r/firewater • u/HalifaxRoad • 2d ago
Has anyone every distilled cheap wine?
Longer story short, I spent about a week picking wild grapes at the farm, and I got almost no alcohol out of it. And Im kinda crushed.
I really want to do grape brandy. I was either thinking of buying box wine, or bulk cooking wine and distilling it.
Has anyone tried this before? How did it go?
I know cooking wine is adulterated with salt, but the underlying wine tastes pretty good.
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u/AJ_in_SF_Bay 2d ago
As a serious home winemaker of many years, I'd like to start out with my own recommendations and then ask a few questions in the hopes of pointing you in the right direction:
As my username implies, I am in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I'm adjacent to some of the best wine grape growing regions in the US, and there is a huge difference between growing grapes, harvesting them, making them into must to be ready to ferment, properly fermenting them, aging, etc. First, not all grapes are great for wine, and your wild grapes are likely smaller, tarter, and higher in acidity than commercial wine grapes. Therefore, they do not have the ingredients needed to make great brandy. But... you could still use them. More on that below.
Where are you located? Are there any wine grape brokers near you? Have you looked? These folks sell grapes at or near the ideal Brix, acidity (Titratable Acidity or TA), and pH, the "holy trinity" of harvest metrics. You could just pay full price for great grapes and end up making wine. Then make some of that into brandy. Hell, if you want, make grappa, also, if that is your thing.
Have you ever asked the grape brokers near you about buying surplus, or "scratch and dent," grapes at the end of harvest? Grapes are fucking gross. People have no idea--they still picture virgin girls and their feet for some unknown reason. I have purchased stellar Cabernet Sauvignon grapes on the cheap the day of harvest with perfect "holy trinity" metrics that had spiderwebs, live spiders, bugs, dirt- you name it, it was in there. But I don't care, because #1, I can give grapes a quick rinse if I want to, and #2, it doesn't matter anyway, since it all comes out in the end. All the crap falls to the bottom of the main bulk fermenter (I use large totes), and then I rack the wine off multiple times to clear it. I never filter, as it is not really necessary.
Have you ever talked directly with a wine grape farmer in your area? Ask them if all of their lots are committed. Alcohol consumption is going down. Way down. Ask if you can buy some directly from them at the next harvest. Agree on a price up front now. Decide how much you want. Look serious and be professional. Offer to leave a deposit (and get a receipt). I have purchased a surplus of a thousand pounds of award-winning grapes this way.
Did you know you can buy 5-gallon pails of frozen must, either red (with skins, etc.) or white (more must)? Shipped directly to your door, and again, here, as with many of these choices, you are supporting American farmers. All you would have to do is thaw, select yeast, and you're off and running.
Don't have any of these things in your area, or don't prefer those options? No matter. As a third option, why not take the next harvest of wild grapes but be ready with a large wine concentrate kit of your choosing--there are so many online it is ridiculous--and you can use grape sugars in the concentrates to boost what your wild grapes do not have, yet when you do make a brandy, it will have the sense of terroir and place that is your home. I recommend against using table sugar, as that's what people will likely tell you to do. In my mind, then it just becomes wild grape vodka; it isn't really a brandy anymore. To me, brandy is 100% fruit, but that is just my opinion.
Good luck, and keep at it! It's worth it.
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u/big_data_mike 2d ago
I interned at Medlock Ames in the early 2010’s. I think buying one of those wine kits is the way to go that way you can skip adding the final sulfates.
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u/dinnerthief 2d ago
Yea restaurant supply store near me sells cooking sherry for $7/gallon and its like 16% abv. Distilled it and actually liked the product.
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u/hathegkla 2d ago
Yeah it works fine. Get some box wine and give it a try. Just make sure you have some copper in the vapor path.
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u/HalifaxRoad 2d ago
Yeah I have copper bubble plates, reflux condenser, and liebeg condenser. that should eat the sulphides
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u/OrganicMF 2d ago
Make sure you don’t strip out all the flavor though. Copper scrubbies and some reflux might do the trick too, while leaving flavor.
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u/WwCitizenwW 2d ago
Distilling would get you a pretty interesting result. Most take more than a bottle..alot more in fact, to make brandy.
From the distillate comes the aging in oak barrels to get that color and mellow out the character.
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u/DeepwoodDistillery 2d ago
Someone in my homebrew club had about 100L of red wine lying around that they wanted to get rid of. Then another buddy pulled 20 bottles out of his basement that he had made 15 years ago and forgot about. I threw them all into my 3 keg (2 boilers, 1 thumper) system and it all came out around 75% alcohol. I think I got 2-3 gallons before I shut it off, but I could have gotten way more!
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u/Savings-Cry-3201 2d ago
Even a cheap wine can give a distinctive brandy character. Not always great, but that’s why you age. Cheap wine is great to practice on and sometimes it gets you a free gallon jug. That probably the best time to buy is if you need a glass jug. Damn shame we see so many less on the shelf.
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u/francois_du_nord 2d ago
what I did was distill a wine kit - fermented the kit, and then turned it into brandy. Worked very well.
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u/fishyfishfishfishf 2d ago
I used some cheap white box wine for one of the first runs on my still (18 years ago). It turned out pretty good.For a 5 gallon run it felt too expensive. It would of been cheaper to buy a decent bottle of brandy. I have found looking for sales on juice or juice concentrate is more cost effective. I also go to a local fruit stand that sales overripe and needs to be used that day fruit.
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u/turkeychicken 2d ago
This guy has major mad scientist vibes but his videos are always extremely in depth. He took boxed wine and did some distillations on it, then compared it to nicer wines. While the tasting section left a little to be desired, it might scratch the itch you're looking for in regards to whether it's worth pursuing or not
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u/trainwreckFactory 2d ago
I did my first practice trial runs on cheap wine. You get a lot more heads that smell terrible that come out at the beginning compared to a clean mash ferment, and you get more aromatics in the run. I didn't age mine, but it did taste like brandy. I got about a liter and a half of decent spirit out of a case of Charles Shaw, but I was also being stingy with the cuts to try to get something that tasted half decent. If was half decent, and I learned a lot.
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u/m0j0hn 2d ago
I have jacked small batches of box wine in the freezer - put some wine in a flexible container (so ice doesn’t crack it), let it freeze overnight, skim the ice off the top, refreeze, repeat - proof slowly increases until no more ice - results were… interesting, def higher proof <3
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u/CrazedHedgeHog 2d ago
At a distillery I used to work at we distilled some throwaway wine and use the wine vodka as a base in our flavored vodkas. The wine vodka had a fruitier taste. Pretty much tasted like a sweet vodka. It wasn’t great but it was different and fun.
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u/CaptainXIII 2d ago
I use cheap wine for a sacrificial run.
But about those grapes… I had something similar this summer. We had a lot of grapes in our garden but they were more sour than sweet. So I picked them, crushed them, put them in the fermenter and added a few kg inverted sugar. Added extra water and pitched a red wine yeast. Distilled it as a vodka and I really like the taste. Very smooth with a hint of cherry. Might work for your grapes as well.
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u/pandakahn 1d ago
My family did this going back three generations. You make a bad batch of wine, you run it through the still. Grappa is great.
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u/Horror_Ad9750 2d ago
I will do it alongside beer and other alcoholic beverages when I have accumulated a bunch. I end up making vodka out of it though to remove any of the flavors that might come with it.
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u/Party_Stack 1d ago
I’ve never made a bad batch of wine that didn’t get turned into liquor if that answers your question.
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u/No-Craft-7979 2d ago
Store wine contains sulfates. Some people can taste them and they make the next few runs taste like it no matter how much you wash.
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u/incredible_paulk 2d ago
I had a neighbor give me 4 gallons of homemade wine (in glass gallon jugs😀) it measured 12%. Poured it in the vevor and boom. Don't remember how it tasted, but it was definitely consumed. Free is free, I'd rather ferment my own mash. Unless free, it's not really the most economical way to go.