Help deciphering Grandma's brandy recipe

Basically the title explains it.

My grandmother sent me this brandy recipe after she found out that I have been making my own beer and wine. I'd like to make it sometime and give some to her, but I'm not quite sure on one ingredient. Knowing her, this is a recipe from god-knows-when, most likely during the early prohibition era. I'm planning on tweaking the recipe to something that's a little more "up to today's wine-making standards".

The recipe exactly as written:

"Brandy
3 Gallons warm water
10# Sugar
4 Lemons cut in eights
3 Quarts fruit firmly packed
1 Large cake yeast
Mix well and cover. Stir once a day for 7 days. Then add
4# seedless raisins, let stand for 21 days.
Do not stir after the 7th day. Let stand 28 days total, makes 15 pints."

The fourth ingredient is what I'm stumped at. "3 quarts fruit"? Uh, what kind of fruit? And should I do anything with it, like slice it, or shred it, or blend it?
I'll be contacting her sometime on what exactly she means by this, but I'm interested in what you guys think. Like I said ^ up there somewhere, I'll be tweaking this a bit and use some quality wine yeast and definitely extending the aging time.

fruit be fruit, just don't use citrus.
if it was fruit, it was brewed with. people from that generation didn't let anything go to waste.

Why not citrus?

Grapes would make the most sense.

I was just reading some other threads, the consensus seems to be blackberries and cherries. Also, it's not a real brandy unless it's distilled, this is more of a 'fruit wine'.. I guess?

I don't know anything about brandy, so I'm not sure what sort of "fruit" a brandy consists of. I'll have to do some research. Not sure of "no citrus" though, as the recipe has you add 4 sliced lemons. Maybe a brandy has no citrus? Beats me...

oldmate said:

I was just reading some other threads, the consensus seems to be blackberries and cherries. Also, it's not a real brandy unless it's distilled, this is more of a 'fruit wine'.. I guess?

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I think it's intended to be a brandywine, but then again, I'm not really sure what the make-up of a brandywine is.

Edit: just researched a bit. Turns out, it seems that "brandy" is short for "brandywine", which seems to be a distilled wine. So maybe when she called this "brandy", it wasn't a good choice for a name. Anyway, I guess "fruit wine" would be the most appropriate name.

I think he recommended "no citrus" because it's harder to ferment due to being so acidic. But citrus is doable.. look up "skeeter-pee" to see what I mean. Course, if you use it in this, it won't be brandy - it'll be skeeter pee

Technically, "Brandy" is the distillate of fermented grapes, and ONLY from grapes, but there is a colloquial usage with a long history that links the term to flavored hooch, flavored neutral spirit, strong fruit wines, etc., so really this recipe can be called whatever you want to call it, and I would suggest you use whatever "fruit" you would like the flavor of. (what I would really do, though, is replace the sugar with a gallon (~12 lbs) of honey and call it a Melomel and give it some really good ageing time)

Stout-n-Braggot said:

Technically, "Brandy" is the distillate of fermented grapes, and ONLY from grapes, but there is a colloquial usage with a long history that links the term to flavored hooch, flavored neutral spirit, strong fruit wines, etc., so really this recipe can be called whatever you want to call it, and I would suggest you use whatever "fruit" you would like the flavor of. (what I would really do, though, is replace the sugar with a gallon (~12 lbs) of honey and call it a Melomel and give it some really good ageing time)

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That does sound delicious, but I don't want to venture too far from this recipe just yet, aside from changing some processes.

Why not just ask her?

+1 on the grapes.

Grappa is some crazy stuff, it could probably double as a paint remover

You could try using grapes but I would suspect that any stone fruit would produce something yummy (peaches, plums, etc).

skyebrewing said:

Why not just ask her?

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I will, but (like I said in the original post) I wanted to see what everyone else thinks. I think it would be interesting to gather everyone's ideas on what to substitute the "fruit" for.

So the consensus so far is leaning toward: whatever the hell I want .

beninan said:

I will, but (like I said in the original post) I wanted to see what everyone else thinks.

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Sorry. Stopped reading half way through post. That's what happens when you enjoy too much of the fruits of your labor..

skyebrewing said:

Sorry. Stopped reading half way through post. That's what happens when you enjoy too much of the fruits of your labor..

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No problem! I suspected that with this being a homebrewing forum, maybe you missed that part of the original post.

further clarifier on brandy and etymology: the term comes from the dutch (believe it or not) brandewijn (pronouned branda-vine) meaning fire wine or burnt (as in distilled) wine. in older english it is often called brandywine, which is the same as brandy, which is always distilled wine and not brandy-like wine. in agreement with previous posts. i think it's the only word in common english parlance other than cookie (from koekje pronounced kook-ya and meaning something like tiny cake) that derives directly from modern-ish dutch.
not to say you shouldn't call this wine brandy of you want to, you can call it ted nugent vodka as far as i'm concerned

Thanks be to the dutch for having created Jenever and Korenwijn as well! Its sad that they are not very available here stateside...

beninan said:

Basically the title explains it.

My grandmother sent me this brandy recipe after she found out that I have been making my own beer and wine. I'd like to make it sometime and give some to her, but I'm not quite sure on one ingredient. Knowing her, this is a recipe from god-knows-when, most likely during the early prohibition era. I'm planning on tweaking the recipe to something that's a little more "up to today's wine-making standards".

The recipe exactly as written:

"Brandy
3 Gallons warm water
10# Sugar
4 Lemons cut in eights
3 Quarts fruit firmly packed
1 Large cake yeast
Mix well and cover. Stir once a day for 7 days. Then add
4# seedless raisins, let stand for 21 days.
Do not stir after the 7th day. Let stand 28 days total, makes 15 pints."

The fourth ingredient is what I'm stumped at. "3 quarts fruit"? Uh, what kind of fruit? And should I do anything with it, like slice it, or shred it, or blend it?
I'll be contacting her sometime on what exactly she means by this, but I'm interested in what you guys think. Like I said ^ up there somewhere, I'll be tweaking this a bit and use some quality wine yeast and definitely extending the aging time.

Click to expand...

Back then and even now lots of people canned their own fruit to get them through the winter.

To do this you take a "Quart Canning Jar" Ball or Kerr brands, cut your fruit into sections and pack it tightly in the jars. Then you poured a boiling sugar syrup over it, remove any air bubbles, cleaned top surface of the jar, and screwed the 2 piece lid on tight.

The next stage involved either a boiling water bath or cooking the jars in in a pressure cooker for a while.

I have on my counter a jar of peaches I canned last year and I had thought that I might make a brandy or wine out of them.

Now I have a recipe.

By the way if you think the cans of fruit you bought at the store are the same, you are in for a great surprize when you can your own.

Yep.. It's basically a generic fruit wine recipe.... In general - you will end up with a very sweet, fruity wine..... Many people drink this stuff very young... and it's really not all that good young.... but the heavy sweetness masks all the weird, icky flavors.....

Unfortunately, it's also heavily dependent on the particular yeast used... most of those old recipes used Bread yeast.. which conks out somewhere between 8-14%... If you use a good, high quality Wine yeast or champagne yeast - you likely will end up with rocket fuel.... It may or may not be sweet rocket fuel....

If you want a suggestion on possibly a little better track - check out Jack Keller's wine making website.... His generic method is to make a dry fruit wine, using fruit, water, sugar, tannin, and acid blend.... then backsweeten it to your preferred sweetness level..... This way, you can control what you get.... so you don't get flat coke syrup with alcohol in it if you get my drift...

Thanks

Thanks for the replies. I haven't contacted her yet to find out what exactly what she had put in it, but I do know it was some form of berries. I think I may take oldmate's suggestion of blackberries and cherries. Maybe 1 quart of blackberries, 1 quart of cherries, and 1 quart of grapes, how's that sound? I'll use a wine yeast and at least 6 months of aging.

My mother in law once canned a large batch of home grown pears, and for some unknown reason canned about 3 quarts of the sugar syrup, in which the pears had been cooked. Since no one knew what to do with it, I made up a gallon batch with it, a can of frozen white grape concentrate, some more sugar (!) and champagne yeast. For about a year I could have sold it to NASA or SpaceX, but eventually it settled down into a very drinkable dry wine. Wines from home canned fruit can be good, if you're patient. Just don't wait till you're old to start one

My Mother-in law used to make what she called Brandied Fruit. She used it to make wonderful holiday cakes every year.

She always kept a starter container around. Ever once in a while she would just dump in a large can of mixed fruit and some sugar.

When she heard I was making wine at home she gave me a gallon jug of the liquid. I added 2 cans of Welch’s grape concentrate and some sugar. When it was done, I had a really nice sweet Port.

She has been gone for years now and I miss her. Now I’ll see if I can make her holiday cake. Thanks for the recipe.

Edit: Oh and by the way, I’ll bet the citrus from the lemons is to help break apart the sugars for the yeast. Do a search for invert or inverted sugars.

A co-worker gave me this same recipe a few days ago. He made 2 batches, one with pears and one with peaches, all grown in his back yard. Although I haven't tasted it myself...I hear it is delicious.

My grandmother made fruit brandy in five gallon crocks. It is much like Rumtopf, which she made for the holiday season. She never added yeast, just relied on natural yeast from fresh seasonal fruit. In the crock, there was a layer of sliced/chunked fruit, then a layer of sugar or honey, more fruit, more sugar, etc., until filled 75% of the way. Sometimes they threw raisins in, and if someone had preserved citrus peel they wanted to share some was added. Cover with papers and set somewhere dark and warm, but not hot, stirred once a day for seven days and did not stir again until they checked it in a month. She used seasonal fruits, peach brandy, cherry brandy, plum brandy, even apples. Her favorite was blackberry.

She said it was called fruit brandy because distillation was not widely used and quite risky. Plus their version of fruit brandy tasted much better, fruity and usually sweet. She said they would sometimes seal the crocks with their treasured lids, seal with wax and many times bury the crock in the ground. Unearth it when the ground thawed in the Spring...and the liquor was delicious.

Figs, dates and other dark fruits would be nice. I have a gallon of a really strong "Date wine" that is pretty much like the above recipe except made with dates. It's pretty potent and tasty stuff.

Great recipe, as a newby I love the idea of bung it all together and let stuff happen!
Figgy date version also sounds fab, I may well start this for next years xmas prezzies...
Also great to read the hand me down stories, my grandad passed on some recipes to dad who made lots of wine when I was a kid, but all the recipes have long since disappeared.