StillSmart

hi, just wondering how much alcohol everyone gets out of a 25litre batch, i got 3 litres double distilling at about 40% am i being to conservative or is this normal thanks.

That depends a whole lot on the alcohol content of the wash. What was yours?

Chuck

That seems very low
Most sugar washes are giving you about 14% ABV so allowing for losses inefficiencies and cuts of heads and tails you should be looking at 7 to 8 litres of usable hearts watered down to 40 %
grain washes tend to be less but I am getting 16% ABV regularly using vodka star

Had it fully fermented or stalled or have you miscalculated perhaps

yes was about 14% start, probably just a bit conservative with my heads and tails then, have got another wash of vodka turbo on at the minute so will hopefully do it right next time and split them up into 100ml and smell and taste, have just been using 500ml hearts and 200ml tails well what i thought anyway

Now see, when I first got a smart still, I followed the instructions exactly, using the SS triple yeast to get my 25 litres of 14% wash.

Then running it, I would (as per the instructions) dump the first 50 mls as foreshots, but them take 800 mls which would come out at about 60% ABV, ending up with 5 litres like that after running the whole lot, then that would be let down to 40% and I'd have about 7.5 litres of that to flavour up after carbon filtering.

I read absolute mountains of stuff about this and even tried taking cuts etc, but I couldn't taste any difference with sugar wash/distillate.

I suspect it would be very different if I was making molasses wash for rums or grain batches for whiskies etc.

Yet I find I do just fine and the only changes have been moving up to a T500, using reverse osmosis water to let down the first distillation then running the batch again at 40% ABV and letting the second distillation down to 40% with RO water.

I even learned about re-using the carbon for my Z filter, so I only have to add some more to top up the amount availalbe for refilling the filter after about every 5 fills of the filter.

So yes, I'd also concur that you're being very conservative with cuts. Hell, you can just run the still longer and the heads and tails can be put back into the next batch thats ready to run through. There's little point in being wasteful with your efforts.....

With my airstill, I look for about 1 litre @ 40% per kilo of sugar used.