• Distilled Spirit Specialty

  Pineapple Juice Fermentation

  Posted by peteb on February 6, 2017 at 12:37 pm

  Has anyone on this forum had experience fermenting and distilling pineapple juice?

  I have been offered 600 litres of frozen juice

  Any ideas for the best use for it?

  Cheers

  Pete

  mjduheme replied 7 years, 10 months ago 6 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  curators reserve

  Member

  February 6, 2017 at 12:53 pm

  G’day Pete.

  Very interested in following your progress on this.

• 

  indyspirits

  Member

  February 6, 2017 at 2:44 pm

  What’s the brix and acidity like?

• 

  roberts

  Member

  February 6, 2017 at 3:15 pm

  https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/19/151.91CFR says pineapple averages 14.3 brix. I found reference to pineapple wine, people usually add sugar but strangely seem to add MORE acid rather than neutralizing. Do you have a lab still and a grace window for a trial ferment?

• 

  peteb

  Member

  September 18, 2017 at 12:15 pm

  Sorry to followers of this thread.

  I forgot to report back on outcome.

  I fermented the pineapple juice with added cider yeast so ended up with a pineapple wine.

  Double pot distilled it which removed most of the pineapple flavor.

  Back flavored and reduced ABV to 18% with more pineapple juice then added a little sugar.

  Final product 100 bottles (500 mL each) of a delicious pineapple liqueur.

  Just a fun experiment never to be repeated, unless someone gives me more bulk juice.

• 

  roberts

  Member

  September 18, 2017 at 1:54 pm

  Interesting that you lost so much flavor, considering pineapple notes are one of the tropical ones that come from Fischer esterfication. I would then assume the one that comes through then is just one of a larger whole, the rest being too heavy?

• 

  silk city distillers

  Member

  September 18, 2017 at 2:50 pm

  Wonder if some of these not-typically-fermented fruits can be processed in a different manner.

  First – steam distillation of the fruit pulp to extract the volatile flavor components – or solvent extraction with ethanol/vacuum distillation.

  Second – fermentation of the remaining fruit pulp and a second distillation to yield alcohol.

  Combine.

  In my own trials, it almost seems like the fermentation process “blows-off” a lot of the characteristic volatile of the fruit, especially the more delicate aromas.

  Pineapple aroma is significantly more complex than ethyl butyrate.  In fact, there are many more butyric acid esters that create the pineapple aroma, Ethyl Butyrate alone is at best, “similar to pineapple”.  Problem is, I suspect most of these will stack up in the heads.  Post-fermentation, you have a significant number of negative volatiles that make it impossible to remove the esters you want.

  So why not strip them off first?

• 

  mjduheme

  Member

  September 19, 2017 at 4:35 pm

  there is a vodka from Maui called PAU that is distilled from pineapple.  very smooth.

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