How to make watermelon brandy |Distilling and blending cuts

all right we've got our watermelon Brandy it is ready to go got about I don't know eight or nine gallons in there we got everything set out to get the eight gallon Dual Purpose Pro mile high steel running this Brandy and uh yeah let's get it so we've got our watermelon Brandy wash in the pot if you missed the mashing of this recipe and how I built this watermelon Brandy I'll I'll put a card for that video part number one this is part number two we're gonna distill it today and I wanted to talk a little bit about the fermentation of this one because it did not ferment all the way down to one and I went through all my checkpoints to uh try and chub troubleshoot uh the temperature was good the pH was good the um I even added some uh some nutrients just in case and I also added in some gluco amylase thinking possibly there were some unfermented sugars that I could uh convert so or not convert but break down into simple sugars and that did help a little bit dropped it like five points but it stayed at 1.018ish so um there are definitely some incrementable sugars in there that even the gluco amylase couldn't break down into simple sugars so that is what we've got I'm not gonna uh lose any sleep over it I'm just gonna run it and we'll see what we get I'm pretty excited about it um I've heard both good and bad things about a watermelon wash Brandy but we're going to find out for ourselves because that's what this hobby is all about uh you got to find out for yourself so let's get to it so we've got everything set up now the heat is on the still is coming up to temperature I've got it set to about a medium high heat because I don't like to me personally I don't like to go full blast getting up to temperature especially when I'm kind of pushing the limit on my head space so I don't want to puke the steel so I'm I'm gonna go a little bit slower I I wanted to talk a little bit about the ferment problems that I had with this watermelon Brandy and how I determined that I wasn't going to get any more alcohol out of the ferment even though the triple scale hydrometer was reading 1.018 so I use the stud ferment guide four steps which uh if you follow these steps then you can know where your ferment is and it's not a very difficult process it is frustrating and for the beginner it can be confusing because you just think I must be doing something wrong when sometimes you're not doing anything wrong like on this wash here there was nothing to be done I went through all the steps to troubleshoot it stayed at 1.018 it's not going to ferment all the way out so it's just time to run the steel so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it I'm not going to fret over it we're just going to roll with it and sometimes that happens and so this ferment guide is just an easy four-step way for you to do that also this is free you can download it print it out whatever you want to do with it share it you can get these guides and I've got maybe a dozen of them now that I've put out uh go to stillintheclear.com guides and just sign up and get them free I'll send them straight to your email and what that also does is sign you up automatically for our free newsletter goes out every two weeks it is it's not a sales letter it is a new recipe an interview an article a deal of the day like usually off of Amazon sometimes off of STC a q a tons of great information there comes out every two weeks and it doesn't cost you anything so anyway go check those out if you want and we're just going to wait for this to come up to Temp another interesting thing is I've been using this a gallon Dual Purpose Pro Steel from mile high now for two years and I did a review on it when I first got it but now I run a lot of liquor through it so I can give you a lot more information so I'm probably going to be doing a video coming up where I'm reviewing this still again after using it for two years and running literally hundreds of gallons through it probably so stay tuned for that and I'll come back when this thing's up and dripping so the first drips are coming off of the still our Vapor temp is at 175 ish our pot temp 190 8 so so I cranked the the flame way down the low look at that look how low I can turn that flame on this burner this this burner is probably the best one I've ever had I was so happy with this purchase if you guys want me to review this burner uh just let me know down in the comments it is awesome anyway so we've got our first drips coming off and I am going to let this jar completely fill up um and that's going to be my first jar of heads and I'm not going to use it alright so here's what I've got after the run and I was kind of smelling and tasting a little bit as the Run was going on and I have to say I wasn't real happy with it there's a very distinct very soury kind of taste that I didn't like um so I'm not sure how this is going to turn out but um so here's what we got we got the first jar and I'm just counting it all as heads and then we've got jar two three and four are all clear and then everything starts getting cloudy at five and six okay so let's start smelling and I'm I'm really worried about this one uh it was not smelling good last night well once again the breathing did help and I did not expect that it was going to help at all the the reason I didn't expect it is because that salary kind of uh note and and flavor that I was getting last night you know I said when you let them breathe It's usually the volatile alcohols that will escape to make it better and I just felt like that was all congenerate kind of stuff just um that wasn't going to go away but this is definitely better that's a that's a pretty good surprise now that's also the highest proof and you know if I'm right about that salary note that I wasn't liking if I'm right about it being you know a congener than it's going to be in the lower proofs that one's not too bad either I'm just going to leave these off no reason to put them back on because then I'm gonna go back and taste them and I don't even I haven't proofed any of this so I don't even know what kind of proof I got and you know if you remember from video one we had a starting gravity of 1.0 74 but I couldn't get it to ferment down below 1.020 so um that was a difference of 0.054 multiply that by 131.25 so we had a an ABV of around a little over seven percent not bad either and then obviously I don't know if you can tell on the camera we start getting cloudy right here yeah and I can I smell that sour again right there and I don't expect this last jar to be any better than that one and it's not it's not so let me go ahead and do a little taste I'm gonna start right here in the Middle with the tasting and uh Nat is in there that's really not terrible i've I was really worried if you were in if you're in the Moonshine for beginners group over on me we I was talking about it last night like this was a this was a wrap this wasn't any good at all it certainly has a different flavor that's kind of uh it is a bit sour but it's not that same you know last night it was like a rotten kind of sour this is like a a sour fruit kind of sour not like uh you know like a sour candy kind of sour that's not bad this is surprising me I did not anticipate this not bad not bad I I will say that I'm you know this is my first time doing a watermelon Brandy and I'm not sure that I'm gonna like watermelon Brandy yet and on this one when you put your nose up to it you can kind of get a hint of that watermelon smell well I don't know I don't know if I want to keep that one or not that one's pretty sharp uh it's got It's got quite a bit of bite I may just use a portion of this jar um so I was going to blend it in this half gallon I don't even think I need it I'm gonna grab a quart I think yeah I think I'm so I'm definitely going to put jars three and four together all right [Music] this has really surprised me this has really surprised me I think I am going to add a little bit of these heads and here's why even though um the heads do have a little bit of a bite my original plan with this watermelon was uh to to put put it on Oak and I was going to use a toasted Oak put some chard Oak in there for just a couple of weeks pull that charred Oak and then finish it on toasted Oak and then last night I made that run and I thought you know this is terrible this is not going to work out and then I was kind of thinking you know what I might just toss this but now I may go ahead and give it a chance and put it on some Oak and see how it turns out so the re that back to the point the I'm going to use some of this jar because it's got some of the heads in it I can tell and whenever you're aging on Oak it's good to have a little bit of the heads so I'm just going to put some of that in there maybe that much right there that's all I'm going to put in there it's really not that bad it's definitely a different kind of flavor you know a lot of what I do is whiskey and I like Mountain brandies which all have grains corn being one of my favorite which is you know why I like bourbon so much but this is definitely a different flavor and I I just can't decide I'm right there on the fence on whether or not I like it or not it's just different maybe it's just different and maybe that's what surprised me so much last night making me think ah I don't know but uh I will do another video in a few weeks and we'll see how this turns out so I've got this on Oak that's a medium charred Oak I tested it it's 110 proof and I'm going to give it a couple of weeks swap it out with a probably heavy toasted out because what I'm thinking I'm going to go with and I would like to know from you guys if you have done a watermelon Brandy how did it turn out did it have that sour fruit flavor and is that what you get with watermelon and um you know what was my initial reaction kind of like your initial reaction did you think it was terrible until after you had gone through the entire process of finishing the liquor so I'm really curious let me know drop me a comment so we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Still'n The Clear

Views: 9,814

Keywords: Home distilling, moonshine, fermentation, fermenting, home made moonshine, how to make moonshine, distilling equipment, watermelon mash, watermelon brandy recipe

Id: NK7qLduxhlg

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 29 2023