When fermenting and distilling fruits, it’s important to work as far as humanly possible only with the flesh itself. Particularly when dealing with apples, plums, cherries and pears, you want to de-seed, de-pit and de-stem. Partly because seeds and pits hold a bitter tannic flavor that is carried over into the final distillate, and masks pure fruit aromas. But also because there’s poison in there.

Plum pits (and other fruit seeds) contain a compound called hydrocyanic acid (HCN), also known as hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid. It’s nasty stuff, with a slight almond scent, and is deeply poisonous in the right quantities. A version of it was produced as Zyklon B and used in the gas chambers by the Nazis during WWII, and is today the compound that some U.S. states use in their execution gas chambers.

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