>>>Well, waiting for mine to blossom... in a few weeks. And then to make brandy of them - mostly the sour, having more sugar, but actually the craziest result I got was with 25% sweet and 75% sour... Because of the names, I call that brandy hare trišnja :).
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>>How is the brandy operation progressing?
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>The first ones are supposed to be ripe in 3-4 weeks from now. Went there today and it looks promising. Apricots are big already, and with the current series of rains, right on time, could turn out really well (knocking on wood).
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>>I don't have cherries but It looks like I will have a bumper crop of pears. Do you have any recipes for pear brandy?
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>Same as any other brandy - make sure the skin is off, preferably by having fruit chopped or mashed. Store in a clear vessel (food grade plastic barrel would be fine, cover with water so it's fully immersed - the fermentation is an anaerobic process. Immediately check the sugar content - you can't get much if it's low, good rate would be above 12%. If too low, add perhaps up to 2% of sugar, to get the fermentation running (and get appropriate strength). Keep checking the sugar every couple of days; when it reaches zero, destill it within 24h.
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>When distilling, throw away the first 5% or so (or don't throw it away, use it as fuel, in small bits), that's methanol which is poisonous. Then keep measuring the alcohol content of what you're getting - both the fresh incoming and the average of collected. When either the incoming falls to 20% or less, or the average in the vessel is what you want (although the percentage will be 1-2% lower then what you measure now, when you repeat measurement a couple of days later), remove the vessel and start collecting the weaker brandy in a separate vessel. The weaker stuff is re-distilled later, either separately (ie. at the end of the season or end of one fruit's crop) or simply thrown into the next batch.
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>There's something to be learned about how to keep the fire - shouldn't be too strong or the bottom burns and the mush boils too violently, may even burst up into the pipe and dye the brandy, and shouldn't be too weak as then it takes too long. Also, most of the brandies take some post-distillation time to ferment (don't know what's going on in there, but something definitely is). Depending on the fruit, may take between 3 and 9 months until it's right.
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>The full matter is thoroughly described in textbooks for agricultural high schools here. I already had two seasons behind me when I got one of those books, and haven't learned much above the preceding paragraphs, except that out of ten typical mistakes we did only eight :), and the brandy was still good. For next season we fixed two more and it was excellent. Then lost the book :). Then tried a couple of unorthodox tricks and the quality stayed, it's just that the process got easier.

I found the stills for sale and I can legally own the still but I can't use it to make alcohol. Maybe I will have to settle for pear wine. I can legally make 200 gallons of wine a year for personal use. That comes out to about a quart a day which should be enough to keep me happy.