StillSmart

Hi All

I have been experimenting with washes. I made a lovely smelling molases and banana rum wash. But after the stripping run it is neutral.
I've stripped tomato washes, wine, turbo, VS and the rum as stated above, All have become a neutral.
Im sure I've read some people making rum etc, But even with only the stripping run Im left with a neutral.
So as the heading says. Is it only posible to distill neutral with an airstill ?.

Norm

Hi Norm,

What do you mean by "neutral"? The product of all stills will be clear, that is the result of distillation. Neutral means that there is no taste at all other than alcohol. From what I understand, it should be pretty well impossible to create a true neutral from an AirStill without carbon filtering it. The AirStill is a pot still and pot stills produce product with flavour. Mine certainly does. The colour and other tastes you get in a rum are from aging on wood and / or additives.

I am still waiting for my first rum wash to finish fermenting, but you might want to have a look here for creating a good tasting rum over multiple washes: Pugirum. That is my eventual target.

Chuck

Pugi's recipe is a good one - but keep in mind it is in US measurements that are different to our UK ones with the same names - go easy on dunder, its easy to make a wash stall if you add too much.

Hi
The recipe I used was jamaicanrum's white rum recipe.
It fermented well. My question was more about the Airstill not the recipe.

I am just finishing up a stripping run of a molasses and demarra sugar wash. I can categorically state that the result is about as far from neutral as drinkable can get. While clear, it has a very, very strong taste of the blackstrap molasses. So much so that I don't like it, not being a fan of black strap molasses. Hopefully the spirit run will tone this down or I will have to do something. So, in summary, you can certainly make non-neutral spirits with the AirStill.

Chuck

Is there anyone that has successful experience with making rum on a regular basis.
If not, then i think It looks like I'll be staying with essence or maybe trying to find some rum barrel chunks if they exist.

I make a fair bit of rum - but haven't ran an air still before - when pot stilling something very flavourful I find the larger the charge the easier it is to make the cuts - not sure how that would translate to the smaller air still - my guess is it would be difficult to do well - but worth a punt - its one of the best things I make.

Hi CC
Thanks for the input. I think that as the AirStill needs more than one run through to make a drinkable spirit, after the second or third run through theres nothing left of the wash except the spirit. Im not getting any flavours from a mollasses wash etc just a Neutral.
Thanks to all for replys to this post. I'll stick to searching for decent rum essences.
Ta again
Norm

Normski wrote:after the second or third run through theres nothing left of the wash except the spirit. Im not getting any flavours from a mollasses wash etc just a Neutral.

I'm really surprised by that, I can strip, then run off the column at 95% and it still has loads of flavour - molasses is really tricky to neutralise.
Pot stilled rum is really stinky off the still - it needs a few months on oak to sort itself out - try just running it twice and aging it - also could try adding 400ml of the dunder to the spirit on the second run through to add back in some of the flavour.

Hi Norm,

Normski wrote:I think that as the AirStill needs more than one run through to make a drinkable spirit, after the second or third run through theres nothing left of the wash except the spirit. Im not getting any flavours from a mollasses wash etc just a Neutral.

Are you carbon filtering it by chance? That, I imagine, would remove a lot of the taste. I did my spirit run of my rum experiment (next time I will measure better as I used 2/3 of the water I had thought, no wonder it is strongly flavoured!). It is much better off the still, but still (pardon the pun) with LOTS of molasses flavour. This is going to need some oak and time before I really like it. But lack of flavour is NOT a problem! In fact, I may throw in some carbon to tone it down a tad.

Chuck

I have continued to try to make a sort of Rum spirit with an airstill. I have run another two batches of molasses wash. This not black strap molasses, but molasses sugar from a supermarket. If I find some Black strap I’ll try that.

As more than one run through strips out just about everything and only leaves a Neutral spirit. I have tried just doing just one run and making very tight cuts. I have managed to collect around 500- 600ml of a spirit that appears to be, with a little time, maybe of drinkable quality. It is mainly a neutral spirit with just a tiny flavor that I am hoping will become rum. I will age this and see if it IS possible to make something other than a neutral. But to be honest, my guess is that its not worth the bother. Maybe if I find Black Strap that maybe the key.

On a separate note, after seeing some of the posts regarding macerating things. I have been soaking various ingredients in spirit to try to make spiced rum. And that has been really successful. I have used Vanilla, Cloves, Coriander Bark, Treacle, Sultana’s, Root Ginger & Mama Juana. The Vanilla pods are wonderful they small and taste so smooth. The cloves appear quite good too. But I think they would be quite easy to over do. The Treacle is a great way to add some colour and a little sweetness., I’m using this to make a dark type rum. The Coriander Bark, Sultanas & Root Ginger are all ok and I will continue to experiment with.
The Mama Juana I bought when I was in the Dominican Republic a few years ago, It is a mixture of sticks and herbs, I have no idea what they are, I have added 200 ml of spirit to the mama Juana in a bottle and leave for a week or two, it has a real nice spicy taste. I have added some of all of the above (5-10ml of each) to a neutral that has a tiny amount of Gold Rum essence. It’s very drinkable.

I don't run an Air Still. I will admit that right at the beginning I did try one of those double plastic bucket type stills. Not for long though.

Next I tried a Spirits Unlimited Mk5E, this is basically an electric alloy pressure cooker style pot still. OK I did modify mine to replace all the rubber washers with compression fittings and also replaced the vapour path with 22 mm copper tube.



I have made my own copper pot stills in a variety of sizes, so I can give you my own opinion.

All of these small pot stills have the same basic "flaw" that has been mentioned previously. In addition,you can NOT create drinking product with a single run. If you wish to make a neutral type product you need to do multiple runs. I stopped filtering at all and substituted a couple of extra runs with dilution and careful cuts to get the same results. A bit more labour and time intensive but it works.

For flavoured spirits they are just hard work. The "flaw" is that the transitions between the cuts are so small it just makes it tedious to do lots of small volume runs.

If you want flavoured spirits like rum and whisky, life is a lot easier if you can increase your boiler volume.

You don't need to go massive though. The smallest practical option (just my opinion) is in the 12 to 25 litre range.

If you were to use a 20 litre boiler charge at 28% you could expect to get in the order of 5.6 litres of premium quality hearts.

Cutting this down further to a 13 litre boiler with a 10 litre charge you might get 2.5 to 3 litres.

A small pot still is an alternative option, but if you can make it a bit bigger, it makes it a lot easier.

As this was about a Smartstill I'll update it.

I did finally manage to produse decent good Rum with an Airstill.
The key was to get Molasses. Not the sugar, but liquid from a farm feed suplier.
I used part Molasses and part Sugar and bakers yeast.
Tripple distiled and then soked on JD chips.
I also soaked Vanilla pods in the rum and when blended this made a fine spirit.

Norm

Myles wrote:I did try one of those double plastic bucket type stills.

double plastic bucket type stills???
I'm not sure I want to know,but what is this plastic bucket still? Sounds like all kinds of wrongness!


Thanks for the update Normski, are you happy with the final product?

I think he is referring to an Amazing Still: http://amazingstill.com/

Yes, there is something that gets less respect than an AirStill!