michaelbgardner

Hi all: New to the forum although I registered a year ago. I am a small maple producer in northeast Ohio, with a ample source of eastern black walnuts on my farm and in the surrounding community. I was introduced to Nocino by the caterer of my son's wedding held at my farm in 2020. Seemed to be a divine match to produce a farm-based nocino finished with maple syrup instead of refined sugar simple syrup. I found a recipe, obtained my Basic Permit and formula approved by TTB and my Ohio A3A liquor permit. I bought three 10-Gallon stainless milk cans and harvested green black walnuts in July of 2022. For some silly economic i thought it made sense to macerate the walnuts with grain alcohol (190 proof) instead of vodka and dilute the grain alcohol in half with the condensate from the evaporator. For every bottle of grain alcohol i added one bottle of the condensate. I believed I would end up at ~47.5% ABV and then by adding maple syrup to finish it, I would end up at about 40% ABV. My recipe (per liter) called for 1 lemon (peel without pith)l 23 walnuts; 1 clove; 1 allspice berry; 1 vanilla pod and 1 cinnamon stick. I bought a pel-a-matic to automatic peeler to peel all the lemons. All was moving along well until about this time last year November 2022. I bought an alcohol hygrometer to measure the ABV before adding the maple syrup. Each batch i measured several times and observed an ABV range of between 20 - 24% It would appear I over shot my mark for dilution. I tried playing around with 50 ml sample and adding everclear to boost the ABV and then maple syrup to get a finished product, but ended up down the rabbit hole of proofing and obscuration. I removed the lemon peel from all of the batches as it seemed much too strong. My mom died last December and its been sitting every since. With the walnuts and all the other ingredients. I'm really at a loss for how to salvage the whole operation. I'm trying to understand how much obscuration if any, might affect the mixture as it stands now without having added the maple syrup? I don't believe any of the ingredients have added dissolved solids to the mixture notwithstanding the fact that it is black. If so, I can see myself adjusting the existing ABV back to my target of 47.5% or even 40% my final target ABV for the nocino by buying and adding more grain alcohol. And try finishing it with maple syrup to taste and then try the proofing and obscuration process. My other question is how much obscuration to expect by adding 375 ml of 66.7% Brix maple syrup into 1 Liter of the mixture. adjusted to 47.5% or 40% ABV. I don't have any sense whether its 1- 5% or 20% 30% or more. Just so I could get some sense of where the ABV my lie using my hygrometer. By way of background i have about $1250 of grain alcohol invested in this already. I inclined to throw a little more at this to give it a go, I can't quite fathom how I messed up in adding 1 bottle of condensate for each bottle of grain alcohol in the mixture and ended up at less than 1/2 of the expected ABV of the mixture. I'm pretty sure I didn't misread the hygrometer. I had my son, a medical student with me taking some of the readings. Thanks for listening to my tale of woe. Any advice would be appreciated.