with 3 x bubble plates I started with approx 78% ABV and was able to strip at approx 3.5 to 4 L/hr, this with the 4" column.

    Not to use plates if I am correct in saying so, might mean 1 x stripping run, 2 x spirit runs and finally 1 x gin run ???

    Yes I understand that more flavours are removed with plate usage but this is the devil that you must contend with.

    Sorry for the confusion but I am looking for right way, wrong way and recommended ways. .... a tall ask.

  • edited February 2016

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  • edited February 2016

    @richard said: There does not seem any definitive answer then why and when to use plates.

    That's because the plated columns do very nicely with either or. It really needs to be up to the end user to develop a feel for what suites them best, based on what they are trying to express.

    Sherwood does not strip his vodka. He wants that honey wash to carry as much as possible. Compared to some that are trying to really create a cleaner, more neutral like vodka.

    So you just have to decide how far away you are trying to get your finish product away from the kettle charge if you see my meaning?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • edited February 2016

    @grim has a very good suggestion with adding back late heads to the final run. The late heads are where all the actual apple flavour that we can recognise are. It's a very difficult thing to achieve full apple flavour without having too much heads.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • edited February 2016

    He is only saying that because I stole that suggestion from him. ;). It's absolutely true though - many esters bunch up in late heads - same with the high ester rums.

  • I made my wine base neutral using a 5 plate plus packed section and I stripped and spirit run in full configuration.
    The difference between the 2 runs was speed (power and RC).
    I didn't start out like that, starting out I dismantled the rig for a strip and then reassembled for a spirit. It was a bloody pain in the arse so out of pure laziness I left in spirit run configuration for my subsequent strip run.
    Well, bugger me that was some damn fine strip and thanks for making my life a lot easier. Just run at full power and no RC.

  • If you use plates and don't make cuts on stripping you shouldn't loose any flavour, just excess water.
    My guess is, if anything you'll recover more of the ethanol, super late tails at the end of the strip and possibly encourage a bit more esterification during. Are you going for a neutral base for you gin or a juniper flavoured, apple eau de vie??
    Why not just make a really nice calvados/brandy and buy some grain neutral for your gin??
    Can you talk us through the last pic? Fermentor? Is the big green box controlling jacket temp? Top pressure? What's in the top left?

  • I can vouch for the brandy/calvados comment. I have 20L sat aside and at 12months it shits all over the 11yo brandy I sampled last night.

  • From my experience with distilling cider 3 bubble plates will result in the most disgusting soapy flavour possible. I rely on 7 plates followed by at least 6 months on oak to get a non-soapy calvados. To get close to a neutral spirit you'll need at least 16 plates, but I reckon there'll be enough flavour carry through to bugger up a gin you make from it. If you want to make gin you can get 200 litre drums of 96% neutral from Manildra for around $400. It's bonded of course, so there'll be around $16,800 of excise to pay when your product goes out the door.

  • That's interesting considering the traditional methods. I wonder what 5 years in an oak barrel would do to that flavour?

  • I haven't really heard of any fruit based gins before, most are grain, but try it and see. You get more apple flavour coming over if you can distill the fermented crushed apples instead of the pressed juice.

    Another option is to just add a small quantity of pressed juice (or fermented cider) back into your product.

  • @ElectricEd said: From my experience with distilling cider 3 bubble plates will result in the most disgusting soapy flavour possible.

    Reminds me of what my blueberry fermentation/distillation ended up like.

  • @ElectricEd said: If you want to make gin you can get 200 litre drums of 96% neutral from Manildra for around $400. It's bonded of course, so there'll be around $16,800 of excise to pay when your product goes out the door.

    @Richard you are from South Africa, I think? If so, talk to Illovo Sugar in Durban. They have a good molasses based neutral.

  • Going through the pictures of the cidery.

    1. Bulk apples are washed and visually checked. Bad apples are removed as they give rise to wild yeast fermentation.
    2. Apples lifted to hammer mill.
    3. Apples "mushed" and pulp multi layered on boards with wrapped around cloth.
    4. Using a hydraulic press, we press out all the juice. Literally 100%.
    5. Remaining dried pommace thrown away.
    6. Juice collected in temporary day tanks before being transferred to 10,000L tanks.
    7. In these tanks we double ferment for up to 6 months prior to packaging. Alcohol approx. 7.5% to 8.5% abv at this point.
    8. Referring to the packaging equipment..... A glycol chiller for the Stainless steel tank and bottling line. ..... A stainless steel 1,250L pressurised tank, glycol cooled and insulated. ..... and lastly a state of the art keg cleaning and filling machine.

    Now where we are coming from regarding fermented apple distillation. Maybe we get an off tank or parts of. Or alternatively we can recover returned dregs of kegs. So I in part want to recover as much as possible for distillation.

  • @richard said:So I in part want to recover as much as possible for distillation.

    Have you tested the sugar content of your pommace? maybe you could add water to that and ferment to recover more. If you're saving keg dregs and bad ferments then it sounds like you're after clean neutral. 3 plates is nowhere near enough IMO. You want a packed column.

  • edited February 2016

    @yurgle said: Richard you are from South Africa, I think? If so, talk to Illovo Sugar in Durban. They have a good molasses based neutral.

    In that case you'll pay a lot less excise. :)

  • Up to this point in time I have never checked sugar levels of pomace. It was always a throw away product. But I can vouch that it is "motherlessly" bone dry.

    Reading in some Calvados sites, they say that they ferment all juice together with the pomace. On my next juicing I will try do a 2,000L batch like this. ... Pressed juice and pomace thrown back in.

  • Our farmers also ferment the whole apple, but they take care, that no broken pits, and any leaves or wood parts are in the ferment. Apples are very popular in Austria, most farmers have lots of very old breeds in their yard. So making apple spirits is like bread and butter for them. We are only allowed to use 3 distillation stages in Austria, btw. There are some really good spirits I know of.

    The only problem might be, not every kind of apple has a strong flavor. There is a say for the determination of fruit brandies here at the tastings: it is not plum, it is not apricot, it is not cherry - what is it? Apple! So the trend goes to making spirits of only one kind of apple breed and use such, that have unique flavors.

    We also have a user who does apple spirits from cider in Norway: @Jann I have featured him in our blog:

    StillDragon Europe Blog

    StillDragon Europe - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Europe & the surrounding area

  • There is also another method that I have not yet used myself. Ferment the fruit on the pulp, do a strip run and then put those low wines back onto the fermented pulp for another period of time before re-distilling. It is supposed to extract more fruit flavour, but you have to deal with the mush in the boiler.

  • edited February 2016

    Hi @richard

    Up to now I have distilled my cider like this:

    • Run 1: Strip (no plates)
    • Run 2: 6 plates
    • Run 3: 6 plates

    This makes a very neutral vodka with pretty much no taste. I then vacuum distill apple juice (without alcohol) creating a intense apple syrup which I blend with the neutral apple vodka. With our apples here up north this makes a really fresh liquor and brandy high in acid and natural sugar content.

    In the future I will include more and more taste from the original cider and for every run I keep getting better with making my cuts.

    I have also tried distilling pure neutral diluted with apple juice as you mention to make a apple vodka without having to make cuts etc.. The result was OK but not great. As discussed earlier in the post, I suspect a lot of the good aromas etc just aren't present in apple juice versus cider.

    I tried fermenting the dry apple leftovers by adding water and pectinase and the result was promising with regards to getting more alcohol yield out of the raw material. I have a 4000 liter tank which will be used for this during the next apple harvest. Hopefully this will give me 100-200 liters extra 96% ABV.

    I've recently bought a new boiler and some other equipment from @sunshine and will most likely continue to develop the process to maximize taste/aroma in the near future.

    Gardsbrenneriet AS, a small distillery located in Sandane, Norway

  • Great answer and very interesting regarding vacuum distillation for the syrup vs. apple juice or cider.

    Okay so let me ask this way .... what's the difference between apple concentrate and and vacuum distilled syrup .... is this not the same thing. Taking it one step further have you tried with apple aroma instead of the above.

    Also have you experimented with any botanicals in the gin basket for the above ?? Here I am looking at the Gin route.

  • David T. Smith has some great gin classes, one was called 'back to basics' and was a comparison of Gins with differrent bases, and the apple was really, really nice.. here is his web page

    Apple-based gin Tag Search @ Summer Fruit Cup Blog

  • I don't know much about how they make apple concentrate (temperature, vaccuum, time) but the product we make with the quipment we developed in house is way different in comparison. If it's due to apple cultivar, climate, process or other things I'm not sure. I guess having small batches with short processing times and low temperatures is key together with the acid/sugar balance of the apples.

    We aim at using only 100% home or locally grown apples in our apple products so I have not tried any other source for aroma etc.. I haven't tried Gin species yet but in my recent order I included a Gin basket so maybe in the future :)

    @CothermanDistilling : Great link :)

    Gardsbrenneriet AS, a small distillery located in Sandane, Norway

  • edited February 2016

    @Jann said: creating a intense apple syrup which I blend with the neutral apple vodka...

    @Jann, have you ever tried Apfelkorn? Is it a similar product?
    I tried it with heat a few times and it didn't really work.
    I can imagine your vacuum evaporator would be great at intensifying flavorful without cooking without changing it to a 'cooked' product.
    Watermelon would be a good one to try too. I tried reducing it with heat a few times and it turned into a weird pumpkin flavour.

  • I've tried fermenting watermelon. All hints of watermelon aroma and flavor disappeared out the airlock. Maybe vacuum evaporation will produce better results.

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • Yes, Apfelkorn was one of the inspirations :)

    Cooking destroys pretty much everything so we had to develop a new process and ended up with vacuum.

    So far I have tried apples, plums and pears. All taste great :) I guess pretty much everything will taste good but some raw materials are to expensive to use. The final product ends up with a price the consumer are not willing to pay.

    Gardsbrenneriet AS, a small distillery located in Sandane, Norway

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