The Schnaps Team is proud to present you its new drinks
The Apple Wine
The Apple Schnapps
Our Wine
Our wine was produced from fresh apple juice coming from a local supplier. We got 110L of apple juice that were meant to be transformed into wine. To do so, we had to follow the basic principles of winemaking.
First, we prepared a starter culture to activate the yeast we were going to use. To do so, we added the dried yeast to a solution of apple juice and sugar. After roughly 2 days, the yeast was ready to be added to the apple juice.
This juice was divided into three different vessels, each of 60L. But we couldn’t add the yeast directly to this juice, it needed to be prepared before, by adding some crucial elements for the fermentation.
We obviously added the sugar that was meant to be fermented. Our first idea was to produce a wine containing 19.5° of alcohol. Thanks to a densimeter, we could then calculate the quantity of sugar that had to be added. After that, we added pectinase to the juice, to destroy the pectines it contained. Indeed, these could be responsible for the formation of bad side-products (like methanol) and so they had to be destroyed.
Just before adding the yeasts, we added nutrients to feed them. The yeasts were then added, and the vessels sealed. The fermentation could begin.
One month later, the fermentation was over. We waited 2 more weeks to let the wine decant, and then we filtered it before filling our bottles.
We decided to produce two types of wine. We separated our filtered wine in two and we added some sugar to soften the taste of one half of our production.
Eventually we have a “Brut” wine and a "Doux" wine.
Details
19.5 % alc.
Our Schnapps
For the production of the schnapps, our team started with 40 liters of apple wine with a content of 19% of alcohol. We did a total of three distillations, collecting at the end of each distillation a volume of 14.9L with 45%vol, 6.5L with 80%vol, 387.5mL with 75%vol, for the first, second and third distillation respectively. At the second and third distillation, we separated the tails. The tails of the second distillation were used for the third distillation.
Before beginning the distillation process, the fifth group used the Rayleigh model to predict how much alcohol would be recovered, and at which percentage.
It consist in doing a mass balance on the input and output of the distillation. It is based on a binary phase diagram of water and ethanol. The hypothesis made was that other components were in negligible quantities.
This model was chosen because of its simplicity compared to others. The prediction made was on how much ethanol would be left in the boiler after the first distillation. After studying how much time it would take to evaporate a certain percentage of alcohol, it was chosen to leave 5% in the boiler.
The distillation was carried out with the design showed in the video to the left. First the liquid is heated until it boils. The recipient was filled with an average of 8 liters, to avoid overflow. Once the distillation is under way, the vapor produced rises in the refrigerant on top of the boiler, where it passes through a thermometer allowing us to know its temperature and so adjust the power of the heater. The vapor then passes next to a coiled tube with cold water flowing in it, consequently the vapor condense in liquid form. The liquid then drops down the refrigerant, and is collected before it passes through two more refrigerants, these having for only function to cool the liquid to an acceptable temperature, in this case 20°C.
Details
40% alc.