StillSmart

Bit of advice please.
I used a turbo yeast (24hr) with plain sugar to create my wash. I did leave it longer than 24 hours (72 hours).
I have just distilled it (binned the fore shots) but the rest smells of ammonia!? Never had this before.
Does anyone know why this has happened and if this is OK to re-destill and drink?
Thank you in advance.

Hi Screwdriver

I've never had anything with an amonia smell before, what turbo yeast are you using and how much sugar did you use?

I don't think leaving it for a few days will make any difference so long as the fermenter was pretty clean to start with, I've found they don't need to be sterile, just visually clean is good enough, once a turbo gets going it soon takes over and takes over any stray yeasts, I've left washes in buckets for weeks before running them.

I've also got a boiler full of strip ready for a spirit that's been there over a week as I had some trouble with my column flooding, I'll run it again tomorrow hopefully.

What container have you stored your stripped wash in? If it's not glass or stainless but plastic there could be an issue with chemicals leaching from the plastic into the high % strip

Hi Anarvin,
I used the Alcotec turbo yeast and silver spoon? sugar - 6KG.
I didn't strip the wash, just straight from the fermenting bin and into the Turbo 500.
I am going to re-destill it and see if it comes out any better.

Hi SD

You're in good hands with Anavrin so don't panic, he'll get things sorted for you

AidanMac

Ammonia or vinegar?

Ammonia (urine for want of a better description )
Re-destilled the 2 litres of spirit and only the last 500ml didn't still smell. The foreshots did seem to have a blue tinge.
After searching the internet for info, all I can get is that a low (or high) ph wash can react with copper - the T500 has copper saddles in the top of the column - and create a distillate with a blue tinge called Schweitzer’s reagent.
I have removed all the saddles boiled them and cleaned the column.

That might explain the ammonia smell too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer's_reagent

Sounds like the T500 needed a good clean then, the good news hopefully is the next batch will be ok.

The bad news is this batch will have to go down the drain, I certainly wouldn't want to drink ammonia, and I wouldn't recomend it!