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The German Way, As If Done in Brandy

A fermented cherry brandy made by boiling sugar and water, adding cherries, and fermenting in a loosely sealed barrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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The German Way, As If Done in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and prepare the cherries, cutting the stalks short.

  2. Combine water and sugar in a pot and boil until it reaches a candy stage.

  3. Place the cherries in a new barrel.

  4. Once the sugar mixture is cool, pour it over the cherries.

Ferment

  1. Seal the barrel loosely.

  2. Roll the barrel daily until fermentation stops, ensuring it is not sealed too tightly at first.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Morelia cherries
Provide the fruit flavour and juice that ferments into the brandy.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished spirit.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that moistens the cherries and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Let the sugar syrup cool before pouring it over the cherries. Hot syrup can damage the fruit and kill the yeast needed for fermentation, so it should be cool before it goes into the barrel.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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