Putting wine through my Turbo Air Still

[Bad Doctor]

So it looks like my impatience bass got the better of me. While I'm waiting for my VodkaStar wash to clear I thought I'd run an old wine wash through the still. I dug out an old demi john of strawberry jam wine (13%) I had lying about and filled the still up to 4 litres and proceeded to do a stripping run collecting 1.3 litres of spirit. It smells rank, the tails smelt burnt and like that wet card smell. Anyway the plan tonight is to add filtered water and make the wash back upto 4 litres and attempt a spirit run. I'm planning on tossing the first 50ml and holding back the next 100-200 ml of heads and collecting 600-700 ml of hearts and then keep tasting these next batches of tails until it starts tasting naff and the volume drops. I'll then filter a couple of times and hopefully get a nice neutral spirit. Does this sound about right or am I missing something?

Any help would be greatfully appreciated.

[Normski]

That’s about it. You really need an Alcometer to test the %.It will let you know when to stop collecting the stripped spirit and also to enable you to then water your spirit to the required strength etc.
Norm

[Bad Doctor]

Thanks Normski. I did have an alcometer that came with the kit but it got err......broken, so I'm having to do the runs blind. I've just used figures that other folk have kindly posted to give me ball park estimates . I'll not dilute the final product down until my new alcometer turns up. I'll be interested to see what it ends up at.

[knobby]

Please let us know how you get on.....you can't go wrong with a double destill on he air still.......I love the machine......have considered investing in the t500 but with the beer and wine I make it could be seen as over the top

I have done stripping runs followed by spirit runs and the results have been very very close to those posted on the forum......

Good luck keep us posted

[Bad Doctor]

Not bad results. It smells ok, is quite smooth and drinkable. It's very finely tainted by the wines flavour but i reckon it would be gone if I did another run or ran it through the filter again. The copper washers I put in the still did something as they have become very discoloured after the 2 runs and I noticed after 600ml of hearts the strength of the spirit dropped rapidly so I only kept the 600ml of spirit. I watered it down a tad with filtered water and I'm just tasting a bit more now its been in the bottle a day. It's better than I thought it would be from an old, strong tasting wine. Looking forward to getting the vodkastar wash on the weekend.

[Jimmy]

It'd improve with a few days to settle down, and aging with a bit of oak would help too - flavoured spirits are always a bit tricky, a lot is in the aging and the method of storage (i.e. oak barrels) - the spirit itself is often less impressive at first. I mean, you're not even allowed to call it whiskey until it's 2 years old if I remember rightly.

[Admiral Toad]

You ca call it whisky straight away but not scotch until 3 years have passed in alexsalmondland

[Almanac]

Yeah! you have to let real Whiskey go off a bit before you have to call it Scotch.

AM

OOps!

[Admiral Toad]

Eeeeeee fancy that !

[biopro]

I have put 2 batches of wine through with very different results. Most of the wine I make is from kits and I keep the lees in a demijon and rack of the cleared supernatant for cooking. After a while I had 4 litres so I put it through the still - it was a mix of reds and whites. I only did one run and didn't remove the first head. I collected 700 mls at 50% and diluted to 40%.

It had some flavour - not a vodka by any means. A bit vanillary - certainly smooth. Not sure I liked it enough to run it again, but a good use of waste wine.

The other run was an Elderflower wine that I had made from flowers picked from the trees. A combination of picking them late in the season and being lazy and not removing all the stems resulted in a wine that was sweek and bitter - it was vile. Aging did nothing to improve it. I put 4 litres through the still and the result blew me away - it is an eau de vie - not as refined as grappa but along the lines of a mirabelle or similar fruit brandy from europe.

So the worse the wine, the better the spirit (assuming you like eua de vie style spirits).

[Bad Doctor]

I'm pretty sure the jam wine I made was from Asda chosen by you 45% fruit jam x3 and half a bag of sugar, a heaped teaspoon of wine yeast and the same nutrient along with a spoon of pectolase. Wine was quite palatable but was surplus to requirements so in it went. Tried the vodka again tonight and its definitely got better. Easy drinking and nice and smooth now.