My Great Grandfather and my Grandfather two little old Italian guy from the mountains north of Naples taught me to distill by making Grappa we would first press the grapes for our red table wine then put the skins in a fermenter add water and sugar let it ferment out screen the skins back out and press them again to remove all the liquid an into the pot still for a nice slow cook from there it went into a used wine barrel for at least a year or two. If you distill wine like you did you get Brandy add wine back into that and you get Brandywine. Great Granddad used to say good Grappa would kill the living and raise the dead. Really enjoyed the video it brought back a lot of great memories for me. I also go and get pressed grape skins every year from a local winery where they save two 70 gallon drums of pressed grapes for me in exchange for a couple of bottles of last years run. Most of them just throw them away or compost them so if you ask nice you can get all you want.
Chuck Don't know do ya : Awesome. Loved reading your story. Can totally relate, just swap out the nonni and insert my papa. He never aged his grappa in barrels though. Barrels are for the wine. Lol
@@robsalvv5853 Thanks Rob we only used wine barrels that had been used for wine a couple of times and we usually charred them again after the Grappa to use for wine again.
Well done, Jesse! You have finally crossed over to the "Grape Side". One of the great things about this as a hobby is you can make anything you want. Grappa, which is an Italian word, is a spirit that is made from fermented and pressed grape must (pomace) and water. No lees, no wine (that's brandy, not Grappa), and no sugar, at least for legal Grappa. The origins of Grappa, and its cousins in other countries, are based on farm culture where everything is used and nothing wasted. So rather than throwing out the pomace or putting it in the compost, it is used to make a spirit. For those of us whose hobby is on a tight budget, buying a Genio to make Grappa is not feasible. Believe me when I tell you that direct fire, gas, heating elements, etc. will burn your pomace unless you have a mechanical stirrer. What you can do, however, is to put your pomace on a raised surface inside the still with water below it. Now you are basically steaming the pomace and there is zero contact to any very hot surface. I imagine that a gin basket would work but it is probably way too small since steam extraction is a very inefficient processs with low yields: you need lots of pomace to make up for the inefficiency. I use a kettle with a suspended inner bucket that is perforated. The kettle supports a copper alembic dome fitted with a condenser. You could use a raised stainless mesh screen as long as it does not touch the water. I have seen a video of country grappa making with a direct fired still. This (not legal) distiller uses water and some feints from the last season, packs in straw on top of that, and pomace onto the straw. Again, no contact of the pomace with a heated surface. The headsy taste and smell you are picking up is a hallmark of grappa even in the middle of the hearts: the pomace has skins, pulp, seeds and other stuff in it. This is a spirit made to enjoy in very small amounts! Cheers!
George L : I've been around home distilled grappa all my life. Italian migrant parents. My old man's home made still is a work of junk yard and home welding mastery. To avoid scorching, he has a grate inside his boiler to keep his pomace off the heating surface. Honestly, he has his process down pat. Even includes a cheese cloth bag with citronella, fennel and basil for flavour. When he does a run, he turfs the first bit of distillate, then collects everything else into buckets until the ABV is about 20%. This is technically a stripping run, but for him it is the run. I recently redistilled 2 gallons making cuts and basically bottling the hearts for him. To me it was a much nicer product, but it was missing all those headsy acetone and oily tail notes. He didn't like it. lol
Awesome, Rob Salvv! I have heard of the tradition of adding spices and aromatics, and wondered if it was to cover up off-aromas. 20% is pretty deep into the tails😉
I was in Italy in 1976 and at that time I drank grappa aka the friendship drink. I will never forget it. They told me not to smell it, & if I did, I would not drink it. They were right. It was the worst smell ever. No I did not drink it.
My family (italian) make grappa. Im aussie, we used muscatdelle grapes (spelling mistake) i reccomend trying to use plums and or sultanas if grapes are an issue.
Jesse, I have made some Grappa and I really liked it. I basically did it the same way but when I did my first run I let the distillate flow over my skins and seeds. I picked up a bunch of flavor and when I redistilled it I was pleasantly surprised. It's just a different technique and I thought I would let you know. Shine on Brother and keep your powder dry.
Made some last year from merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and Petit Verdot . All excellent but the Petit is the best! Just added some water to the pomace to help get the steam action going in my Robobrew with copper dome. 1 run. Not making wine this year so will have to meter out my supply. Well worth the while!
i made grappa from backyard concord grapes after fermenting for a week strain off the wine, add more water and sugar and referment, then strained that and 2X distilled it. very fruity taste and aroma!..also a bit fiery, but i'm told that's not unusual for grappa. this year i'm going to try using apple pulp leftover from cider making, and chuck it in a barrel with water and add sugar and wine yeast. that's an awesome shirt BTW!
Holy crap, I can't even express how jealous I am, LOL! Such a cool project and great coverage of the whole process. Very cool choices on the blends you made, but no idea if the wine/grappa blend is a "thing" already or not. Very interested to see how that turns out. Awesome dude!
Well done. Grappa usually has a very low yield because it tries to extract as much juice as possible to make wine. The maximum (aroma and yield) is obtained from grapes that are not too pressed, that is, with still inside the must (in this case it must be completely stopped in a container).A big hello from southern Italy.
This is a very good video, thank you! I must however state that you did not legally make grappa, for grappa can be made only from pomace (vinacce as they are called in Italy). What you did is called acquavite di vino in Italy. However, I don't really care what the legal definition of grappa is, and you still did a great job. I think the result must have been really close to legal grappa. For anyone that is interested in making it the "traditional" way: The first step for grappa is the fermentation of the pomace. This is a fundamental step because it has a tremendous impact on the flavor of the grappa and determines a good product. In the case of using pomace from red wine you can go directly to distillation as you did, because the fermentation has already occurred together with the must. If, on the contrary, white wine pomace is used, it is necessary to ferment it first. I learned that traditionally, the heads are collected until 80C and then everything is kept. Sometimes they continue the first distillation until 96C to collect all flavor from the grapes and then the grappa is distilled a second or even a third time to get rid of the tails and "purify" the product. Cheers!
been making the family grappa for years and years now. we add back sugar and water and do a second fermentation on the grapes. and yes, you can over cook it and that horrible taste does not age out. just put it in your column still and use it for vodka now. oh, and we only make it from red grapes.
Ah nice to know that red grapes are in for this. Its right on the edge of being too headsy now, not that far over. Im going to let it ride for a while and see what happens. Cheers mate
@@prccap Thank you!! Doing that now. I have made this 2 times, Once with a little sugar and a second without any. Both batches turned out, but I liked the sugar version best so I trying to make a better recipe. Thank you for the insight. Pat (Portland, Oregon)
KUDOS! Been hoping you’d get round to Grappa, Schnapps and Eau de Vie. I’m Italian Swiss and in the Alps we make Grappa fron Concord Grapes (Uga Americana) cause its the only variety hardy enuf to grow up there.
pretty much all wine producing regions in France have their own version of fortified wine made by blending grapes/wine waste with unfermented grape juice. The most well known is "Pineau des charentes". The vineyards dump the must on the side of the road and the distilleries come pick it up, but I think most of it is distilled to make vodka/medical alcool or bio-fuel. I think you could have get more alcool by rincing the must with water and letting it ferment again (with or without adding sugar).
@@StillIt yeah Might depend on the winery's process/type of wine produced. In your case most of the sugar was gone so might not be worth bothering. But in a wine were the macerating is shorter or even not existent (white wine for exemple), it would be worth it I think.
Jesse try to ferment some raisin and I love to know your opinion,its very easy crush the raisin and fermented as you do grain or other sugar for every 10 litter of water 4 kilogram of raisin will give you about 1090 gravity point .it produces a flavorful spirit .cheers
Umm, I do the opposite. I add 45ABV to 400g of raisins in a 5L bottle and leave it. I use flavoured sprit directly out of the bottle topping up as required. When raisins turn white, discard, rinse and repeat. I have beeb known to add maple syrup to bottle as well 🖖
Made some many years ago from speciality grapes that were brought in by a local seller for special clients and pressed by hand as opposed to the electric presses that suck every last drop of juice out. It turned out amazing but it's such a messy process, and the acidity of the skins eventually ate through the aluminum pressure cooker I was using at the time.
You leave the jars closed for maturation ? In france they say to let it open (with a coffee filter above) under the roofs so that it warms during day and cold during night. cold concentrate, warm enables evaporacion of the "burning" part; never tried yet but seems it was the old way of doing things...
My fathers family is Açorean portuguese. Wine making is in our blood, many generations for home consumption. We call grappa aguardente in Portuguese. Aguardente can be made with old wine or the skins like you did. We grow uva de cheiro a concord like grape both white and red. We always gave are skins and stems to a man named Joao. The skins and stem are called pé de água or foot water. What i head is that you take the skins and leftovers from pressing, add water and sugar and let ferment. Then you distill it. We can add fruit to it for flavor. Sometimes we put it in our wine for stronger wine. The best thing to do with aguardente or grappa is to juice the white concord grapes, about a gallon, add 750 ml or one wine bottles worth of aguardente and then sugar to sweeten. Let age for 6 months to years and we call it angelica or angelic. Very tasty and smooth.
Hey jesse. Just wanted to say hi. As you said we could lol. Been thinking about starting my first ever brew just daunting with no guidance or knowing anyone that does it. But have to say with every 1 of your videos I watch I get closer and closer to buying a fermenter + still and getting in to it. So thank you and keep it up then eventually one day I can partake in one of your international experiments.
The 1 grappa I had that I enjoyed was made by a winemaker I used to know. She specialized in red blends so I think red grapes were her base. Not sure about distilling technique but I belive it was aged for a few months with lightly charred or maybe just toasted French oak. I had no idea what I was smelling at first but I thought it tasted like a fruity scotch. Maybe like a sherry finished single malt with the fruity raisin notes turned up just a touch
Never made grappa, but wanted to offer up another method for handling dirty washes or musts. Use a large thumper charged with the dregs and charge the boiler with cleared wash or water. Avoids scorching and also avoids spending $15,000 on a Genio.
Yeah nice man. Would need to be a pretty sizeable thumper to get that amount of solids in there, that second run basicly had no cleared wash. You dont need a genio, its just the best tool I had on hand for the job.
@@southcack8245 I'm in the process of putting together exactly this with 30 liter kegs. Doing so specifically so I can do grappa and strip on grain ferments (rye, corn buckwheat and millet don't lauter well at all).
Been looking at ouzo, apparently Grappa is used a base commonly, then the usual aniseed and liquorice root. Might be a viableway to use some spare grappa if you like liquorice? Can't remember where I read it, but it sounds good
Great Video Jesse. If I remember well, from your podcast, Ilias was cutting hard on the heads, and digging a bit further on the tails? to get those sweeter grape notes. As a passionate home distiller, love your videos. Cheers from Canada
Interesting.... I've never tried grappa. I DO love my peach brandy tho, about 80 proof with a few peach slices added for a week or so. Best fruit distillate I've done by far 👍👍 CHEERS Jesse !
@@yoguimasterof69 I cut them in half to remove the pit then put them in a drum with a hole drilled in the center of the lid which I run the shaft of my stainless steel paint stirrer through attach it to my drill then lock the lid down and mix at high speed without any mess. I sharpened the edges of the paint stirrer so it really does a job on most fruit add a pound of sugar for every two pounds of fruit and a gallon of water to start then adjust your brix reading from there check your ph then use a good wine yeast I use one that's been in my family for generations. Good luck and #HappyDistilling
Hi here in Greece after making wine the rest (wine and grapes) distill them an making GRAPA if traditional add anise we call it TSIPOURO . Is like OUZO but is not the same product
Great way to make spirits and wine at the same time! I make concord wine via a wild fermentation, then after you press the must to separate the skins out, add water, sugar and some yeast nutrient and let it ferment a second time (also using wild yeast, lends to an amazing flavor profile. Your mileage will vary based on local yeast populations). Makes an amazing shine, or as we call it in Russian, cha-cha! Btw, love your channel! Because of you, I’ve decided to start experimenting with grains as soon as I get a chance.
Grappa, in general, in my experience is very ethanol forward. Had different varieties, the oak aged ones are generally my favorite. As a whisk(e)ydrinker, I generally think it tastes very ethanol forward, with fruits mostly in the background. Usually some wine-notes (melon, grape, apple, sometimes stonefruit and rarely deep, dark red fruit). Usually not very sweet, but it does tend to hint towards sweet with the notes. The oak does what oak does, mainly adding vanilla.
my sicilian friends father makes grappa. when there was a house party at the family home, the father returned and we thought we were in trouble because we were drinking one of his grappas, turns out he was really happy we liked it. he had 3 types that he brought out for us to drink with him. one was with peach, one was with mint and i cant remember what the third one was. im not sure of the process of whether he added the extra flavours after or not, but they were so tasty.
Hey Jesse, we've really been enjoying your show - very informative! Was curious if/how did you address methanol that may have been present in the heads while cutting forward into it? Or is that something I'd know the answer to once I actually get some hands-on experience? (US based- have read a lot but no practical experience)
Your videos are maturing ;) Well done dude. Regarding Grappa, I would recommend to ferment it again. Make a sugar wash with it all and ferment. Then sieve and still. I leave it to natural wine yeast, but you can experiment with anything. Enjoy :)
Grape stuff Jesse im going to start the colab malt this weekend i just got a brewzilla 35 l but iam a bit worried that the 8 kg of grain will be to much but we will see
Hi Jesse. Love your videos man. I like your experimentation. I know in France they make Ratafia which is unfermented grape must mixed with marc (grappa). Its sweet and delicious so I look forward to seeing how the grappa and wine mix works out!
Wow was I surprised to see a very familiar face appear in your video. Making Grappa from the by products of a winery sounds very interesting and a great use of those waste materials. 👍
~3:45 you only need to aerate the wine when it is fresh and unaged or only bottle aged. wood cask aging will impart air slowly and is part of the aging process though now you haven't had and light based aging which is sometimes desirable and sometimes not as then we can finish with bottle aging with green/brown glass that blocks light or other colors that allow various wavelengths in to allow light aging. the primary purpose of aging is to allow time for water molecules to completely surroud each molecule of alcohol thereby preventing the 'sweet' part of the alcohol molecule from clumping with the same on other alcohol molecules resulting in the presentation of only the bitter/nasty side of the molecules to our tastebuds. this doesn't require air or light. the air and light based aging is to allow the flavour profile to change and mellow but not all flavours will go in a desirable direction so expert bottlers will normally bottle into airtight/airsealed light impermeable glass bottles to halt the aging process at the specific aging profile they wish to present to drinkers. all that said this guy has just taken wine from a barrel that has not finished aging and the aeration he is doing is to get it closer to the direction it will be going as it ages. wood cask aging does a few other things besides add air of course but how much do you want to read?
do you ever talk about what you do with the waste? Grappa leaves a ton (not by weight) of waste between the lees, and the skins etc.....so after you're done what do you do with it? I grow cab-sav, I make usually vermouth, I compost most of the waste and I've been tempted to look into grappa but mostly interested in what you do with what's left over from mash or grapes either both.
I work landscaping for an Italian family owned business and we all learn real quick ghat if the old man offers you a coffee you must be careful hahaha and when you see raisins in the the bottom of the cup go sit down. Have a good one yall
I was wondering if this would be the same type of way that rakia would be made or hopefully someone can tell me a little about how to make it for a girl I am friends with from Albania
Super late to the party: This is very interesting, and reminds me of an experiment I did last fall. I was making crowberry wine, and there was so much must it didn´t want to throw it away, so i put it in a pot, added water to it along with some added sugar, boiled it (to extract more essence out of the must) and fermented it. And it actually came out better than the crowberry wine itself. So I wound up making a delicious must wine, which this fall, I want to try distilling it. A crowberry must wine grappa wannabe.
Sounds like you've made more of a brandy using skins too rather than grappa, however, I believe this would age really well in French oak barrels. get it to a 3 to 5 years ageing if you can!
I would have called out all the gods, I really hate spilling things and I do it daily. The heat here makes it feel even worse. But a bucket full... fuck... sounds like future me with a brewery
Grappa is a kind of brandy that typicly made in italy , grappa is made from grape skins (known as "marc" ) so thats the thing that makes it diffrent from normal brandys
Your grappa and wine is the first thing I thought about..isnt that like super port ..PORTSHINE .. interested to see how only adding wine to proof it down with in the glass like a Raki would be .....keep up the good deeds and work
Yeah, no, it's not a thing, you would have been better off proofing it down with water and putting it in a 20L charred American oak barrel. Well i guess you can always distill it again.
Well, about 10 years ago I made a spirit with a homemade reflux still out of wine I had made that was not up to my drinking standard. Tried running it through activated charcoal also. Gave up because it all still smelled and tasted of low grade brandy. The still is sitting there unused after all this time!
The "fiery" note is supposed to go away with seasoning. The way the old men did this in the old times was to cut it very dirty and to let it rest for around six months. That will "distill away" the heads. Different people have different tastes regarding how dirty or how clean they want their grappa, but I think it is safe to say that the traditional way to make grappa was never to consume it immediately. I think - but it's just supposition - that ultimately the reason why this works is that part of the terpenes, which are what really distinguishes grappa from other distillates, come out of the distiller with the heads (especially if only a single run is made), but they are not "heads" and they will not evaporate as easily as proper heads. By cutting "dirty", taking many heads inside, and then let the product rest for months one can have the terpenes and yet get read of the nastier heads. Grappa was made in any case in all parts of Italy so any region and any single distiller might have had its own "style" and "method". For what I know, double run is not commonly practiced in traditional grappa making here in Italy. It's one run, and months of rest.
Hi Jesse, if you liked this, you can try to distill the must and the wine all together like your guest here: ruclips.net/video/rEocGA5MYQc/видео.html recommended, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I think the ethanoly taste will disappear if you leave the jar open for a week or two and age the samples for several months. I would recommend to repeat your "Can I Age With Different Woods? Lets Test It!" experiment, but with grappa. In my country, for home making, we often use black mulberry or acacia. One question though: wine makers usually use SO2, in some form, very early in the wine making process. But, for grappa I think this shouldn't be done since the copper in the pot still is used to reduce the unpleasant sulfuric components from the vapors. Why to add something that you would like to get rid off after that? For protecting the wine from spoilage you can simply distill it soon after fermentation. Regards and Ziveli (Neven will understand :) )
IF you'd like to view a VERY DIFFERENT way of distilling, look at "Drunkard Lee" kiwi fruit episode. She is Chinese, I think?...& uses the must & fruit debris, when she distills. It's interesting to watch how she uses EVERYTHING.
If you distill wine and then cut it with wine you made fortified wine.My preferred run but dangerously good. So I would guess you made fortified grappa.
Hello Jessy, looks like rakija to me, very nice Macedonian brandy, try to make them from 'prunus damson' plum en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia slivovitch, you will like it a lot. Make us a nice movie, greetings from the Netherlands & former yugoslav republic Macedonia
Hay man, love seeing people from all over the world here :) Neven suggested Damson plums in the podcast too if I remember correctly. May need to track some down next season.
My neighbor would love me to make some grappa, but unfortunately I don;t have a way to heat my little 8 gallon still that wouldn;t burn everything haha
good stuff mate, there's a few wineries where i live in tassie, been thinking of acquiring some of their stuff, i'd love to make ouzo with it, but where to get aniseed bushes, i have no idea... saw this vid a few years ago, your video reminded me of it... ruclips.net/video/3pH3RSnDT_U/видео.html
Would love to sample a dram or three of that purple, oak-aged Grapp-Skey! With A bit of Must, a touch of Lee; And Still It's Love, how bad could it be? I'm a Drunken F4cken Leprechaun!
Grappy can be dangerous if precautions are not taken with a special still. It has to be made from licensed grappa makers in Italy because it can contain higher proportion of methanol because you are distilling from woody parts - stems etc. Please make another video explaining the RIGHT way to make Grappa otherwise you ;are encouraging a not so safe alcoholic concoction.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
My Great Grandfather and my Grandfather two little old Italian guy from the mountains north of Naples taught me to distill by making Grappa we would first press the grapes for our red table wine then put the skins in a fermenter add water and sugar let it ferment out screen the skins back out and press them again to remove all the liquid an into the pot still for a nice slow cook from there it went into a used wine barrel for at least a year or two. If you distill wine like you did you get Brandy add wine back into that and you get Brandywine. Great Granddad used to say good Grappa would kill the living and raise the dead. Really enjoyed the video it brought back a lot of great memories for me. I also go and get pressed grape skins every year from a local winery where they save two 70 gallon drums of pressed grapes for me in exchange for a couple of bottles of last years run. Most of them just throw them away or compost them so if you ask nice you can get all you want.
Chuck Don't know do ya : Awesome. Loved reading your story. Can totally relate, just swap out the nonni and insert my papa. He never aged his grappa in barrels though. Barrels are for the wine. Lol
@@robsalvv5853 Thanks Rob we only used wine barrels that had been used for wine a couple of times and we usually charred them again after the Grappa to use for wine again.
Well done, Jesse! You have finally crossed over to the "Grape Side". One of the great things about this as a hobby is you can make anything you want. Grappa, which is an Italian word, is a spirit that is made from fermented and pressed grape must (pomace) and water. No lees, no wine (that's brandy, not Grappa), and no sugar, at least for legal Grappa.
The origins of Grappa, and its cousins in other countries, are based on farm culture where everything is used and nothing wasted. So rather than throwing out the pomace or putting it in the compost, it is used to make a spirit.
For those of us whose hobby is on a tight budget, buying a Genio to make Grappa is not feasible. Believe me when I tell you that direct fire, gas, heating elements, etc. will burn your pomace unless you have a mechanical stirrer. What you can do, however, is to put your pomace on a raised surface inside the still with water below it. Now you are basically steaming the pomace and there is zero contact to any very hot surface. I imagine that a gin basket would work but it is probably way too small since steam extraction is a very inefficient processs with low yields: you need lots of pomace to make up for the inefficiency.
I use a kettle with a suspended inner bucket that is perforated. The kettle supports a copper alembic dome fitted with a condenser. You could use a raised stainless mesh screen as long as it does not touch the water.
I have seen a video of country grappa making with a direct fired still. This (not legal) distiller uses water and some feints from the last season, packs in straw on top of that, and pomace onto the straw. Again, no contact of the pomace with a heated surface.
The headsy taste and smell you are picking up is a hallmark of grappa even in the middle of the hearts: the pomace has skins, pulp, seeds and other stuff in it. This is a spirit made to enjoy in very small amounts! Cheers!
George L : I've been around home distilled grappa all my life. Italian migrant parents. My old man's home made still is a work of junk yard and home welding mastery. To avoid scorching, he has a grate inside his boiler to keep his pomace off the heating surface. Honestly, he has his process down pat. Even includes a cheese cloth bag with citronella, fennel and basil for flavour.
When he does a run, he turfs the first bit of distillate, then collects everything else into buckets until the ABV is about 20%. This is technically a stripping run, but for him it is the run. I recently redistilled 2 gallons making cuts and basically bottling the hearts for him. To me it was a much nicer product, but it was missing all those headsy acetone and oily tail notes. He didn't like it. lol
Awesome, Rob Salvv! I have heard of the tradition of adding spices and aromatics, and wondered if it was to cover up off-aromas. 20% is pretty deep into the tails😉
@@robsalvv5853 haha you de-grappa’d it!
I was in Italy in 1976 and at that time I drank grappa aka the friendship drink. I will never forget it. They told me not to smell it, & if I did, I would not drink it. They were right. It was the worst smell ever. No I did not drink it.
I'm literally in the other way of the world from you, exactly where grappa was born, i love and respect you and your channel very much.
Aye awesome. Cheers mate.
My family (italian) make grappa. Im aussie, we used muscatdelle grapes (spelling mistake) i reccomend trying to use plums and or sultanas if grapes are an issue.
Jesse, I have made some Grappa and I really liked it. I basically did it the same way but when I did my first run I let the distillate flow over my skins and seeds. I picked up a bunch of flavor and when I redistilled it I was pleasantly surprised. It's just a different technique and I thought I would let you know. Shine on Brother and keep your powder dry.
Made some last year from merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and Petit Verdot . All excellent but the Petit is the best! Just added some water to the pomace to help get the steam action going in my Robobrew with copper dome. 1 run. Not making wine this year so will have to meter out my supply. Well worth the while!
I'm going to try it in a Grainfather with the copper dome.
i made grappa from backyard concord grapes after fermenting for a week strain off the wine, add more water and sugar and referment, then strained that and 2X distilled it. very fruity taste and aroma!..also a bit fiery, but i'm told that's not unusual for grappa. this year i'm going to try using apple pulp leftover from cider making, and chuck it in a barrel with water and add sugar and wine yeast. that's an awesome shirt BTW!
Nice. Yeah grappa can definitely be on the fiery side. Although the last couple I tried were not.
Apple pulp works, needs some more sugar for a good ferment according to my old man (78yo grappa distiller).
Good morning Jesse how about a chase the craft shirt that says " have a kickass week" on it just a thought
Holy crap, I can't even express how jealous I am, LOL! Such a cool project and great coverage of the whole process. Very cool choices on the blends you made, but no idea if the wine/grappa blend is a "thing" already or not. Very interested to see how that turns out. Awesome dude!
Yeah I have no idea either. I guess we wait and see if its any good lol.
@@StillIt What was your ratio of wine to grappa?
Fortified wine??
@@BeardedBored he made Mad Dog 2020
Well done. Grappa usually has a very low yield because it tries to extract as much juice as possible to make wine. The maximum (aroma and yield) is obtained from grapes that are not too pressed, that is, with still inside the must (in this case it must be completely stopped in a container).A big hello from southern Italy.
This is a very good video, thank you! I must however state that you did not legally make grappa, for grappa can be made only from pomace (vinacce as they are called in Italy). What you did is called acquavite di vino in Italy. However, I don't really care what the legal definition of grappa is, and you still did a great job. I think the result must have been really close to legal grappa.
For anyone that is interested in making it the "traditional" way:
The first step for grappa is the fermentation of the pomace. This is a fundamental step because it has a tremendous impact on the flavor of the grappa and determines a good product. In the case of using pomace from red wine you can go directly to distillation as you did, because the fermentation has already occurred together with the must. If, on the contrary, white wine pomace is used, it is necessary to ferment it first.
I learned that traditionally, the heads are collected until 80C and then everything is kept. Sometimes they continue the first distillation until 96C to collect all flavor from the grapes and then the grappa is distilled a second or even a third time to get rid of the tails and "purify" the product.
Cheers!
I’ve been processing pomace in an air still, only coming out at 15% abv. Thinking I will have to double distill.
Sending love from the UK I just found your channel this weekend, really enjoyed this video!
been making the family grappa for years and years now. we add back sugar and water and do a second fermentation on the grapes. and yes, you can over cook it and that horrible taste does not age out. just put it in your column still and use it for vodka now. oh, and we only make it from red grapes.
Ah nice to know that red grapes are in for this. Its right on the edge of being too headsy now, not that far over. Im going to let it ride for a while and see what happens. Cheers mate
Still It aging on medium toast French oak turns out wonderful btw
How much back sugar do you use?!
@@patlando5917 enough to get you to around 1.060-1.080
@@prccap Thank you!! Doing that now. I have made this 2 times, Once with a little sugar and a second without any. Both batches turned out, but I liked the sugar version best so I trying to make a better recipe. Thank you for the insight. Pat (Portland, Oregon)
I’ve learned so much from your channel Jesse. Thanks!
Cheers mate :)
KUDOS! Been hoping you’d get round to Grappa, Schnapps and Eau de Vie. I’m Italian Swiss and in the Alps we make Grappa fron Concord Grapes (Uga Americana) cause its the only variety hardy enuf to grow up there.
pretty much all wine producing regions in France have their own version of fortified wine made by blending grapes/wine waste with unfermented grape juice. The most well known is "Pineau des charentes". The vineyards dump the must on the side of the road and the distilleries come pick it up, but I think most of it is distilled to make vodka/medical alcool or bio-fuel. I think you could have get more alcool by rincing the must with water and letting it ferment again (with or without adding sugar).
Interesting. I could see that working if the wine didnt ferment out dry. But this was down below 1. Or do you mean adding extra enzymes to it>
@@StillIt most winery's separate the skins before fermentation Jesse I think thats what he meant.
@@StillIt yeah Might depend on the winery's process/type of wine produced. In your case most of the sugar was gone so might not be worth bothering. But in a wine were the macerating is shorter or even not existent (white wine for exemple), it would be worth it I think.
I agree ty jesse for
All your videos
Love the slow motion shots from the drip you do.
Jesse try to ferment some raisin and I love to know your opinion,its very easy crush the raisin and fermented as you do grain or other sugar for every 10 litter of water 4 kilogram of raisin will give you about 1090 gravity point .it produces a flavorful spirit .cheers
Interesting. I could see that being almost more like a molasse based spirit?
Umm, I do the opposite.
I add 45ABV to 400g of raisins in a 5L bottle and leave it.
I use flavoured sprit directly out of the bottle topping up as required.
When raisins turn white, discard, rinse and repeat.
I have beeb known to add maple syrup to bottle as well 🖖
Made some many years ago from speciality grapes that were brought in by a local seller for special clients and pressed by hand as opposed to the electric presses that suck every last drop of juice out. It turned out amazing but it's such a messy process, and the acidity of the skins eventually ate through the aluminum pressure cooker I was using at the time.
You leave the jars closed for maturation ? In france they say to let it open (with a coffee filter above) under the roofs so that it warms during day and cold during night. cold concentrate, warm enables evaporacion of the "burning" part; never tried yet but seems it was the old way of doing things...
My fathers family is Açorean portuguese. Wine making is in our blood, many generations for home consumption. We call grappa aguardente in Portuguese. Aguardente can be made with old wine or the skins like you did. We grow uva de cheiro a concord like grape both white and red. We always gave are skins and stems to a man named Joao. The skins and stem are called pé de água or foot water. What i head is that you take the skins and leftovers from pressing, add water and sugar and let ferment. Then you distill it. We can add fruit to it for flavor. Sometimes we put it in our wine for stronger wine. The best thing to do with aguardente or grappa is to juice the white concord grapes, about a gallon, add 750 ml or one wine bottles worth of aguardente and then sugar to sweeten. Let age for 6 months to years and we call it angelica or angelic. Very tasty and smooth.
Hey jesse. Just wanted to say hi. As you said we could lol. Been thinking about starting my first ever brew just daunting with no guidance or knowing anyone that does it. But have to say with every 1 of your videos I watch I get closer and closer to buying a fermenter + still and getting in to it. So thank you and keep it up then eventually one day I can partake in one of your international experiments.
The 1 grappa I had that I enjoyed was made by a winemaker I used to know. She specialized in red blends so I think red grapes were her base. Not sure about distilling technique but I belive it was aged for a few months with lightly charred or maybe just toasted French oak. I had no idea what I was smelling at first but I thought it tasted like a fruity scotch. Maybe like a sherry finished single malt with the fruity raisin notes turned up just a touch
Ah cool. Did you find it quite heavy on the red berry side of things? Im kinda hoping that the oaked version heads that way.
@@StillIt Red berry, raisin yeah. I dont have much experience with cognac but maybe it would have been more comparable to compare it to that
Never made grappa, but wanted to offer up another method for handling dirty washes or musts. Use a large thumper charged with the dregs and charge the boiler with cleared wash or water. Avoids scorching and also avoids spending $15,000 on a Genio.
Yeah nice man. Would need to be a pretty sizeable thumper to get that amount of solids in there, that second run basicly had no cleared wash. You dont need a genio, its just the best tool I had on hand for the job.
That answers my question on the price of a Genio. Yeah Nah. 😳
Many people use a 50 or 60 L keg for both boiler and thumper. It's fairly common. With water in the boiler, it's called "steam injection".
@@southcack8245 I'm in the process of putting together exactly this with 30 liter kegs. Doing so specifically so I can do grappa and strip on grain ferments (rye, corn buckwheat and millet don't lauter well at all).
Nice brother🥃👍🏻 I’ll be waiting to see the follow up videos. I’m very interested in how they all do with some time.
You and me both!
Awesome job mate, Grappa can be pretty sharp/intense., think the blend is called acquavite di vino (@Eric C)
Been looking at ouzo, apparently Grappa is used a base commonly, then the usual aniseed and liquorice root. Might be a viableway to use some spare grappa if you like liquorice?
Can't remember where I read it, but it sounds good
Great Video Jesse. If I remember well, from your podcast, Ilias was cutting hard on the heads, and digging a bit further on the tails? to get those sweeter grape notes. As a passionate home distiller, love your videos. Cheers from Canada
Interesting.... I've never tried grappa. I DO love my peach brandy tho, about 80 proof with a few peach slices added for a week or so. Best fruit distillate I've done by far 👍👍 CHEERS Jesse !
Great! How do you do the fermentation? Do you press or do you use the whole mashed fruit? Do you use any kind of yeast or just wild? Thanks
I definitely need to play more with fruit!
@@yoguimasterof69 I cut them in half to remove the pit then put them in a drum with a hole drilled in the center of the lid which I run the shaft of my stainless steel paint stirrer through attach it to my drill then lock the lid down and mix at high speed without any mess. I sharpened the edges of the paint stirrer so it really does a job on most fruit add a pound of sugar for every two pounds of fruit and a gallon of water to start then adjust your brix reading from there check your ph then use a good wine yeast I use one that's been in my family for generations. Good luck and #HappyDistilling
Hi here in Greece after making wine the rest (wine and grapes) distill them an making GRAPA if traditional add anise we call it TSIPOURO .
Is like OUZO but is not the same product
Well done Jesse! And yes white grapes, especially the more aromatics will produce a very different Grappa than the reds, both are equally good!
Great way to make spirits and wine at the same time! I make concord wine via a wild fermentation, then after you press the must to separate the skins out, add water, sugar and some yeast nutrient and let it ferment a second time (also using wild yeast, lends to an amazing flavor profile. Your mileage will vary based on local yeast populations).
Makes an amazing shine, or as we call it in Russian, cha-cha!
Btw, love your channel! Because of you, I’ve decided to start experimenting with grains as soon as I get a chance.
I still have a lot of skins left. So I think I am going to referment with sugar. Cheers mate :)
Grappa, in general, in my experience is very ethanol forward. Had different varieties, the oak aged ones are generally my favorite.
As a whisk(e)ydrinker, I generally think it tastes very ethanol forward, with fruits mostly in the background. Usually some wine-notes (melon, grape, apple, sometimes stonefruit and rarely deep, dark red fruit). Usually not very sweet, but it does tend to hint towards sweet with the notes. The oak does what oak does, mainly adding vanilla.
my sicilian friends father makes grappa. when there was a house party at the family home, the father returned and we thought we were in trouble because we were drinking one of his grappas, turns out he was really happy we liked it. he had 3 types that he brought out for us to drink with him. one was with peach, one was with mint and i cant remember what the third one was. im not sure of the process of whether he added the extra flavours after or not, but they were so tasty.
Hey Jesse, we've really been enjoying your show - very informative! Was curious if/how did you address methanol that may have been present in the heads while cutting forward into it? Or is that something I'd know the answer to once I actually get some hands-on experience? (US based- have read a lot but no practical experience)
would've loved for you to snag some wine from your buddy and compare the brandy side by side with the grappa.
Yeah, thats a totally different ball game when the good wine can go for $120 a bottle haha
Hi Jesse! Another awesome video! Can't wait to see more on this project as it ages! Cheers from Iowa mate!
Hi Jess great stuff man. I have some good idea for fast aging, instead of microwave use a baby bottle warmer it works great. Keep up the good work
Hey bud. By ground or whole adding aniseed before distilling will give you a whole new level of flavor. t
I think I keep watching just to hear your laugh, everything else is just a bonus. That laugh....... 😀
hello Jesse. in Greece we caled "tsipouro-τσιπουρο"
I just wont to ask if you use the wine and grape and still it. Is it kinda like henicy the licker
Awesome video Jesse, Will love to do a grappa run, so Awesome, Thank you, Is there still space in the Great Malt Co-Lab.
Hey Jesse. I think that wine/grappa blend is called “port”
Your videos are maturing ;) Well done dude.
Regarding Grappa, I would recommend to ferment it again. Make a sugar wash with it all and ferment. Then sieve and still. I leave it to natural wine yeast, but you can experiment with anything.
Enjoy :)
And also I live in the US in Tennessee wonder where I could find the stuff at make my own grappa
Loudon, Tennessee Valley Winery.
Grape stuff Jesse im going to start the colab malt this weekend i just got a brewzilla 35 l but iam a bit worried that the 8 kg of grain will be to much but we will see
I liked you ..
I'm from yemen Arabia..😍
Good luck 🌷
Hi Jesse. Love your videos man. I like your experimentation. I know in France they make Ratafia which is unfermented grape must mixed with marc (grappa). Its sweet and delicious so I look forward to seeing how the grappa and wine mix works out!
Huh, thats interesting! First time I have heard of that. Thanks man!
Luv the shirt
Great Episode! Damn... now i have to buy a Grappa.
Wow was I surprised to see a very familiar face appear in your video.
Making Grappa from the by products of a winery sounds very interesting and a great use of those waste materials. 👍
Hey bud ! What yeast did you use to ferment the grapes ?
I”ll buy cheap white wine and give it a try in my pot still...then macerate it with vine leaves...Italian gran ma’ recipe!!!!!
~3:45 you only need to aerate the wine when it is fresh and unaged or only bottle aged. wood cask aging will impart air slowly and is part of the aging process though now you haven't had and light based aging which is sometimes desirable and sometimes not as then we can finish with bottle aging with green/brown glass that blocks light or other colors that allow various wavelengths in to allow light aging. the primary purpose of aging is to allow time for water molecules to completely surroud each molecule of alcohol thereby preventing the 'sweet' part of the alcohol molecule from clumping with the same on other alcohol molecules resulting in the presentation of only the bitter/nasty side of the molecules to our tastebuds. this doesn't require air or light. the air and light based aging is to allow the flavour profile to change and mellow but not all flavours will go in a desirable direction so expert bottlers will normally bottle into airtight/airsealed light impermeable glass bottles to halt the aging process at the specific aging profile they wish to present to drinkers. all that said this guy has just taken wine from a barrel that has not finished aging and the aeration he is doing is to get it closer to the direction it will be going as it ages. wood cask aging does a few other things besides add air of course but how much do you want to read?
do you ever talk about what you do with the waste? Grappa leaves a ton (not by weight) of waste between the lees, and the skins etc.....so after you're done what do you do with it?
I grow cab-sav, I make usually vermouth, I compost most of the waste and I've been tempted to look into grappa but mostly interested in what you do with what's left over from mash or grapes either both.
~7:11 must in this case is also called pommace.
I work landscaping for an Italian family owned business and we all learn real quick ghat if the old man offers you a coffee you must be careful hahaha and when you see raisins in the the bottom of the cup go sit down. Have a good one yall
I was wondering if this would be the same type of way that rakia would be made or hopefully someone can tell me a little about how to make it for a girl I am friends with from Albania
Super late to the party: This is very interesting, and reminds me of an experiment I did last fall. I was making crowberry wine, and there was so much must it didn´t want to throw it away, so i put it in a pot, added water to it along with some added sugar, boiled it (to extract more essence out of the must) and fermented it. And it actually came out better than the crowberry wine itself. So I wound up making a delicious must wine, which this fall, I want to try distilling it. A crowberry must wine grappa wannabe.
Sounds like you've made more of a brandy using skins too rather than grappa, however, I believe this would age really well in French oak barrels. get it to a 3 to 5 years ageing if you can!
This is why I saw dream about wine clusters (=grapes) :D
great content thanks
Im never moving any active brewing buckets in my car again , i had one bust once , nightmare
Yikes that would have sucked!@
@@StillIt the smell never went away lol
I would have called out all the gods, I really hate spilling things and I do it daily. The heat here makes it feel even worse. But a bucket full... fuck... sounds like future me with a brewery
@@djscottdog1 has the smell gone yet? lol
I really liked your intro XD
So, grappa in New Zealand is like brandy in the rest of the world? Enjoy your channel, Jesse. Keep up the good work!
Grappa is a kind of brandy that typicly made in italy , grappa is made from grape skins (known as "marc" ) so thats the thing that makes it diffrent from normal brandys
@Warrior Son from what ive herd good wine makes crap brandy and good brandy wash makes crap wine
Your grappa and wine is the first thing I thought about..isnt that like super port ..PORTSHINE .. interested to see how only adding wine to proof it down with in the glass like a Raki would be .....keep up the good deeds and work
Yeah interesting man. Hmmm perhaps I should have saved a little more haha.
Yeah, no, it's not a thing, you would have been better off proofing it down with water and putting it in a 20L charred American oak barrel. Well i guess you can always distill it again.
"I haven't made anything with fruit before"
Lemoncello: ;-;
Lol
Limoncello is a liquor not a distilled spirit ;)
I could stay trashed for weeks.
Jolly good.
Well, about 10 years ago I made a spirit with a homemade reflux still out of wine I had made that was not up to my drinking standard. Tried running it through activated charcoal also. Gave up because it all still smelled and tasted of low grade brandy. The still is sitting there unused after all this time!
The "fiery" note is supposed to go away with seasoning. The way the old men did this in the old times was to cut it very dirty and to let it rest for around six months. That will "distill away" the heads. Different people have different tastes regarding how dirty or how clean they want their grappa, but I think it is safe to say that the traditional way to make grappa was never to consume it immediately. I think - but it's just supposition - that ultimately the reason why this works is that part of the terpenes, which are what really distinguishes grappa from other distillates, come out of the distiller with the heads (especially if only a single run is made), but they are not "heads" and they will not evaporate as easily as proper heads. By cutting "dirty", taking many heads inside, and then let the product rest for months one can have the terpenes and yet get read of the nastier heads. Grappa was made in any case in all parts of Italy so any region and any single distiller might have had its own "style" and "method". For what I know, double run is not commonly practiced in traditional grappa making here in Italy. It's one run, and months of rest.
53 hectare is he opposite of small batch.. Thats massive . My favorite winery is 2 Hecatres
Well, how did it age?
The leftovers from the press is called pomice.
Maraekakaho road, that's just around the corner from me
Got 410 litres of Teddy's vodka brewing so it has been a kick ass week.
Nice, thats going to keep you going for a while!
@@StillIt well. Ah yes. Just for me. Yep uh..
If I add everything I'm fermenting together right now I have 832.70 liters going at the moment 440 with grains and the rest in fruit.
I found a recipe for an apple mash brandy from the 1700s that your genio would be perfect for.
You should make a vintage and call it "Ain't Your Grandma's Grappa". 😂
Jesse and Khalif wine tasting together 🤯
Hi Jesse, if you liked this, you can try to distill the must and the wine all together like your guest here: ruclips.net/video/rEocGA5MYQc/видео.html recommended, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
I think the ethanoly taste will disappear if you leave the jar open for a week or two and age the samples for several months. I would recommend to repeat your "Can I Age With Different Woods? Lets Test It!" experiment, but with grappa. In my country, for home making, we often use black mulberry or acacia.
One question though: wine makers usually use SO2, in some form, very early in the wine making process. But, for grappa I think this shouldn't be done since the copper in the pot still is used to reduce the unpleasant sulfuric components from the vapors. Why to add something that you would like to get rid off after that? For protecting the wine from spoilage you can simply distill it soon after fermentation.
Regards and Ziveli (Neven will understand :) )
I was told to say " Hi ". So i do. Hi Jesse.
Someone watched the whole vid :)
Are you doing a grappamiel next?
I didnt even know that was a thing! A quick google has me interested though!
JESSE FOR PRESIDENT 2020!!!
IF you'd like to view a VERY DIFFERENT way of distilling, look at "Drunkard Lee" kiwi fruit episode. She is Chinese, I think?...& uses the must & fruit debris, when she distills. It's interesting to watch how she uses EVERYTHING.
If you distill wine and then cut it with wine you made fortified wine.My preferred run but dangerously good. So I would guess you made fortified grappa.
Hello Jessy, looks like rakija to me, very nice Macedonian brandy, try to make them from 'prunus damson' plum en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia slivovitch, you will like it a lot. Make us a nice movie, greetings from the Netherlands & former yugoslav republic Macedonia
Hay man, love seeing people from all over the world here :) Neven suggested Damson plums in the podcast too if I remember correctly. May need to track some down next season.
My neighbor would love me to make some grappa, but unfortunately I don;t have a way to heat my little 8 gallon still that wouldn;t burn everything haha
todd simi : need a little fine grate with a stand off inside your boiler.
Galvanized tub full of water on top of your burner and set still on a couple bricks in the water. Bain Marie double boiler!
lol those 8 buckets almost bottomed out the car
good stuff mate, there's a few wineries where i live in tassie, been thinking of acquiring some of their stuff, i'd love to make ouzo with it, but where to get aniseed bushes, i have no idea...
saw this vid a few years ago, your video reminded me of it...
ruclips.net/video/3pH3RSnDT_U/видео.html
Hey a Honda Fit
Hi Jesse
You can give it a new name
Call it
Grabba Jess
LOL
hahaha
They need to hammer some nails in those barrels ;)
Waist of time.... 17:11 it's the begin
Dude... Those ear lobes 😢
Should see em with the plugs in ;)
Welcome to the dark side! 😁
corn is a fruit therefore it’s a brandy
Would love to sample a dram or three
of that purple, oak-aged Grapp-Skey!
With A bit of Must, a touch of Lee;
And Still It's Love, how bad could it be?
I'm a Drunken F4cken Leprechaun!
Never showed how to make it
Mezz
Grappy can be dangerous if precautions are not taken with a special still. It has to be made from licensed grappa makers in Italy because it can contain higher proportion of methanol because you are distilling from woody parts - stems etc. Please make another video explaining the RIGHT way to make Grappa otherwise you ;are encouraging a not so safe alcoholic concoction.