How Is Grappa Made? Get The 101 From A Professional!

The New Zealand vintage is basicly on top of us. I am really hoping to be able to distil some grape-based products this year. Top of my list is GRAPPA! I have no experience making the spirit, so I wanted to get some advice from a professional distiller.

Ilias owns and operates Mastrogiannis Distillery out of Lakewood, WA, that focuses on traditional Greek spirits. Understandably this means a whole lot of grapes for brandy and grappa.

In this episode, Ilias gives us advice on finding grapes, selecting grasp, yeast and fermentation and of course distilling.

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#Grappa #homebrew #distilling

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This will not change the price for you at all, But the seller will buy me a cup of coffee if you purchase from one of the links. Choice eh?

[jdwinfield]

Yes, stoked for this. Being a fellow washingtonian, we have tons a wineries and fruit/berry wineries with must galore here. Thanks.

[aussiex]

A big thing with grappa is pectin, fermentation with pectin creates more methanol. It’s important to take a longer foreshot cut.

[BeardedBored]

This is awesome! Been wanting to try this for years.

[glleon]

Cheers, Jesse, I re-visited this video with Mr. Mastrogiannis today. At harvest time last year I made white wine fermented on the skins like you would with red grapes. The wine was not suitable for consumption, rather tannic. Then I kept the solids (pomace).

The white wine was distilled into brandy, and I kept the heads and tails or feints. Then I loaded my pot still with the feints, the pomace, and some water. The pomace sat on a false perforated bottom so no scorching. Then I distilled the grappa with narrow cuts. Again save the feints for next year.

So from white grapes I got some lovely brandy and some awesome grappa. Cheers!

[bearddragon_]

I hope to one day see videos about brandy on your channel. with how many options there are in terms of fruit and fermentation, it could become really interesting.

[peterscandlyn]

Hmm, Jesse. In the last couple of days I have turned down offers of as much grapes as I could use (I'm lazy). This gives me something to reconsider - my biggest difficulty is I'm leary of putting solids into either of my boilers....
In another life I ran a wholesale liquor warehouse, a major part of our trade was cask wine. In a (very) hot climate, probably 5-6 semitrailers per week needed. Aside from inevitable warehouse handling damage, if winery had got it wrong secondary fermentation with the heat, suddenly I'd have pallets of casks dropping like flies. Credits from supplier, no problem. Disposal was my problem. Solution - a shady Sicilian customer with a well known Italian restaurant and pizzeria. He would take all I could give him and run it thru his 'machine'. I have no idea what he did with it - I didn't like to ask as distilling was highly illegal in that country but I have a fair idea. He did great food, always with a complementary grappa or two to finish the evening.

[kenhugen]

What are you referencing at the 7:20 mark regarding 79 to 80 down to 55? Is that the temp in C? My neighbor has 800 lbs of home grown grape skins and want to make grappa. I’ve experimented 10 year ago with some brandy and corn mash in a little pot still. We want to run a few samples and then decide where to take it from there. Great channel mate!

[simox]

To make the grappa properly in a traditional way with the pressed grapes (vinaccia in itailian) you need to use a steam based distilling methods, i a discontinues system, the first part being the boiler with water at the bottom and baskets of pressed grapes on them, that vapour will pass through the grapes carrying the alcohol left over in them with it, all the way into the second still where the distillation takes place. roughly 100kg of grapes produces 75lt of winer and 25kg of vinaccia, those 25kg will produce about 3 bottles of grappa (1.5lt roughly)
This is the method used traditionally for fermented grapes (red wine)
White wine and rose vinaccia is pressed but not fermented, so that HAS to be fermented, and yes, it's still classed as grappa as it's the only way to extract alcohol from them (as you know) and are distilled in more traditional pot stills.
What he describes in his method will be classed more like a brandy, or a halfway method in between....
Bottom line, the still used makes a world of difference and the grapes must be distilled almost immediately after the extraction from the wine.

[djsomers]

Last fall did 300 lbs cabernet, 350 merlot, and 150 Petit Verdot. After fermenting and pressing, just added some water to make steam. Each turned out great as a grappa out of Robobrew copper dome still attachment. Makes very nice hand sanitizer that you could drink in a pinch.

[christopherengland]

So maybe its because I'm to to this but I came out of that with more questions then answers. Hopefully you'll do a run and it'll clear those questions up.

[ThethSonSteve-O]

Great idea editing this out of the podcast

[mikederp]

We make wine every year up to 500 gallons between the family. Finally gonna start making my own grappa.

[jpb]

I love learning about fruit stills
Have you planned to do more videos about fruit based stills? Like Slivovitz etc...

[HappyCamperGourmet]

I have frozen a heap of grapes in anticipation you might show us something like this. Lots of apples stored too so time to pull that old press I bought at a market a few years back out of the shed and listen to the podcast me thinks 🤔

[romanb]

Well Well, look who FINALLY gets on with the grappa!! And talking fruit/grape press too... :-D ;-P Can't to see how it works out (sorry for the, gentle, badgering) Hope you're well mate!?? Cheers

[DJBrucetx]

Like it! Little bit of everything running off the still!

[thomyafanaro]

I do 5-6 gallon runs of homemade wine that isn’t very good, but we call it grappa

[thomasa]

Plenty of time to experiment during the lockdown huh

I have a mate a couple hours north of Auckland, unfortunately she has to mail order her gin now

[brandonmctaggart]

LOVE still it!
This comment isn't relevant to this video but i am looking some advice, still mate and i are prepping to make our first (whiskey)
we are at an impasse, he's a believer that heads and hearts are the only product he wants. He has no interest in saving any of the tails to add into our finished product.
he believes the tails is all the bad by products that give us our hangovers and bad taste.
i believe tails has a great potential in creating something interesting. separating it into small jars tasting and mixing some back in is important to me, but my mate strongly disagrees.
any ideas or conversations points that might help us come to an agreement? am i right?? is he right??
please help!

[peterlmallard]

I have access to cheap wine I live in France.