A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.
Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.
Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
So I managed to find 80% food grade alcohol (it was harder than you might thought) and started the all season maceration.
Basically every fruit that I will get or pick I just put few pieces there and let it sit, the tasting will be at Christmas or sometime in December. First layer is red currant, I already used it for some maceration so I know it starts good.
That's a cool project - good luck and update us on how it turns out.
Here in the US, high strength (95%) ethanol is widely available. We would occasionally do shots of it when I was (much) younger.
My late-father once told me about a recipe he used when he was young, passed down to him by his old uncle.
Got a bunch of black plums (but he said any fruit could be used). Washed them, then put them whole in a big, glass jar with a screw top lid. The fruit was layered with sugar. Lots of sugar. Closed the lid and left it all out in the sun for a month. It fermented and turned into mush.
Brought it in and sifted out the solids. Left a lot of pulp. Mixed it with plain vodka and decanted it into smaller dark bottles with clip tops. Aged it for six months in the dark. After that, kept it in the freezer. 10+ years later, it still tasted amazing.
This post is inspiring me to try again. Thinking peach this time.
This is maceration not fermentation but I unintentionally did something similar with red currants and wine. I don't know how I made it but it was partly fermented with sugar wine and vodka (or some other clear distillate) to add more alcohol to be stable.
Found bottle few weeks ago and it was amazing, I forgot about it after I tasted it and don't liked it few years ago.
I don't like distillates that much, bit too strong for me, but basically fruit+bit of sugar+time+still and you have some eastern Europe pálenka/slivovice (from plums) or other "moonshine".
A friend of the family from Hungary used to bring out home-made palinka in small 7Up bottles to sneak them past customs. He said they would drink a few shots before and after every meal. Said that was how Hungarians became the highest per-capita meat-eating country in Europe.
I just remember it burning all the way down. The recipe I mentioned was more of a sweet liqueur and with lower risk of near-fatal distillation mishaps.
Will have to look into maceration. Thanks for the tip!