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#010 Rakia / Fruit Brandy With Neven From Kapela Distilling Co
1k Plays5 years ago
Neven started distilling Rakia at 8 or 9 years old with his father on his family farm. Now he is opening a commercial distillery, Kapela Distilling Company. Not one to take these things lightly Neven has learned from and/or apprenticed with distilleries in England, Scotland and the USA.
In this episode, Neven helps us understand the process of making Rakia or Fruit Brandy.
Kapela Distilling Co: https://kapeladistilling.com/
Chase The Craft Support: https://chasethecraft.com/support
Adventures In Home Brewing: https://www.homebrewing.org/ctc
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
How's it going chasers? I hope you're having a kick-ass week. This podcast is brought to you by Gladfield Malt right here in New Zealand making sweet sweet craft malt. If you're interested commercially go to gladfieldmalt.co.nz or if you're lucky enough to be here in New Zealand and you're home distilling your home brewing you can pick the stuff up anywhere like anywhere any homebrew store they're gonna have Gladfields.
00:00:24
Speaker
On the other side of the world, this podcast is also brought to you by Adventures in Home Brewing. They're based in America, awesome service, awesome products, great prices, and free shipping on most orders, over $50 in the lower 48. Try Adventures in Home Brewing for your next order in relation to home brewed beer, homemade wine, or...
00:00:47
Speaker
home distilled spirits. They even have international shipping if you're that way inclined. So visit homebrewing.org slash CTC to visit their specials page. Using that link is not going to cost you a cent, but it does help support the podcast.
Support & Guest Introduction
00:01:04
Speaker
So thank you guys.
00:01:05
Speaker
Speaking of supporting the podcast, I can't go any further without saying a huge, huge thank you to the Patreons of both this podcast and the Still It YouTube channel. I can't do this stuff without you guys, so thank you. Thank you so much. If you're finding value in these podcasts or the Still It YouTube channel, feel free to visit chasethecraft.com slash support to find out lots of different ways that you can help me keep on keeping on and carry on creating this content
Passion for Rakia & Distilling Journey
00:01:35
Speaker
for you.
00:01:35
Speaker
My guest today is all the way from Croatia and he's here to talk to us about Rakia the local traditional fruit brandy Jeffrey from the beer wine and spirits YouTube channel actually put me on to this guy And I'm so freaking glad he did because I don't know man. He's he's just a cool human being I had an absolute blast talking to him He's definitely one of those people that I'm gonna be keeping in touch with
00:02:02
Speaker
and talking more back and forth just to keep a keep tabs on what this guy's doing. He first started brewing and distilling Rakia with his father to preserve or make use of the fruit of the family orchard and ever since then it's turned into a passion and an obsession. He's got to the point where he's gone far beyond the normal home distiller and he's actually opening up his own distillery.
00:02:26
Speaker
He's not someone to do that lightly so he's been all over the world to England, to the US, to Scotland to learn and intern with other commercial distilleries and now he's ready to jump in with both feet. Let's get stuck right in and hear from Nevin from Capella Distilling Company in Croatia.
00:02:56
Speaker
Maven, it was an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast, dude. I will admit right now, I have never tried any of your spirits and to be honest with the distance between us, the amount of world between us, that might take a while to do so. But I've heard really good things from people that I trust and respect, so thanks for coming on, man. We appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. Big thanks to Jeff Bradford.
00:03:20
Speaker
to connect us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For those that you don't know, Jeff runs a YouTube channel called Bear One and Spirits. And he essentially is lucky enough and awesome enough to travel all over the world meeting people just like you do. Oh, yeah. I love watching his episodes, you know, and we hit it off as you know, the first day he arrived here to Croatia. We have a lot of things in common, you know, just like instantly, you know, good friends.
00:03:51
Speaker
And, you know, people, if you're watching this, you know, subscribe to Jeff's channel, subscribe to Jesse's channel. Great channels. And, you know, once again, thank you for inviting me. And I must admit, I haven't seen many of your podcasts, but, you know, since Jeff told me, I went through a lot of them, you know, a couple of hours of watching daily.
00:04:17
Speaker
So I really like it. It's pretty cool. It's very relaxed. A lot of good material for people.
Podcast Format & Content Discussion
00:04:24
Speaker
So keep it going.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, man. The whole point was just to be relaxed and chill. And I mean, we're going to get into this, right? And there are so many different variables in the hobby and the industry of distilling where a YouTube video where you have to kind of keep things short and succinct and on topic and only use so many words and edit it short and all that stuff to play the YouTube algorithm game. You just don't get to have interesting conversations like you can when you just get to talk to someone, you know?
00:04:54
Speaker
You have to keep it short and interesting.
00:05:01
Speaker
People's attention span is not that long, so. No. It's weird, man, because people say they want to see a longer video, but it just doesn't work out that way. It really doesn't. I like to do one. I like to throw one up there every now and again that's a little longer, I guess, just to test it out again. But yeah, they don't do so great. But anyway, enough of that, man. We appreciate you coming on. And I mean, we're here to talk Iraqia.
00:05:26
Speaker
which is is there something yeah yeah yeah so for those of you that can't see uh see the video that we're we're you know recording right now if you're listening to the podcast uh nevin's got a rakia connecting people shirt on just like nokia it's uh it's awesome i might have to i might have to figure out how to get one of those if you did um we'll sort it out yeah yeah yeah so is there
00:05:53
Speaker
Is there a difference between Rakia and Brandy? Like, is there something that makes Rakia Rakia or is it just your word for Brandy? No, we're here, you know, okay, let's talk about the definition shortly. Yeah. You know, it's when you only go through languages, you know, in English, in English language, uh, from what I understood, uh, talking to people in the industry, uh, some people call it or the V, you know, from water of life.
00:06:20
Speaker
and which is the same base as Latin, the same base that Whiskey got its name. And there's also a term, fruit brandy. And then people said that a long time in this industry, and let's say people that are setting standards, that all the vision is usually used for clear spirit. And fruit brandy is usually used when it's aged.
00:06:50
Speaker
That's what I heard is in English language as terms. Germans call it schnapps. We call it rakia, no matter whether it's aged or it's just a clear spirit. So, you know, it depends on the country. So, you know, if you're going to if you're going to talk about it, you know, like speaking now in English, you know, we can call it fruit brandy or
00:07:15
Speaker
or the V or whatever. So people that can distinguish the differences between age and the clear one. Yeah. Okay, cool. So in actual process and definition, there's not something that separates it. Is there a regional flair to it? Like something that, if I lined up
00:07:36
Speaker
five different brandies made from five different places in the world. And then I put a Arakiya in there from somewhere near your local area. Would you be able to, do you think you'd be able to taste which one was from your area? Is there something that makes it local? I cannot really say I would. Yeah, right. You know, fruit spirits are very delicate and it's very hard to make high-end fruit spirits.
00:08:05
Speaker
Because there are so many components in the whole process, so many variables. We usually say here that, OK, this is our opinion. People from Scotland, from the US will say that whiskey is much harder to make. It's more like this. People who make more gin, they're going to say this about gin and so on and so on.
Rakia Production Insights
00:08:30
Speaker
But we all fight for our things, so it's a fair game. I was just going to say, I think the one thing that is absolutely undisputable is the
00:08:41
Speaker
the, how hard you have to fight for yield with fruit spirits, right? Like the amount of raw products that you use compared to the product you get at the end is, I mean, do you want to kind of compare what, what your yield is compared to something like whiskey? If you know the whiskey game, I'm not sure we haven't talked to whiskey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have whiskey, you have a much higher yield. You have like three times higher yield because you know, when you, when you, uh, do the mash, you know, like you, you put like, I don't know,
00:09:11
Speaker
uh, two thirds of water, three quarters of water. And the rest is, you know, the rest is the, uh, the grains. And, uh, so practically use much less of raw material than with fruit. Okay. There you have, you have, you have to measure, you have to convert starch to fermentable sugars. So, you know, uh, it's, it's a part of the process that you don't have with fruit spirits.
00:09:36
Speaker
where you already have fermentable sugars, you have fructose in fruit and it's ready to ferment right away. But the thing is about rakiya, you know, about fruit spirits, you have to really be careful about the sort of the fruit, about the maturity of the fruit, you know, if it's ripe. You have to, depends on as with wines, you know, depends on the year,
00:10:05
Speaker
If there was enough sun, there's going to be enough sugars in it. The more sugar in the fruit, the more alcohol you have. And then if you have more acids, esters, you get more aromas. And then it also depends on yeast, which yeast you use.
00:10:31
Speaker
Back here at home, in this whole area, the whole former Yugoslavia and Balkans, including Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria region, the whole Balkans, let's say. People mostly leave it to the wild east. Oh, wow. OK. So they literally just cut the fruit up or mash the fruit up? Oh, yeah. We're just talking about home distilling. If we're talking about home distilling, people are using wild yeast.
00:11:01
Speaker
There are people that use selected yeast and most of these are wine yeast. So there is a whole, you know, whole palette of wine yeast from many manufacturers, you know, like that you can use and it's just, you know, you have to experiment with to see what you're going to get. You know, you know how the yeast creates like, I don't know, 60, 70 percent of the flavor.
00:11:31
Speaker
When you take all that in consideration, if it was the right year, if the fruit was ripe when you picked it, which yeast did you use? At what temperature did it ferment? With which yeast? The distillation, you have to be careful when you're making the cuts. It's not that bad if you cut earlier, but you have to make a straight cut before the tails.
00:12:01
Speaker
because it goes bad very fast. And it also depends on the type of the still that you used for the stilling. And then aging, you have to leave it to, let's say, to stabilize, because when the spirit comes out of the still, it's in the state of chaos. It was under the pressure of chemical, physical reactions. And you have to leave it for the aromas
00:12:27
Speaker
Let's say to harmonize. Yeah. In the vessels where you leave some air to have the oxidation also, if you're not putting in the barrels, you usually put it in stainless steel or glass. Glass is the best, but you know, stainless steel is good. So mostly when we're talking about home distilling, people usually have glass vessels of whatever kind. So, you know, or jugs or those like, you know, from wine,
00:12:57
Speaker
than five little ones or whatever. And it takes time, months. I don't touch my stuff at least three months. So even if you're creating a white spirit, you're going to let it just chill. Let it marry. Let it relax. Let it all come together. Oxidize a little bit. I have to imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least three months, I don't touch it, but it's usually six months. Oh, well. And then I start diluting it.
00:13:25
Speaker
you know, with the mineralized water. So if you want, you know, you can you can try things like using spring water. Okay, it's gonna, right? Yeah, it's gonna have minerals inside in it and things like that. So but it might change, but it might change the flavor of it. But you can say like, you know, it's, it's the local thing, you know, water. So it has a certain kind of terror. So
00:13:55
Speaker
But usually it's just demineralized water, distilled water. Over here they call it distilled water, but it's all just demineralized water. Right. There are so many things to unpack here. And I'm trying to think of, from the point of someone like myself,
00:14:15
Speaker
who kind of knows the way around it still, but doesn't, I've never made brandy before. So this whole process is fascinating to me, especially, you know, I think everyone tends to, when they learn something new, they relate it back to what they know, right? So, and for me, that mostly is whiskey.
00:14:34
Speaker
So maybe, maybe let's start at the beginning of the process and kind of pick out some key differences along the way. And then I've got about 50 questions for you from what you just said. I'll try and remember all of them as we go. You know, the more comfortable I'm just like, Oh yeah, I've got a drink by the way, guys. I don't know. It's like a 10 o'clock for Nevin there. So he's maybe not drinking yet. I have my, uh,
00:15:04
Speaker
I got the plum. Oh, you know what? Yeah, dude, show us the bottles for the people, for the Patreons and the... Yeah, yeah, grab them. The one that I made when Jeff was there. So this is a year and a half old. Oh, that's the same spirit? Oh, that's really cool, man. Same spirit. I got like a few bottles left. So this is the clear one. Okay, these are... So as we are opening this still very soon. So these are just test labels.
00:15:31
Speaker
We didn't measure right, so they'll be a bit too big for the bottle, but this is going to be designed. Kapila Distilling Company is the name of the company, of the distillery. Kapila is the name of the mountain where I'm from. I was just about to ask you what the significance of that was. Nature spirits within.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, cool. So it's super for the people listening to the podcast, as real clean as essentially, I was going to say it's basically black and white, but that makes it sound really basic. It's not, it's dope. Let the people know where your website is so they can go and check these out for themselves. It's probably the easiest way to do this. And this is the aged one. This is something that, you know, I used wood chips just, you know, to age it a bit with wood chips. And it completely changes the flavor.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, nice man, but completely but no it changes a lot so We can talk about aging fruit spirits also, you know, just you know, who's doing the big burner now and Yeah, I think if we go through in order of the process that'll that'll yeah save us for getting as much as possible but before we get into that I want to talk about this so you have Essentially had distilling in your blood since you're a kid, right? Like you just grew up around it Yeah, I know eight nine years old
00:16:49
Speaker
since I was first time around the still, you know, with my father and with my uncle, you know, and with all other guys from the village, you know, where my father is from. So I was born in this, it's a small town, it's named Ogolin in Croatian. So and the village where my father is from is some like 15-20 kilometers from there. So we were often
00:17:12
Speaker
Often we were going over there, over the weekends, during the holidays, because my father was helping his mom and her brother to work the land. And we were going all the time. Friends back home, they were playing football, and I have to go and dig around the potatoes and collect hay for cows and things like that. But now I'm really happy I did that, because I know so many things about
00:17:42
Speaker
agriculture about farming and it really helps. It's insane what you just learned by osmosis, by being around stuff. That's an education that you can't pay for that. The only way to do that is to do that, is to be around it. So what made you flip from, this is something I do with my father or something that I do to preserve fruit. I'm assuming when you're going into autumn, what changed from that into, oh, I'm going to do this professionally?
00:18:12
Speaker
Well, you know, mostly frustration. Yeah, right. Yeah. So you had a day job that you didn't particularly like it. Uh, I wasn't completely satisfied with myself, you know, like, you know, you know, there's, there are periods in life when you're just like, you know, you're not happy with anything with yourself, with the situation you're in and, uh,
00:18:41
Speaker
You know, it doesn't fulfill you completely. It was a nice job. It was a decent job. I was I was working as a marketing manager for an I.T. company back home here in the area. It's a good company and great people I was working with. But it's just like, you know, it
00:19:04
Speaker
I feel like a treadmill. You're just like running in place going all the time, the same things, you know, all the time, same problems. I'm not saying in this, in this telling, it's not the same. Okay. You have same thing, same problem. Somebody will say that, but it's just, uh, at least they're your problems though, right? Like if it's your business and you're the guy that's responsible, if you succeed, it's because you did a good job. And if you fail, it's because you screwed up and there's something fulfilling about
00:19:33
Speaker
I'm responsible. I'm the responsible one for myself now. So it has nothing to do with the other company working for somebody else. I feel you, man. Not to get me wrong. It's just I felt it's time to start working for myself and start doing things that I like and to connect to distilling. So I was thinking for a long time, what could I do? I had an idea. I always liked, you know,
00:20:03
Speaker
the distilling part, you know, when autumn comes and we do this in the countryside. And as my childhood dream was to become a pilot or to be, you know, if I wouldn't pass out to be in the army, you know, in the aviation, you know, in the Air Force. And at that time it was still Yugoslavia. And then the war came and everything and, you know,
00:20:27
Speaker
just puff in the air. You will not dream anymore. The war started and all the wars came. As a kid who was dreaming about it in his whole childhood, I was just stunned. I didn't know what to do. In those years, you were just thinking about how we're going to get through the war and things like that. And after that, I went to law school. And when people ask me, I said, I don't know.
00:20:56
Speaker
It was easier to get in. Or maybe because I was more in social sciences at that time. And I was, you know, I was always, you know, the guy who fights for the rights and things like that. But you know, the law is not about that. So they definitely thought about it. So, you know, after I've flanked two times, you know, like, each year, two times, you know, I was thinking like, you know, this doesn't make so much sense. You know, so
00:21:25
Speaker
Then I got a job in the IT industry and slowly worked my way up a bit. But it was fun. I like IT. I like computers. I like technology. I built my own website. So at least it did some good with that. But I was never fulfilled. I was never completely fulfilled. And with time, some, I don't know, five, six years ago,
00:21:53
Speaker
I said, you know, when I was selling with my father, we were just, I think we were making bear brandy or something. And bear luck, yeah. So, yeah, I could do this for a living. You know, and as you know, the craft distilling movement started some 10, 15 years ago. Of course, here back home, the same as in New Zealand, home distilling is not forbidden.
00:22:22
Speaker
So it's legal. And it wasn't so hard. It's not so hard to open it. OK, there are rules. You get to have some permits and things like that. But it's something I could do. I like doing it. I start to get into it more scientifically and reading more about it. I started going to conferences. The first great thing that I did was going to London
Professional Growth & Capella Distilling
00:22:55
Speaker
2014-15, I guess. Oh, wow. Okay, so you've been on this road for a while now. You've been on this road for a while now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kraft is still a guy's spot in London, which is a great, you know, it's a great exhibition. There's so, so many, so many people in the industry over there, so many master classes, workshops. I met so many great people over there. I met Bill Owens from ADI.
00:23:22
Speaker
who helped me so much on my journey. You know, he invited me next year to go with them to a journey, you know, to a trip to Scotland. So yeah, I went to space side and went all through like, I don't know, five or six distilleries, which was, you know, going with people, which, you know, I told him when I met them all, oh, hey, I have your book. Yeah, I have your book too.
00:23:49
Speaker
And then going tasting whiskies and touring the distilleries with them was amazing. And after that, I got an internship also through ADI from American Distilling Institute. So I got placed at Cedar Ridge Distillery in Iowa. Amazing people. And Jeff and Laurie and Madison, they
00:24:17
Speaker
uh, the same year they visited me back home in Croatia. Also, so, so it's so, you know, I love making new friends like that. And I spent there almost a month in the States at, yeah, it was a month around the month, uh, two and a half weeks at Cedar Ridge. And, uh, one more way we can have, uh, traveling. It was for a week in California, uh, taking her out with Bill and Christie from ADI. And, um,
00:24:46
Speaker
visiting distilleries over there. I worked one day at SpiritWorks Distillery. How cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're amazing people also. Lauren is such a great distiller. So many things you can learn from her. So it's a great experience. And things were just upgrading, upgrading all the time, just meeting new people. Things are moving forward.
00:25:12
Speaker
And everything is setting up right, you know, like just, just, you know, connecting the dots and, and, you know, you, you get that feeling, you know, I really, I really have to do this because I love doing it. So, you know, I hope hopefully till the end of this year, we're gonna, we're gonna have the facility up and running. So.
00:25:33
Speaker
So right now, before we do anything else, I need you to tell everyone the name of the distillery and I need you to give everyone the name of the website, because we we almost got there before and then we forgot it. So now before we forget again, the story is it's OK. The company capital is still in company. It's K. A. P. E. L. A. Distilling Company capital is the name of the mountain, which is very close to that village where my father is from. So it's what it's something like of, you know,
00:26:03
Speaker
traditional name for me. And you have to be authentic. You know, I think it's important in every business, especially this business to recognize, you know, your roots, your tradition, especially for making traditional drinks. So let's say in this, in this way, you know, we're showing, you know, who we are, where we are from. My friend, my veteran and I,
00:26:31
Speaker
We are partners in this and we're best friends in childhood and for the last 25 years he was living in the States. For the last 20 years he was living in New York and he came back and we're starting the distillery together. That's pretty cool, man. Website. What's the website? Websitekapaladistilling.com.
00:26:53
Speaker
Easy. All right, guys. Make sure you go and check it out. You're not up and running yet, but you're hoping to be in production by the end of the year. Obviously, current events around the world may change that one way or the other. I mean, who knows right now, right? They already have, so. Yeah, I'm sure. All right. Let's take it all the way back to the start, man. I have to imagine that if we're talking about
00:27:18
Speaker
Rakia, if we're talking about brandy, you have to start with fruit, right? That this needs to be the place that we start talking. So what is, what are you looking for in a fruit? Not necessarily, you know, like a specific, uh, you need plum, but you know, so if we are talking plums, what about the plumber you're looking for? That makes a good brandy. You have to, okay. It depends on the part of the wall.
00:27:47
Speaker
There are so many different sorts of plums. Over here, back home in the Balkans area, especially in Fonrigo Slade, we have this sort of an old heirloom variety of plum. In Croatia and part of the Bosnia, they call it Bistritza. And in other parts of Bosnia and Serbia, they call it Požegacza. It's just a different name. But it's one of the best plums in general. One of the best varieties in the world.
00:28:17
Speaker
in my opinion and mostly in the opinion of all the people from this area, one of the best plants for Rakia, for fruit brandy. So what aspects of that plum make it good? Is it like a tasty eating plum as well? It's very tasty. There is this professor in the University of Agronomy in Belgrade,
00:28:45
Speaker
uh, professor Nikicovic and, uh, he's, I think he's the only guy in the world who has PhD in plum branding. Oh, well, it's cool. Yeah. Well, I'm going to show you something. I got his book. Oh, nice. Yeah. So this is like, uh, you know, how many pages check this out? 1,400 and something out of the Bible.
00:29:13
Speaker
I hope this will be translated to English one day, because it's such an amazing manual, especially for making fruit brandies. And there's a lot of things that you can learn from him and from other people from the industry over here about fruit brandy. And mostly in this book, they are named local varieties. OK.
00:29:43
Speaker
You heard about Stanley Plum? I know the name, but I know nothing about it. OK. I think it's a worldwide spread, Plum. Stanley Plum is good for spreads. It's good for eating. But it doesn't give such good aroma to brandies. It doesn't translate into fruit spirits. And this Plum of ours, the local plum, one of the local plums,
00:30:13
Speaker
local varieties, you know, they give amazing are almost in brand is okay. It all depends in the process then with, of course, with the fermentation, with the so, so, so, so, so many variables. And one of the things that I wanted to say, the professor, this professor in the kitchen issue, what he says in his book, and you can see it in his videos, some, uh, uh, he made a few videos, uh, when he, you know, his, his guests at some shows and things like that. Uh,
00:30:44
Speaker
He says, when the plum is easily separated from the stone, when the meat, how do you call it? Easily separated from the stone, that this one is suitable for aquia, for fruit brandies. And the one that's... So if it's less ripe than that, it doesn't have enough sugar? I'm assuming that's the problem? I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. I have to read more about it. I admit, openly,
00:31:13
Speaker
Oh, there's too many things to know everything, man. You don't need to explain to me. I don't think I'm even ready yet to read this whole book, because there's so much chemistry inside. And I sucked at chemistry in high school. Yeah, I almost flunked chemistry before graduation.
00:31:33
Speaker
Because so that I, you know, I just didn't feel like learning. It just wasn't interesting at that time to me, you know? And I had, I don't know, I had a, we have grades here from five to one as five is the best and one, you know, with one, you flank. So I had the five from philosophy, history and things like that, social sciences, because at that time I was interested in that, you know? And I get a bit weird sometimes. If I'm interested in something, you know, I will learn everything about it. If I'm not interested, you know,
00:32:01
Speaker
nothing. I can tell that by looking at all the books over your shoulder on the filling. So for the fruit, are you looking for something that is just sweet or do you need it to be a little bit tart? Do you need some acid in it still? Yeah, you need acid. For example, for my experience,
00:32:31
Speaker
Apples. That's not fun. Apples, they have more acids. I get from them so much nicer, more aromatic for gravity. So of course, because acids, from acids, you get the aromas. From the sugar, you just get the volume. You want the perfect combination of that.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, you need enough sugar to create enough alcohol. And you don't want to be leaving alcohol behind. Something I've been wanting to ask you from the moment I knew we were going to do this was I talked to a guy called Elias on one of these podcasts. I can't remember what number it was. Sorry, guys. It's Elias on Brandi, on Great Brandi.
00:33:20
Speaker
And he, I know it's really hard to put these things into generalizations, like when you're talking years of experience and just being able to pick up a piece of fruit and smell it or taste it and say it's ready or not ready. I get that, but something that he said is that.
00:33:33
Speaker
If grapes get too sweet and they don't have enough acidity, then the brandy is kind of flabby. It just tastes like old cooked stewed fruit that doesn't have any, it's not fresh. It doesn't remind you of the fresh fruit. It reminds you of kind of just a flabby version of it. Whereas if you get that same grape earlier, when it has some acidity, some tartness to it still,
00:33:59
Speaker
Yeah, the same thing. So it sounds like that that general rule is going to apply to most fruit, would you say? Yeah, yeah. Whatever you're doing. Definitely. And that's why it's important to know which variety of each fruit you're using. So, for example, there is usually the rule of thumb is pick your fruits when they're
Fruit Selection & Harvesting
00:34:23
Speaker
ripe. Don't leave them too long. Don't pick them too early. Just pick them when they're ripe.
00:34:28
Speaker
But if you're working with William's pear, or in the States, they call it Bartlett pear. The recommendation in the industry of people who are working for years with that is to pick it some two weeks earlier. William's pear, before it's ripe. So the starch, before the starch, there's still a lot of starch in the fruit.
00:34:56
Speaker
So it would convert while the fruit is resting. I don't know how to say it in English while it's waiting for it to be processed. So it could, like, on its own, to create these sugars from starch. And the Williams pear is very specific. It gives such a nice, delicate subtleroma. It's different from so many other pears.
00:35:26
Speaker
So you have to be careful when you're making it in the whole process, even more than with other fruits. Sorry, to get that nice, delicate Williams Perirona. I just had a thought.
00:35:47
Speaker
I don't know, I'm going to run this past you. Tell me if you think I'm completely crazy. But quite often I hear people saying that the best, the best fruit that you can get, whether you're talking about pears or apples or grapes or whatever, there's more often than not a old variety, an heirloom variety. And I've just realized that the main difference between any heirloom variety of fruit and the new one, like let's talk apples, for example, right?
00:36:15
Speaker
any Apple that's being sold in the supermarket, what do people want from it? They want it to be big, they want it to be red, and they want it to be really, really sweet. They don't want it to be tart. They don't want it to be acidic. Like, do you think that the reason that heirloom varieties work for Brandy is just because they haven't been bred to be crazy sweet? Like, am I crazy thinking that? Not at all. Not at all, because, you know, I don't know,
00:36:44
Speaker
Do people have, you know, is it widespread to have your own gardens and grow old varieties of vegetables and fruits and varieties in New Zealand?
00:36:57
Speaker
Uh, for like, for my parents' generation, it was kind of common for my grandparents' generation, very common, but it's very quickly disappearing now. Really quickly disappearing. Yeah. Over here it's coming back because. I must say it's happening here too. It is coming back. Yeah. That's a good point. People like to grow their own food, some just for the fun of it. And, but one of the reasons is like,
00:37:24
Speaker
People all the time say, do you remember how the tomatoes used to taste like? Do you remember how old grandma's apples tasted like? Yeah. So there's a lot of fruit in what you're saying. Because with all these new hybrids, you lose, you get yield. You get the looks, visually attractive fruit and vegetables.
00:37:53
Speaker
You lose some of those significant aromas that you taste when you're eating them and they also translate into the spirits. I was watching this documentary about seeds.
00:38:12
Speaker
you know, about big, big pharma companies, I mean, those in agriculture, especially. So they're just producing, you know, genetically modifying seeds, working on hybrids, just, you know, to get the bigger yield and, you know, but when they did the research on a chemical analysis of these, of the fruits later on, these vegetables, all ever more at this had like 70% more
00:38:43
Speaker
How would you say it in English? Like good ingredients inside, you know, like minerals, vitamins and things like that. Nutrients in general, yeah. Yeah, nutrients, sorry. I forgot, you know, sometimes just words slip. It all happens to me. Sometimes when I speak Croatian, I cannot remember words in Croatian because I speak English a lot.
00:39:06
Speaker
I can't comment, man. I speak one language, so any issue anyone ever has speaking more than one language, I got to step out. I've got four in my head, so it's interesting. What I want to say, so I want to say like a disclaimer now, I'm not an expert in this, but from what I experienced, all varieties are so
00:39:36
Speaker
much tasteful. They have so much more aroma. When you take that fruit from the trees, from the old variety, and when it's ripe, even weeks before that, as kids, we were usually all the time eating green fruit because we couldn't wait for them to ripe. And you just feel a huge difference.
00:40:03
Speaker
So that translates into distance because distillation is practically getting the essence out of the fruit. So like literally. Yeah. So definitely, I think it is. But with fruits, you have another problem.
Market Challenges & Balkan Spirits
00:40:21
Speaker
It's the most expensive to make, good fruit branding. And if you're selling it,
00:40:32
Speaker
You don't get the same value as you would get for whisky or for cognac or for craft jeans these days just because of the branding and marketing. That's a perception thing and I do think
00:40:50
Speaker
I have a feeling that as this resurgence of respect for a place for terroir, for one of the better words, for people doing their own stuff, you know, like literally farm to plate sort of food and beverage type idea.
00:41:07
Speaker
all of those things that sort of roll into the non-wanky side of craft, whatever it happens to be. I don't know man, I could see there being a resurgence for fruit products because it seems to fit that narrative. I
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen the same thing here, man. It's really hard to even find fruit products on the shelves in a liquor store. You know, let alone find something that's not made by, it'll be like a couple of random things from Diageo or something, which is the last thing I want when it comes to a fruit brand. It's economically viable for big distilleries. Yeah, it's really not. Brand is, you know, wine from what you get from wine. Brand is, yeah, because they already,
00:41:54
Speaker
They already have a name for them. So it's Dr. Konyak, Armaniak, and things like that. Brand is all over the world. So I think we haven't worked enough. And this area where we live, it was never too popular in the world, the Balkans. Sometimes I feel that people around the world think of us from the Balkans as some
00:42:22
Speaker
savages going around in rags, you know, just fighting each day and things like that. The thing is people over here are very passionate about everything they do. And so sometimes, you know, through history, things get heated up, you know, so but yeah, right, you can see sports.
00:42:40
Speaker
you know, the sportsmen from the whole former Yugoslavia, from Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, they're very successful people, you know, football, basketball, tennis, you know, all sorts of sports, because people are very passionate, you know, when they get heated up about something, you know, they will go, you know, all the way till the end, just just to be the best just to work on things, you know, like, to create something special, you know, so
00:43:09
Speaker
In a way, you can compare us to nations like Latin nations, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese. They're also passionate about things. So we are the same. We're just a different area of the world. I think you're right, too. I think there's a marketing issue with the product. And I don't mean marketing on an individual basis. I mean as an industry.
00:43:38
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, the only way, the only way that that can change is people like you doing things like this, right? You know, talking about it, sort of... I want to use the word evangelize. I've been talking to Roy from Akvavite and he uses that word with... I saw the podcast. Oh, did you? Yeah, yeah. With no connection whatsoever to religion. He just means it in the fact that
00:44:05
Speaker
You're so passionate about something that you want to tell someone else about it, and you want them to understand what's so awesome about the thing is. And there's not a better word for that, right? Evangelizes the... No, no. I mean, this is the term that they use. I mean, at least in English language.
00:44:21
Speaker
If I would say it in creation, it would sound weird. So the fruit, let's run through a few different, I guess, species would be the right word of fruit that works well. So we've covered plums, pears, apples. Is there anything else that you think is? What other things should people be looking at?
00:44:52
Speaker
This is such a wonderful area of distilling for people who want to create special things. For example, Quince. Oh, OK. I could see that. Quince. Amazing fruit brandy. Amazing.
00:45:09
Speaker
with the quince, it's very delicate to work with as with fruit. It gets spalled very easily if you hit it, for example, when handling quince. Oh, I see what you mean. You get those brown, black marks on it. It starts to rot very fast. So you have to be very careful with it. And the thing is, there's not so much
00:45:36
Speaker
There's also much sugar in it, for example, as in some pears or especially plums. Cherries have a lot of sugar, for example. So with beans, you would get, you would need, let's say, some average 100 kilos for four or five liters of fruit brandy at 40 something percent. But it's very delicate, aroma is very nice, it has
00:46:05
Speaker
depending also on the variety of queens. You get this on the nose. You get this combination of honey and fruit and spring kind of aromas. Like when you walk, when you go to a meadow in spring and all those flowers start to grow and you get a bit of earthy aromas on the nose and all those
00:46:35
Speaker
floral aromas, floral scents. And you mix that with honey. And this is the aroma you get from quince. And it's also very subtle when you drink it. So it's very delicate. Practically, it's a delicacy among fruit brandies. Then you also have apricot.
00:47:05
Speaker
They make a lot of apricot brandy in Hungary and in Serbia. Excuse me. I have to imagine that all stone fruit would work relatively well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Peach nectarine plum, obviously. What was the, I was, when I was exploring, there's a distillery in Colorado and in the States, they make a lot of peach brandy.
00:47:32
Speaker
Oh man, I'm sorry guys, I just can't remember the name now. They have great branding also. So like, okay, my apologies, I forgot the name. We've got plenty of time left. It'll come back to you. Don't worry about it. So
00:47:54
Speaker
Apricot, ques. So all of the stone fruit, that makes sense to me, right? Because you've got a very aromatic thing with a little bit of sugar, but it's not starchy and mushy. And it has that bite to it. It has a aspect of acidity and sharpness to all of those fruits, right? So that just makes sense to me.
00:48:23
Speaker
what about doing something like have you done it like what about banana or melon i haven't tried it okay well i mean when you look at banana but banana has a like i almost said uh where's the tip don't say in public okay it has a lot of sugar yeah bananas have a lot of sugar but i never worked with you know i might even try you know it's like you know get get like uh 50 kilos of bananas and um mashed up and
00:48:51
Speaker
Just just see what I'm going to get because I have this lab still like six liters still from the app from I still and it works great. So you know it's great for testing purposes. So I mean the beauty of all of this is that it doesn't matter where you live in the world.
00:49:12
Speaker
there's some sort of local fruit for the most part, right? You know, unless you're in the Arctic circle or something crazy, but you know, like maybe it's like even dates, you know, when you're in the middle of the desert, there's some sort of fruit. Yeah. You get, you get a great brand new from figs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually I have tried that. But from dry figs. So you dry figs, you know, when they're completely dry and you've got just, just like,
00:49:39
Speaker
When you look at them, it's just a whole big pile of fruit sugar. And then you just mash them, add water, add yeast. And when it's fermented, then you distill it. It gives an amazing brandy. But you also need, it's a process. Yeah. So I mean, let's talk about that now. Is there a general rule of thumb?
00:50:09
Speaker
to get from, let's get from the fruit is on the tree or, you know, on the vine or whatever it happens to be. How do you get from that point through to it's in your fermenter? You know, what is there a general rule of thumb in terms of cutting it, mashing it, mixing it with water? You know, I know, I know your ideas on adding sugar. So let's talk about that too. Yeah, it's a no go for me. So I want
00:50:39
Speaker
You know, I want the right stuff. Uh, the real essence of the fruit that I, that I get. So, so it's just, um, you start the business to make money, but you also, you want to make the good, the good, the good thing, you know, especially, you know, our idea now it's like, you know, bring, bring the good stuff to the table. If I don't want to drink it, I don't want to sell it to anybody. So I don't know how it's going to be down the road. For example, you know, like,
00:51:07
Speaker
A miracle happens and we grow to grow to a huge company and we hire a manager and like we just retire and go to Bahamas or something like, I don't know how it's going to work down. Okay. But it's, it's still a long way down the line. So, but let's get serious. Uh, I don't, I don't like to put sugar in it because either to meet cheating, you just, you just get more alcohol to meet cheating. Um,
00:51:32
Speaker
And it's more alcohol with the same amount of flavor, right? You're not getting more flavor. You dilute the flavor. So you pick the fruit. What we mentioned before, it has to be ripe. A lot of people do this. They use all the fruits that are not so good. They're gone bad. They have some growth on them. I don't know how they call them.
00:52:03
Speaker
But those white stuff and you just throw all that away because it's going to go bad in fermentation. All the bacteria from there are going to ruin your mesh, your fruit mesh. So you mash it. You put it through the grinder. You separate as much as you can, especially the stone fruits. You separate the stones.
00:52:26
Speaker
You separate the, how do you call it, the wooden part, the petals? No? Yeah. Oh, the stems. The stems from the hull. Yeah, the stems, the leaves, everything. So that just ruins the flavor because that's a wooden part and you get methanol from that. And during fermentation, it's going to also affect the flavor. So you want to get it as clean as you can.
00:52:53
Speaker
So when it's mashed, so when you have like this thick mesh of fruit, you can add the pectolyptic enzymes. So you add pectin when you make spreads, gems. So you want it to gelatinize even more. Here is the opposite. You want to break those bonds. So you want this thick mesh to become more fluid, more watery. So it's going to be
00:53:23
Speaker
easier for yeast to access, to access the sugars in fruit. And it's going to be much easier for you to distill. So you put it after that, after a couple of hours, let's say five, six hours, you add yeast, you close it up and... Oh, sorry. Are you adding water? Or are you literally just using the fruit?
00:53:49
Speaker
Just using the fruit. You can send my water as well. Depends on the fruit. Depends on the fruit. For example, when I work with plums, I don't add water. But when I work with apples or pears, I add some water because it's too dry. You feel the vessel where you put the fruit in, you feel it to the top, and you add water just, you know,
00:54:16
Speaker
till it comes to the top to cover it. But you have to be sure that it's all full with fruit first. So you're essentially looking for, you're going to end up with a whole lot of solids in there, obviously, like very small particulate or mashed up solids, but you want enough liquid to completely immerse that. So you want a slurry, not
00:54:43
Speaker
bits of fruit kind of thing. Like if you want to be able to steer it is what I'm saying. Yeah, the best thing is what would be to have to have the fruit juice. For example, you, you press all the fruit, you get all the juice out, you put that juice and then you add those solids also. And, and you put yeast in that. And I think I think that would be the best. I did it once. I did once with the with
00:55:13
Speaker
with apples. So it works really well, but it's it's more work. You know, it's two separate processes. So you have to you have to press the fruit to get the juice and then you get to have to get the solids back in. And it's twice work as just, you know, compared to just grinding it, meshing it, you know, just into one mass. So
00:55:38
Speaker
Then you add yeast, yeast of your choice. Let's talk yeast, man. This is another huge, you can go all sorts of roads here. The people that are going to listen to this are probably more likely going to be very serious about what they're doing, if not by thinking about potentially doing this professionally in their distillery or starting a distillery to do this.
00:56:05
Speaker
So I think we're going to talk about pitching yeast, right? I mean, sure, you could potentially make a living off wild yeast. But to me, that's just a little bit. You don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, you never know. It's like, it's like, you know, like you've seen four has gone like, yeah, like a box of chocolate.
00:56:26
Speaker
The last guy I talked to about wild yeast said exactly that, like literally use that analogy. Wild yeast is like a box of chocolates. Yeah. Great minds think alike or fools never differ. I can never tell a difference between the two. So let's shelf the wild yeast thing because that's a whole other kettle of fish. So if we're going to use a commercial pitch of yeast,
00:56:53
Speaker
What are you looking for? Are you looking for something relatively neutral that's just going to sort of get out of the way and let the fruit do the talking? Or are you seeing this as another step, another way to add more complexity and flavor to the final product? I experiment all the time. As a home distiller, I experiment all the time. So what I usually like, I like yeast that don't have a killer factor. So, you know, there was
00:57:22
Speaker
do their own thing, but they will allow wild yeast also to, you know, to pitch in. Right. So you want a sour a little, you want some more acidity from fermentation. A terror or something. How would you call it? So it is a bit risky, but you know, you had enough of the yeast you selected and it will start, you know, doing the reading thing.
00:57:46
Speaker
So the wild yeast won't have so much influence, but it will have a little influence on the whole aroma of the fruit, of the mesh later on.
00:58:05
Speaker
My advice... No, I was just going to say, do you have a go-to yeast? Like, you know, is there a certain... You said you use wine yeast a lot and I'm assuming that's because it's used to... Let's just check on the... What's the name of that yeast? Just a sec. Yeah, no problem. So, I mean, different yeast... Yeah, it's Lauvin EC1118. I had pretty good results with that yeast, especially with plums.
00:58:35
Speaker
Yep. And does that add something specific to the final product? You get more esters, you get more fruit aromas. So it really pulls out those fruit aromas, what you want from that fruit. But in my experience, you know, my personal view of things, I'm not a chemist, you know, just
00:59:01
Speaker
It's just what I got good results from. I haven't worked with specialized distillers, distillers yeast for fruits. They also have it in Lalman, and they have it in soft spirit. I haven't used it yet. I have to try it. I was reluctant, mostly because wine yeast worked very well so far.
00:59:31
Speaker
Try the yeast. Let's say you like some wine. You like the taste of some wine, especially, I don't know, pinot noir or cabernet or whatever. So try that yeast that they use for that kind of wine or for some, you know. Try it with the fruit that you want. See what you're going to get. So there is no brew of thumb for me.
00:59:58
Speaker
I find out what the industry uses mostly because it's all small manufacturers over here in this whole area. There are a few big ones, but it's very hard to get information from them. And sometimes even when you get the info from them, you get surprised with some things, how they do things.
01:00:26
Speaker
A lot of times I got surprised negatively. Not really. Yeah, because you know how it's with home distillers and craft distillers? You're all about the detail. Yeah, we all want to make it perfect. You want to perfect our skill, our product. And a good part of the industry just works for profit. So I'm not saying they're doing bad things. You have amazing. This is like when you talk about the definition of craft.
01:00:57
Speaker
Amazing, big, huge distiller is that they make amazing product. It's not about just, you know, like, you know, they are big, they make lousy stuff. No, they have great equipment. They have access to the best raw materials. You know, they have best experts working for them. You know, they can make amazing drinks.
01:01:21
Speaker
It's just not about if you're big or small, just how good you're at it. No, it's about mindset. It's about the experience you've got, the skill you've got. And I think you touched on it already, right? It's about what your reason for being in business is. If your reason in business is just to, you know, get rich quick. Well, for one, you're in the wrong damn business. Find another job.
01:01:44
Speaker
Distilling's not your answer, my friend. But you're going to go about things differently, right? You would be adding sugar in teal mashers to stretch it further. So yeah, there's a thing there. I also think it's very interesting to talk about this with someone.
Home vs. Commercial Distilling
01:02:01
Speaker
I didn't know that it was legal for you to distill at home.
01:02:05
Speaker
And this is the beauty of being able to distill at home, right? You've been able to hone your craft. You've been able to chase that craft down to a point where you, you're on a level that you can take your spirits, you know, and be insanely proud of them. Imagine if you wanted, if your dream was to own a distillery, but it was illegal for you to run a still in the backyard. Oh yeah.
01:02:32
Speaker
I understand, but I don't understand. All the time it was legal for us over here, the same as for you in New Zealand. It's just not how come I cannot do that. But when I was in the States, when I was traveling and working over there, it's a big thing since prohibition. You're like, just don't do that. You end up in jail.
01:03:00
Speaker
It's it's something that it's part of the tradition. That's just the way of life, right? Yeah, exactly. The way of life. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy, man. I do hope it is something that changes and opens up because in my opinion, it's doing nothing but hold the industry back. Like imagine if there was
01:03:20
Speaker
If everyone out there that was interested in this could just mess around in the backyard and could try every yeast on the face of the planet collectively, you know, you just the information that those people find, you know, that the individual isn't important in that scenario. It's the hive mind. These people expand the knowledge database.
01:03:41
Speaker
Yep. I mean, when they push boundaries, like you can, so you've got this little six litre still, right? Yeah. Even as a, even as a, as a business, you've got to pay someone to operate it. You've got to pay for all the stuff that goes into it. You've got to like buy the equipment to start with. Even though it's a small scale, you're still losing money on that batch. Whereas a home distiller, yeah, sure. I'm spending money on it, but it's a hobby. That's what hobbies do, you know? So if I end up throwing, you know,
01:04:10
Speaker
10 liters of mash down the sink or down the toilet, what does it matter? I learned something from it, I move on to something else. But as a commercial distillery, you should do that, but it's a little bit hard to justify it. Yeah, it's economically viable.
01:04:28
Speaker
No, yeah, not to be doing it all the time. Anyway, all right. And I've sidetracked us drastically. So back to the fermentation. I watched the video that you recorded with Jeff multiple times. Actually, I think I've seen it about four times now. And one of the things that you said, and that was interesting to me in that you prefer a cooler, slower fermentation compared to, you know, guys that are fermenting at 30 degrees Celsius or something crazy for
01:04:57
Speaker
for whiskey, do you want to walk us through the thinking there and why you choose that? What I noticed that in this, when I get, you know, when it's called fermentation, a bit longer fermentation, I get more, I get more, I get more aromatic mash.
01:05:20
Speaker
Then it's just a personal opinion. So you retain more of what the fruit is already giving or you think the yeast is adding something to it? It's hard to say. It's hard to say, but to me it seems that it keeps more of the original fruit aroma. But then again, it also depends on yeast. Lately, I have watched this series of video from Odin, from Istil,
01:05:51
Speaker
And he has on his web page, I still University online. I don't know exactly. And he talks about yeasts. And he mentions a lot of things about how yeasts work and pushing the yeast to their limits and to their boundaries, how it will react. And that also gives me now another perspective on things, because usually,
01:06:20
Speaker
People usually can be stubborn with our knowledge. If we learn to do something one way, yeah, it's working only that way. It doesn't work any other way. It showed me right so many times before, and I'm going to keep doing it. When I talked to my father, when I was starting to do this thing by myself years ago, I'm like, what do you know? I'm doing this for 30 years.
01:06:50
Speaker
But, you know, he's a very reasonable guy. So, you know, when he saw, you know, that I'm making improvements and I like doing it, so he just, you know, let me, I'm doing everything now. He just relaxes. And what I wanted to say about, you know, so Odin talks about yeast, you know, like how yeast function on different temperatures. What kind of yeast functions on what kind of temperature?
01:07:17
Speaker
like when you push it to the edge and what you get from it. So I suggest everybody look at that video. So I'm going to take some things from there, and I'm going to try this here with different kinds of yeast and different kinds of temperatures. So so far, when I talked about fermentation in that video, to me, in my experience,
01:07:42
Speaker
In my experience, around 20 degrees, fermentation on 20 degrees, some four to five weeks, it worked very well. But it was mostly this year that I mentioned, Louise EC1118, wine yeast. I used it. But with all this new information, I'm going to try a different approach with different batches of fruit.
01:08:11
Speaker
As I said, it depends on yeast. OK, when you're doing home distancing, you don't always get controlled fermentation. You cannot control the temperature all the time, especially if you put it in IBC or some HDP vessel or whatever you have. So you cannot even close it. Just put nylon on it, close it somewhere.
01:08:40
Speaker
somehow because it's not to get other wild yeasts in it and for the ethanol to evaporate. I mean, you have to try things. OK, now when I'm thinking about the business part of the equation, you just have to stick to a certain process.
01:09:08
Speaker
That gives you the best of both worlds. You get a good deal and you get good aromas. As a home distiller, you get speed. Speed, yeah. You don't want stuff sitting around in the fermenter for months if you can get away with it on the commercial side. Exactly. You have whiskey mash in fermenters for like three, four to seven days, usually. And with fruit,
01:09:37
Speaker
those fermenters are used for a month. Okay. Depends on temperature. Okay. If it's, it's, if it's hot, if you, if you ferment it around 30 degrees, you can be done in 10 days. It's just, there's a lot of variables in it type of yeast type of fruit, temperature, variety of the same fruit.
01:10:02
Speaker
And like you say, too, this is what's working for you, where you are with the fruit that you're using. And you're not claiming that the way you do it is going to work best for everyone. You're just saying that you know that that gives you a consistent result. And I respect that, man. That's the only thing you can claim, right? At this moment, with this set of skills and knowledge, I have, I think I'm doing a good thing. But maybe, like, never in a year from now.
01:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, grade yourself all the time and work on it. So listen to other people, you know, read, educate yourself.
01:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, totally. All right, so let's move on to the distillation. So the biggest thing here that strikes me straight away is that you're going to have to distill on the solids. You're not going to be able to separate it out into a liquid that is clear and like a thin watery liquid, which means you're not going to be able to use naked elements in the still. Even I'm assuming direct fire
01:11:12
Speaker
I'm thinking for fruit. I don't know So okay depends you know what I mentioned earlier. So if you put pectoralic pectoralic enzyme to break the bonds And to get it more Watery you can get like a fruit juice and you distill fruit juice perfectly so you don't have so much solids and
01:11:34
Speaker
You can see in that video when Jeff was filming it, that plum mash was mostly sour plum juice, plum wine, how would you call it? It tasted pretty well, like a good sour beer. I have any idea about that also.
01:12:02
Speaker
Traditionally, it's here at home in our region. People are using wood fire steels, classic post steels, and not all of them have mixer, how do you call it, the ramager. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have this row of chains on the bottom, and the mechanism, you know, with the handle outside, you turn.
01:12:30
Speaker
And they go on the bottom, and they mix the mesh, and they scrape if anything gets stuck on the bottom of the steel. So this is good, then it doesn't burn. But if you're using a pot still without it, you just have to set the temperature right. Don't make too strong fire. Don't put too much wood. Just keep it steady.
01:13:00
Speaker
It will take a bit longer time, but with just a bit of luck, you won't burn it. So what are you going to be doing in a commercial setting? Because I've got to imagine that going wood fire in a commercial setting is a bad idea. No, we're going to use electricity power still with direct heaters. We chose ice still for us. We're going to order a 500 liter one for the start.
01:13:27
Speaker
And it has direct fire, sorry, indirect heaters inside. And they have some insulation around them so that they don't burn. And plus, we also chose the agitator for it. So it all the time mixes it.
01:13:49
Speaker
And the good thing about, yeah. Is it a sink? It's essentially like a, from memory that the, the, I still is like a giant Bay Marie, right? So it's got like a, there's a, the pot and then there's another pot around the outside with liquid or oil around it. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, it's just, uh, it's a square still. Uh, and the elements are literally in the fruit mesh. Yeah. Yeah. How are you not going to scorch it? No, because they're insulated.
01:14:17
Speaker
There is. And you have the agitator. So you also get the malar reaction and you have the agitation. So it won't scorch it. I mean, I even tried on this on the small one, which doesn't have the agitator inside. We just have that small lab one that
01:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Five, six liters or something. Something, yeah. So it worked nicely. I didn't squash it. It wasn't a very thick mesh, but more like a fruit juice. And it worked very nicely. So if it worked very nicely on the small one, which doesn't have so many other options, like the big one. So the thing is why we chose this one is
01:15:09
Speaker
We also want to lower the risk of you don't want to open fire in the distillery. It's different. In the countryside and home distilling, there's space. The quantities are not so big.
01:15:32
Speaker
But if you have a steel of 500, 1,000 liters, 2,000 liters, there's a lot of alcohol over there, a lot of alcohol vapors, especially if you don't have good system ventilation. But also, it's much easier to work just with electricity. You don't need the boiler for steam. That was me flipping a switch. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
01:16:02
Speaker
Both of us, the veteran and I, we like new technologies. And this is the way that we're going to put together a tradition and new technologies. I mean, Nikola Tesla is from the same area where I'm from. It's the region of Croatia called Lika. And he was born some 100 kilometers away from where I'm from. So he's our guy.
01:16:31
Speaker
Because of him, we all have what we have today. So I think he would be in for it also. All the time improve on something. You just can't stick because it's, I don't know, talking about copper or something. It's still only if it's made of copper or if it's still this way and the other way. In every aspect of life, you have to improve. You have to strive for the best. You have to explore. This is how we go.
01:17:00
Speaker
to the state of the world that it is now, from the old ages, you have to explore. Yeah. I know nothing about Brandy, so I can't comment on it for that. I mean, if we were talking about whisky, I think there's probably a pretty solid pushback against that. I think there's personally, I think there's still an advantage in it all copper.
01:17:26
Speaker
you know, an all copper pot still. But, you know, I don't know for this. Alright, man. So let's, let's talk about
01:17:33
Speaker
distillation itself. Is there any major difference between running a whiskey and a brandy? Same process? And I know from listening to you talk in other places that you are 100% on the do it by your senses, smell it, taste it, touch it. And that's the best way to make cuts.
01:18:00
Speaker
Question. Do you see yourself? OK, so a little bit backing up a little bit. For me, I have to do that, right? I have to do it by sense, by touch, by smell, by taste.
01:18:16
Speaker
because every single thing I ever make is different. It doesn't make good YouTube content to make the same thing over and over again. But I could see myself if I was using the same ingredients, the same yeast, the same fermentation regimen. If everything was standardized and I was trying to create a more reliable commercial product, I guess I'll say,
01:18:41
Speaker
I could see myself relying on numbers more in that situation. Do you think you would do that more when you start going down a commercial road? Yes, absolutely. Because business wise, you kind of function any other way. It's one thing, home distilling. Another thing is working with having your own distiller, making a product for the market. You have to
01:19:11
Speaker
I would have to put it to automize some things because you would be spending too much time checking stuff all the time. I mean, I would be doing it as much as it would be needed to be done, checking all the processes because it is important. But it wouldn't be as much as with home distilling.
01:19:40
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because your time is valuable, right? You can be off. Yeah. You can be sweeping the floor or, you know, whatever it can be. Well, people don't know about having a distillery or a brewery like 70 or 80% of your time is cleaning. Yeah. Yeah. It's cleaning. So just guys, you know, before you want to start the business, before you want to own a distillery or a brewery,
01:20:10
Speaker
just prepare yourself, you'll be cleaning a lot, a lot. That's a good advice, man. Real good advice. Yes. And you can still be making the nitty gritty changes, right? It's just that you know, okay, this is my plum brandy. And I know that if I'm doing it this way, generally my head's cut is somewhere between, I'm just making numbers up here, dude, but somewhere between 85 and 80%. Yeah, okay.
01:20:38
Speaker
So you go off and do your shit until you get to 86% and then you go, you know, then you can come back in and check it, make your cut. And then, oh, normally for my tails cut, I'm at whatever, 46%. You know, so you just let it run until you get to 48%. Yeah. You just need to also get familiar with your still.
01:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, so when I say this, guys, I'm not saying that as soon as you start a commercial distillery, talking to the people listening to this now, that I'm saying that you should automatically switch to running by numbers. What I'm saying is that you run the same batch 100 times in a row.
01:21:15
Speaker
And okay, it's probably more like 10, 15 times in a row. But in those 10, 15 runs, you start to make assumptions about what's going to happen in the next one, right? You're not just pulling numbers out of thin air. You're doing it based on experience. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Sorry for jumping in. You're definitely right. I mean,
01:21:40
Speaker
I worked in bigger distilleries, and the process is the same. So when I arrived to Cedar Ridge, when I was operating the big steels, and first two times, I was adjusting to the steel, the way it works and stuff. And later on, I knew I have, OK, now it's lighter, up to 15, and I can leave it. It's set on the temperature.
01:22:10
Speaker
The valve for the steam is open this much. So I guess I have like 20 minutes before it starts running. And then when it starts running, I have this much time for that. So you automate the process in a way, because you get familiar with it. It's not like that you're degrading the quality of the product. You just get familiarized with the equipment that you work with.
01:22:39
Speaker
you know how much time you have for what and what you're gonna get from a certain mesh and it's just the process and the whole routine of work. Because you're doing it day in day out. When your home is telling or home brewing you're just like
01:23:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I feel I'm going to do something tomorrow. And you mash and you put your beer to ferment and you leave it for a couple of weeks. And then, oh, yeah, this is good. I have enough beer now. I'm not going to do it for two weeks or distillation or whatever. When you're doing this for a living, it's a much different thing. It's industry. It's a process.
01:23:33
Speaker
Yeah. So you said right at the back at the beginning, when we first started talking to that, even though you drink a lot of your, your spirits white, you're still quite, I don't know. I don't even want to use the word aging because that has connotations with it, but I guess resting it or marrying it. Well, you're not drinking it right away is my point. So do you want to talk us through that a little bit more? I think there was a little detail. I'll tell you the reason why
01:24:04
Speaker
most of it is drank as a clear spirit. Because people don't make too much of it, I didn't drink it right away. Okay, right. So that's just the tradition of it and that's what the taste they've developed? Yes, yes, that's correct. So for example, you have an orchard with I don't know, 10-15 plums and you get like certain
01:24:29
Speaker
among 500 kilos of plums. That's around 50 liters of plum rachia, plum brandy. So 50 liters, you have barrels of 50 liters that are pretty small. But if they are new, you cannot keep it for a long time in there because the wood is going to take over the flavor. So OK, the barrels are a whole other thing, the aging and everything, the whole science about it.
01:24:59
Speaker
So people usually don't have the quantity to age it. They usually, legally, to produce legally, you can produce up to 50 liters of, let's say, 40%. So it's 20 liters at 100%, which is theoretically. Per year? Per year, yeah. Okay. As a home distiller. Everything after that, you have to pay the duty.
01:25:26
Speaker
So you can distill more, but you have to go to the customs and, you know, you put the paper in with the report. I made so much. And, you know, here is the proof of payment of duty. And that's it. It's all right. You just you're just not allowed to sell it. But you can make as much as you want as long as you pay duty for it.
01:25:49
Speaker
But then if you make 3,000 liters, they're going to get a bit suspicious. Where did that go? Who drank that? What are you going to do with that? Usually, people make up to 100 liters a year. And that's a lot of fruit, man. A lot of fruit. That's a ton of fruit, let's say, in average. So mostly, then some.
01:26:19
Speaker
distilleries that are expanding their business and they want to have aged, or how do you say rested, fruit grandies, then they use that process. And plums and apricots, they do extremely well in barrels.
Aging & Flavor Exploration
01:26:38
Speaker
So I have tasted, and it's very rare to find old ones because nobody puts it in, nobody aged it. And I have tried
01:26:48
Speaker
Uh, 16 or 18. I think it's a 16 year old, uh, plum brandy. And, uh, I'm sorry, whiskey guys. I love whiskey. It's amazing drink, but no whiskey could compare to this honestly. And I'm, I'm not being now like biased, but this was, this was amazing. The best, they have a lot of color at that age. Like it was quite dark.
01:27:17
Speaker
It was quite dark. Okay, it doesn't matter. But it was getting wood influence is what I'm saying. Yeah, it was, but not too much. I was so surprised with the bouquet, with the whole
01:27:43
Speaker
How would I put it? With the completeness of this drink. It was amazing. It was something similar that I drank that was one of the best whiskies, maybe even the best whiskies that I ever drank was when we were visiting Noctu distillery. And it took for us to try from a barrel that wasn't bottled yet. It was a 15 or 16-year-old.
01:28:13
Speaker
amazing to me. I think that was the best thing. And I tried some 50-year-olds, but that unknown 15, 16-year-olds straight from the barrel was brilliant. One of the best things I have ever tried. And this one brandy was amazing. This was really amazing. So one of the things that I want us to do in our distillery is to set up part of
01:28:42
Speaker
the production for aging of fruit spirits. So it's not going to be a lot because, OK, economically looking, you make much more money making gin and vodka and spirits like that. But with fruits, you cannot make so much money.
01:29:07
Speaker
But if you make a really good one with good branding and everything you can achieve the price So with aging it's gonna get it's gonna get a whole other dimension So I'm not I'm not against it. I'm that I'm definitely for it to try to age it in barrels. It's just that it's rarely done and You don't have the chance to try spirits like that so often
01:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, I've got to imagine there's a lot you can learn from the grape brandy world on that side of things because the tradition is so much stronger there, isn't it, in terms of, you know, aging on wood.
01:29:51
Speaker
And that, some of that stuff's crazy, man. Like the people that are blending spirits are not, it's spirit that their great-grandfather put down. It's like 40, 50 years old, you know? And they're blending from this vast array of, yeah, it's a totally different world. Yeah.
01:30:09
Speaker
Awesome, and I think we've covered this pretty well from start to finish. Is there anything that you think that we've missed that's important to the process? And if not, we'll go backstage. And I've got a few questions from the Patreons to flick to them. But, yeah, is there anything else? Nothing, you know, crosses my mind at the moment. Just, I think it's that fruit brandies deserve
01:30:38
Speaker
much more love than they get in the world these days because there are so many varieties of fruits and really premium high-end fruit brand is an amazing spirits. It's something really special. So here's a question for you. It's like you said, it's relatively easy to go into pretty much any liquor store worldwide and find some sort of brandy or grape based distilled product.
01:31:07
Speaker
Is there a widely available mass produced?
01:31:13
Speaker
fruit brandy that is not horrible that you can recommend. So for people like me, I have tried a fig brandy, that was delicious. I had totally forgotten that existed. Other than that, the only other brandies, oh, in Tahiti, some random local who was so drunk he couldn't stand up, gave me a bottle, like literally forced it into my mouth. And after playing charades with each other, we figured out it was distilled from banana.
01:31:42
Speaker
Other than that, a little bit of Grappa and nothing else. So for someone like me that hasn't experienced this world, is there a product that you could suggest that is made by one of the giants that isn't horrible to win my whistle and get me excited? I cannot say that I've tried. But I'll tell you why, because mostly
01:32:09
Speaker
as we make fruit brand is over here. You all the time try this, you try Rakia from somebody else, from neighbor, from guy from another town, from another village, you know, from, from other country. You try a Bosnian one, a Serbia one, a Slovenian one, a Romanian one, you know, like, and they all, and you're also surrounded here with all sorts of home distilled fruit brand is. And
Cultural Influences on Spirits
01:32:32
Speaker
some, you know, people don't even buy so much because everybody's making it at home. Yeah, right.
01:32:38
Speaker
And there's so much going around it. And everybody, I think everybody has at home has at least four or five bottles of different, you know, different types of, of, of, you know, schnapps, however you want to call it. So what I was focusing on with the, uh, when I, when I'm buying spirits, I usually, you know, get the good whiskey because I'm a big whiskey fan also, you know, a lot. I really love a good whiskey.
01:33:04
Speaker
And so, you know, so I get that because we don't make whiskey over here. So there is that makes sense. Yeah, nobody makes whiskey because fruit is readily available. I mean, one thing that we didn't talk much about when I remember when you asked, we didn't talk so much about it. When you look at the geographical and historical aspect of, you know, of all these spirits, you know, why was whiskey made in
01:33:32
Speaker
northern parts of Europe, like, you know, northern and western parts, like, you know, Scotland and Scandinavia, you know, because they didn't have so much fruit over there. They were mostly growing grains. And you make, you know, you get made beer. From beer you make, you get whiskey. And in southern parts, Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, wine.
01:34:00
Speaker
So they were mostly waking wine, because there's so much wine growing. Like with us in Croatia, in the Meixia and Istria regions, amazing wines, brilliant stuff. If you ever come to Croatia, there are so many places to see and taste so many good wines here. And in the continental part of Europe, coming from, I don't know, France, OK, France also has wines. But let's say Germany, Austria,
01:34:28
Speaker
Czech Republic, Slovakia, going down to the Balkans, you know, like all these countries are from Yugoslavia and Romania, Bulgaria, they have an abundance of fruit. So we made spirits from fruits. So it's just, you know, these are also the things that influence, you know, the tradition. It's what you had at hand, what you worked with. So that's why
01:34:54
Speaker
Nobody in Croatia makes whiskey. There is one small distillery in the east of the country, but they really make really small amounts of it. I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but I'm really curious. How is it? Yeah, right. Yeah. So mostly, when I go to the store, I get whiskey. If somebody wants to buy me something for my birthday or something, they know, like, buy him a whiskey.
01:35:20
Speaker
whiskey or buy him a gin or something because he has so many fruit brandies of his own or from relatives or from friends. Yeah, that makes sense, man. So I don't know if I could recommend something. But if you ever come to this part of the world, you know, Croatia, Serbia even more, they make more fruit, they make more fruit brandies than than we make over here.
01:35:48
Speaker
Uh,
Community & Future Plans
01:35:49
Speaker
so especially Slivovica, it's plum brandy. Uh, you can find some really good ones, uh, over there. Um,
01:35:57
Speaker
But as a brand, I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't know. If I would say something, it would be just like inventing stuff or that kind of stuff. Yeah, right. No, no, no. I wouldn't want you to. No, it's mostly, I mean, for me, the reason I've got bottles of whisky damn near evenly now is because I got interested. I wanted to. I knew I liked whisky. I wanted to make whisky.
01:36:21
Speaker
And the easiest way for me to make whiskey or to learn about making whiskey was to go and buy a specific bottle that I knew, you know, like I tasted before and it had a certain flavor in it. I'm going to buy it and I can sit there and, you know, sip it and smell it and pontificate about how that flavor got put in this glass. And then I can go and try it and then try my spirit next to this spirit and how I screwed up, you know. So, you know, if I wanted to
01:36:51
Speaker
I need to make brandy dude. I need to try it. I just, it's, it's the fruit. Like you said, it's expensive and it's hard to get hold of. And it's one of those products that it is more valuable as you know, just even just sitting on the shelf at a supermarket, right? They, they can get a pretty good, pretty damn good price for that. Um, yeah. So just buy something to start with first and try it to get an idea would be nice. But, um, yeah, I feel you feel free to ask anything you need, you know, anything I could help with.
01:37:23
Speaker
Oh, I'll be keeping in touch for sure, man. This is the best thing for me about doing this, is that I get to talk to people like you, man. It's so cool. You know, like if I was just some dude in a shed,
01:37:36
Speaker
It's kind of hard to reach out and to be taken seriously, I guess. But, you know, like having this little platform as small as it is at the moment has given me the opportunity to talk to some amazing people and to meet people like you. It's brilliant. It's amazing, man. I'm going to be following you now all the times because I really liked, you know,
01:37:58
Speaker
I like about you, you're natural, spontaneous. So that's what I like in people. It's just making great videos, great podcasts. So just keep on doing that. Well, I appreciate it, man. So one last time, tell people where to go and find you and give them a rough idea. I know it's somewhere around the end of the year where they should be looking for your product. Are you going to be distributing anywhere or is it just going to be purely local?
01:38:26
Speaker
No, we are going to be. We want to go distribute our spirits anywhere we can. Of course, the whole world is the market. We are working on some strategies. But the problem in the beginning is going to be the quantities. If you're able to provide quantities, if some distributors want, nobody wants under a palette, and there's a new distillery in the first few months,
01:38:55
Speaker
you won't be able to have so much for every market you want to cover. But as long as we sell and get money for it, you just have to be able to make money to keep on working, doing what we like. And just like, it's almost normal. So I'm going to have one video.
01:39:25
Speaker
All right, man. So I got to say, dude, New Zealand is a nice little test market. There's only four and a half million of us down here. Oh, and we're surrounded by water come to New Zealand. I was I was supposed to be in New Zealand this year. Cheers, man. This is from Christchurch. And congratulations on the wedding.
01:39:48
Speaker
It was a bit hard to organize at this time to come for the wedding, but sorry Liz, I wasn't there.
Conclusion & Contact Information
01:40:00
Speaker
I would really like to be there. Here's to Liz and her husband. Cheers, Liz.
01:40:08
Speaker
All right, mate, this has been an absolute blast. Thank you so much for doing this. We will be in touch again, I'm sure. And you know what? Why don't you, why don't you reach out to me? I'm sure we'll keep in touch anyway. But when the distilleries open and when the madness has died down, why don't you come back and we can have a talk about how that whole process was. Yeah, absolutely. We can do a podcast straight from the distillery. Perfect. Perfect.
01:40:34
Speaker
I'm open for the questions, anything I can help with. And if anybody wants to contact me, the contact information is on our web page, capiladistilling.com. And so nothing to hide. A lot of people have helped me in the last couple of years, and honestly and heartlessly willing to share anything I can with anybody who wants to know something.
01:41:04
Speaker
That's awesome, man. The distilling industry, I've been talking to a few people lately who have had the opposite experience to that, right? Where they've got a new, they've been thrown into a situation where they don't know the answers to something and they've been trying to reach out and find people that will help them or mental them. And it's tough, man. The old guard of the distilling world, you know, they're not so fond of sharing. But I see a lot at the end of that tunnel. There's more and more people like you
01:41:34
Speaker
like the guys at Cedar Ridge, like the guys at Iron Route that are happy to talk about what's going on and they're happy to share the love. So, Cedar Ridge guys are amazing, amazing people and you know, lots of love to everybody in Cedar Ridge.
01:41:48
Speaker
Thank you for everything. Thank you for having me over there. I'm actually going to, I've been talking to Murphy and I'm hoping he'll be on the podcast within probably probably one or two episodes from this. But yeah. Yeah. No, I can't wait. I finally got a bottle of spirits. I will. I finally got a bottle of spirits. It's the standard Iowa bourbon. It's the old version, actually the 40% version, not the 43%.
01:42:14
Speaker
But it's interesting. It's a little different. It's quite traditional, but there's something, I don't know, I've only really had the neck for so far. I love the podcast one. Yeah, right. The podcast is amazing. I still have a bottle over here that I haven't opened. I'm all the time like, I want to save it because I cannot find it anywhere here in our area. I'm just keeping it for
01:42:45
Speaker
for some special occasions. Yeah. All right, mate. We're going to stick around backstage. We're going to answer some questions for the Patreons. But thank you, mate. Thank you for inviting me.
01:43:00
Speaker
So a huge, huge thank you to Nevin for doing this, for agreeing to have a talk to me, for taking the time to go out of his way and answer some crazy hairy guy's questions from the other side of the planet. Please guys, if you are interested in this kind of thing, take the time to go and visit their website, capelladistilling.com. I know we mentioned a couple of bottles and label designs and stuff there that you're not going to be able to see if you're listening to the podcast. It's all on the website.
01:43:27
Speaker
Thank you so much to the Patreons as well for making this happen and Gladfield Malt here in New Zealand. And once again guys, visit homebrewing.org slash CTC to see the team at Adventures in Home Brewing and pick up your next set of ingredients. Alright, thanks a bunch team. I'm out of here. Let's get in the lake. I gotta get this edited and get it out for you. Keep on chasing the craft. I'll see you next time. See ya.