Making homemade calvados from apples: from prepping the fruit to distillation and tasting the finished spirit.

In this video I walk through the entire process of crafting apple brandy. We'll cover preparing the raw ingredients, fermentation, and proper distillation techniques to get a fragrant, high-quality spirit. If you've been wanting to master a classic calvados recipe, this video will help you understand all the technical nuances.

Home distilling is a creative process that demands attention to detail at every stage. We'll go through everything from choosing equipment to the final purification. This kind of home distillation lets you control the flavour and purity of your spirit, achieving results comparable to top commercial brands.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Apples and pears from the market
1:19 Why not wild yeast
1:33 Cutting apples without a press or juicer
3:09 The mash: apples, pears and sugar
5:13 Adding yeast for fruit mash
7:02 Day ten of fermentation
7:21 Cider yeast vs fruit yeast
8:14 First distillation
9:29 Infusing the low wines with apple and pear
10:00 Three versions of low wines
12:51 Which version is best
13:30 Second distillation
14:20 Setting up the column
16:18 Collecting the hearts by vapour
18:55 Yield and strength of the distillate
21:15 Tasting the calvados
23:06 Comparing it to last year's oak-aged calvados

Subscribe to Distillations: lots more recipes and home distilling experiments coming up!

#calvados #applebrandy #homedistilling