Aging fruit mash

[Firefighter777]

I'm new to distilling, only 1 year into it. I recently made a large batch of wine using a mix of 1/5 of each of these fruits; strawberries, bluberries, choke cherries, goosen berries, raspberries.

The wine turned out amazing, but I hated to see the all the fruits go to waste , so I took all the fruits and mixed them into four 5 gallons buckets added 8lbs of sugar, some ditiller's yeast and fermented for 2 weeks. I then ran it thru my 3" reflux still without any packing inside the tower, so basically using it as a pot still I stripped the whole mash. The 20 gallons of mash gave me 3.5 gallons (14 liters) of a very tasty alchool at 55%.

Now you can taste the berries and smell them in the alcool, now I was thinking of aging it into a new small medium charred oak cask. Should I go ahead with this or should I be trying something different, I never aged before in cask before or done this type of distiling.

Would anyone have any suggestions for this newbie?

Any thing would be greatly appreciated.

[John D]

It's not really the same but you could try chips or spiral in a 1L bottle to get and idea of how it will change. With a small barrel it might add something really nice to the next batch that goes into it as well.

I am no expert but willing to try and pass on what I have tried. Hope to get DSP by this time next year.

[porter]

Good to experiment isn't it.....

Brandy is too delicate for casks, not enough control or selection of woods.

Unless you want the whiskey taste, never use 'charred' wood, only toasted.

I use stainless with oak and cherry strips. 3/4 square, saw kerfs every 1/4inch. Number of planks depends on how many gallon container.

Our minimum is 2 years on the wood. My 7 yr old has a nose on it fills the room with fresh fruit aromas.

Mine is mostly grape since that's available to me.

And put those used oak/cherry woods in next batch of rum. That's a real treat.

[Lenny]

I've got limited experience in brandy maturation — a question on the mention of not using charred oak to age brandy in... I thought I had heard somewhere that the origins of bourbon being aged in charred oak led back to french brandy being typically aged in charred oak. Way back when, in an effort for the bourbon to be better received by french folk throughout Louisiana, a switch was made to charred oak to yield a flavor profile more inline with what a french brandy might have. Now I might be totally making this up, but I could have sworn I heard something along these lines from a bourbon historian of some sort.

I just moved 30g of freshly distilled brandy into a once used 30g toasted/charred barrel to sit for a year or two. I'm okay with a more whiskey like profile, but you've got me thinking, Porter, about historical practices and what would really yield the best results. Hmmm.

[Firefighter777]

Thanks for the info everyone, I think I'll order some spirals and try it on a smaller scale. I don't want to ruin all the alcool in one shot. I really like the taste and the smell, so I will start a medium toast and maybe work my way up from there.

[porter]

Lenny, that's exactly why I suggest not using fresh charred wood, changes flavor too much toward the whiskey stage. Isn't it interesting some of the best whiskey (scotch) is aged in sherry (wine) barrels? Your story is probably right given all the thing they tried back when. Remember the beer recipes where fermentation was start by floating 'aged' meat in the wort..........

My really great secret is to age the wine with toasted wood in secondary for 90 days.

Pull out the wood and run the brandy, then put the wood back in the spirrits for 2 years. Since most of what I run is Norton wine the rich norton flavor/color carries over from the norton soaked staves, all natural.

[fldme]

Choke cherries are poisonous I think.

[bluestar]

Choke cherries are poisonous I think.

Only the pit, the fruit is edible (although astringent).