Was given a few kilos of black sapotes (chocolate pudding fruit) by a family member. I've tried em once ripened up and they resemble a mild chocolate pudding with out the sugar hit.
I learnt a few lessons after fermenting and distilling japanese persimmons trying to make a brandy out of them. Will be applying them to this. Namely using the sugar in the fruit to ferment then feeding the wash with a little extra sugar to bump up abv but not dilute the flavour out with too high of an abv.
The lack of sweet flavour has me a little worried that it contains low to no naturally fermentable sugars.
I blended 150g of the frozen pulp up, put it in a erlenmeyer flask and topped it up to 1L with water and gave it a good mix.
The liquid was slightly viscous, stuck a hydrometer into it the reading was 1.000 which was disappointing.
I decided to give it another chance and added 1/4 tsp of pectinase and mixed it thoroughly. Let it sit for 24hr then took another reading. Liquid was as viscous as previous and the SG was still sitting around 1.000.
Doesn't appear to be any naturally fermentable sugars.
I'm going to try ferment the remaining 3.5kg of pulp in a 30L wash with 4kg of white sugar (added in 2 stages, 2kg for initial ferment then 2kg more after a day or 2, SG depending)
Should produce an approx 7.8% abv wash (Initial SG 1.051)
Will be using EC1118 yeast.
Either going to run this through the bubbler or pot still it.
Now to the more educated and experienced stillers out there, will this result in me just making a very weak flavoured neutral. Should I use a different yeast and or adjust the sugar content in it? Pot still or bubbler?