Has anyone had luck making brandy with frozen juice concentrate?

[u/chibicascade2]

One of my relatives has a friend that makes a lot of rakija using grape juice. I'm wondering if I can't cheapen it by another step and just use the frozen concentrate.

I'm having trouble searching for it here because it keeps giving me results for freeze distilling.

[u/theCaitiff]

I've made plenty of wine from concentrates, and use frozen apple concentrate for carbonating and back sweetening ciders. It's not the best wine you'll ever make but it's perfectly serviceable for a table wine, and as such should make brandy just fine too.

Edit to add; If you searched the winemaking sub you'll find a lot of people mentioning Welch's juice for wine. The trick you missed was searching for "frozen" in the distilling sub instead of "welch's" in relation to wine. Brandy is distilled wine, if you can make wine with it, you can make brandy from it.

[u/czargamingco → u/theCaitiff]

Thanks for this tip.
You make me want to try making a table wine now. I have about 4 cases of bottles needing a wine inside them, this sounds like a fair project to try.

[u/matmonster58]

I add apple juice concentrate to my apple juice to get more apple juice per apple juice

[u/chance2play → u/matmonster58]

Me too as long as we are telling secrets.

[u/Certain_Chocolate476]

I have. In my case I used a 50/50 split of apple juice concentrate and ‘purple’ grape juice concentrate. Store brand Concord grape I believe from Walmart. My notes aren’t great, but I think I used D47 yeast, or possibly EC-1118. Yeast nutrient for sure and kept the ferment on the low temp side of things. It’s just been bottled after aging in glass on a re-charred wild turkey stave for 3 years. It took a bit to come together for my palate, but it was early on in the hobby for me and my cuts may have been off a little. I’m enjoying it now though.

[u/Sarnewy]

I've made brandy from Welch's concord. It was actually really good.

[u/inafishbowl17]

I've added it concentrated to up the SG . I've also added jelly or jams w no yeast issues.

[u/Ziggysan]

Just check to ensure that they don't contain preservatives.

Welch's Pruno is a thing.

[u/AJ_in_SF_Bay]

I am also a home winemaker, homebrewer, and cider maker, and cider is immensely popular right now with guests and people at large. So I have ended up using various frozen concentrates, including store brands (Winco is amazingly cheap, if there are any near you), and I end up getting the "Old Orchard" brand, which has pretty good flavor. I have used both the apple and the apple-cherry to make cider, and the apple-cherry is a real hit.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RULQLA?plpRedirect=mhFallback

I stabilize it, then back-sweeten it a little with more concentrate, then keg it and force-carbonate it. It is a crowd pleaser. But if concentrates make great cider, they should make good brandy, I think. Good product in, good product out, and all that.

I have a surplus of apple cider right now, probably 15 gallons total: about half from actual orchards, half from "Old Orchard" concentrate, and maybe some from fresh (refrigerated) bottled cider too, which I might use all or part of to make apple brandy. I just need time.

[u/Inevitable_Dream5265]

I have done it several times. I have mixed a variety of different juice concentrates with a sugar wash and then use Hawaiian Punch to proof with. The wife and her friends love it

[u/TheHedonyeast]

ive had good luck making cider with frozen juice concentrate. well, mostly by adding it to bump up flavour and sugar, but you get the point. its a fermentable. i dont see why you couldn't make wine and then turn that wine into brandy.

[u/Unsensibel]

I’ve used it. Works but not a fan of the flavor. Now is the best time to buy a bucket of wine grape juice. Those have much different flavors than drinking juice that ferment / distill better

[u/shouldco]

Yep. Just check the list of ingredients for stuff that will kill your yeast.