StillSmart

What did you buy?

Today(actually yesterday in my time zone), I got home from a work trip South.
Looked at the row of DJ's containing various of my products aging on oak,and decided life was good.
Checked the mail and didn't find an envelope pertaining to the fact that I may have driven a little too quickly through a speed camera on the M6,on my way South a couple of weeks ago,and decided life was good.
A couple of hours ago the rain and wind died away,and the midges came out to play.
I then realised, "Life's a bitch and then you die...."
Bearing in mind that the wee beasties home in on CO2,my plan to get a few buckets of fast fermenting neutral wash going may not be the smartest move.
To many people a midge bite is a case of 'How can something so small bite so hard?'
To some,like me,a midge bite is a large,itchy swelling.Guess I never ate enough porridge.
DEET,horrible stuff,(melts my watch strap each summer)is effective,and I shall be covered in it for the next couple of months.Life's a bitch.
And then you die.
Robert.

Wasn't it Mr Walker, aka Phantom, who coined 'life wasn't meant to be easy'?

chill wrote:What did you buy?

Maybe not everyones taste, but thank the spirit gods we're all different.

A Citroen C5 sport tourer.. fully loaded.

Hi to all friends old and new
Sorry it's been ages since I posted
In truth this hobby has been taking a bit of a back seat last few months very busy at work plus been restoring and riding motorbikes and other busy weekend stuff
That said there's one or two casks maturing nicely and nearly ready to bottle (got some smashing corked spirit bottles from local HBS really classy looking)
For varied reasons I spent a lot of time in Scotland in June one trip being to Shetland from where I smuggled a few lumps of peat.
Thes have now dried nicely so have aquired a smoker and intend to 'peat up' latest 25kg of malt for next mash when we get back from our hols
Guess where we're going.....Scotland including a few days on magic island AKA Islay
Doubt I will get much peaty malt in the motorbike panniers but going to try and make some contacts
Still doing some sugar washes to keep friends and family happy mind
So hope you're all well and will try to keep in touch a bit more...Happy Stilling

Glad your back on board Admiral... I know the feeling about not having the time you need to do those little things you want to do.

I'm having a week off in Sept just to get some things done, one being my bike.

Today I woke up in my caravan feeling a little rough! Mainly due to a bottle of wine, a few cans and about a third of a bottle of Russian standard yesterday :-(

I decided that once I get home I really need to get some decent spirit made, it now pains me to pay £18.50 for a litre of vodka.

So tonight I've just stripped my last wash and I now have 3 full demijohns of high wines, unfortunately I'm gonna have to wait till next Sunday to do my spirit run, think I'll put it in the boiler a day or two before, water it down to 25% and treat it with calcium carbonate just to see if it has any effect on reducing the heads. Two chances I guess.

I distilled for the first time ever today.
Just messing around for an hour but was very interesting. You can read as many books and web info as you like, but it's no substistute for a quick play with the knobs.
After having given my freshly built still a good clean, I decieded to run a small quantity of junkahol thru the still. Searched the back of the Kitchen cuboard and 2 bottles of Aldi Glühwein fell out.
I emptied 2L of 10% into the boiler + around another 7 litres of water to well cover the element, So I guess my wash was around 2.2% and turned it on.

I collected the product into small glasses trying to sniff and taste my way around. The smell of Glühwein was overpowering everything to be honest, whilst I could smell differances I could not detect fusils or wet cardboard. So any cuts were lost on me. But I guess the extremly small quanity of Alc and lack of equalisation time probably mixed things anyway ?

After getting to temp I let it equalise for 15 mins and took off 3/4 of an egg cup calling it fores.
Let it sit another 5 mins and took off 100ml at 95.5% but the temp started to climb so I guess I was taking to quick, backed off
Took another 40ml and then temp climbed again. So in the end I collected 140ml at 94%.
A good grin, Im looking forward to a large batch going in.

Today....I finally logged on to this webforum again
and I now remember what a civil and informative site it is.

My fault re MIA for sure...and (again) thank you to all contributors in making this place feel like a nice place to stop, etc.

Hi Frank, how are your chooks doing these days?

AM

Hi Frank! Nice to see you around again. I still have not gotten around to trying out your whisky recipe. One of these weekends...

Chuck

Nice to see AT is only busy...
Some of us old farts are just happy to wake up alive,as opposed to not waking up.
Enjoy Islay,my favourite isle
Robert.

Just emptied 3 demijohns of high wine from my last three stripping runs into one bucket, I had 13.5 litres at 57%, watered it down to 30% and now have 25.5litres ready for a spirit run tomorrow, I'm thinking I can get just over 4 litres of alcohol after my cuts to make just over 10 litres of 40% vodka

Happy Days

Had a busy evening, racked 2x25 litre vodka star into clean fermenters to clear.Then when the 60 litre fermenter was cleaned i thought i might as well fill the sod up again,so i had root in the goodie cupboard to see what there was. there was 2x 500gms of extra light spray malt, 4x 454gms of malt extract,2x 740gms jars of natural molasses, 1 kilo of light brown sugar,and 2x 500gms box's of branflakes.I thought what the hell add 5k of sugar and 41 litres of water and a dozen 7grm sachets of alinsons yeast, lets see what transpires here.

B_D

Well more like yesterday and the day before.....
Stripped my two googes kale washes and have to say outright, found them pretty impressive both for volume and taste. Thanks googe

Had a strange occurence though with the first wash strip.
After passing the fores and heads, the first two cuts were 44% and 63%. The first was particularly discoloured, the second not so much. Both tasted clean.
Third cut was 67%, clear and clean and the rest of the run was normal.

Fores and heads came off clear, degree ranged from 80 to 89.5
The first and second cuts came off at 90.5 degrees, third at 91.5

The second strip run paralleled the first except without the hiccup.

I'm puzzled - can anyone advise, please?

Cheers, Peter