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I'm making "brandy" with plums and vodka. I followed a recipe and am to the straining stage. Most of what I can smell and taste is the vodka. However, as I was letting the mixture strain through cheesecloth overnight, some spilled on my counter. I didn't want to waste it, so lapped some up to see what it tasted like. It was really very good; it didn't have the strong vodka taste. My question is: "How do I reduce the vodka, or alcohol, in the remaining brandy? Should I heat it? Can I let it sit out and let it evaporate naturally? Obviously, what spilled on the counter had less alcohol in it, and the taste was significantly improved in my opinion. Right now it is resting in the refrigerator, and I plan on straining it again in a few weeks.

Pat Davis
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Basically it boils down to evaporation. Just as you can preferentially boil off the alcohol in distillation (where the alcohol is collected to make the spirit), so you can with your brandy. However, in your case you don't want to collect the alcohol, so it is an easier process.

There are a couple of ways you can achieve this:

As happened on your bench, you could simply leave the bottle/jar/can loosely capped and let the ethanol naturally evaporate. This is more or less what happened on your bench. However, doing this will lose quite a bit of water in the process too. The loss of both means you have a more concentrated flavour, which you may like as it will disguise the ethanol somewhat too. This process will take some time - it might be days or weeks, depending on volume and how loosely covered the container is.

Ethanol (the alcohol in wine, beer, spirits) boils at about 80 C/170 F (see the table on the right hand side of the linked Wikipedia entry). Water on the other hand boils at 100 C/212 F. This means that if you raise the temperature of the brandy to about 80 C/170 F, the ethanol should boil off faster than the water, leaving you with a reduced alcohol content brandy. This is relatively quick (a couple of hours should be plenty), but you do need to monitor it to ensure it doesn't get too hot. You also run the risk of cooking or even burning it and changing the flavour profile.

For both of these you can taste as you go to determine how well the process is proceeding and to get it to a point that you like.

bob1
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