StillSmart

Hi guys.

I joined here because homedistiller are mean and laugh at the size of my still.

I am doing the Airstill thing. If I get into it I will upgrade when I feel comfortable.

I followed instructions, and have my 6kg sugar, triple distilled yeast, carbon, and 21 litres of water going (making 25 litres in total).

The wash was relatively quiet on day one, then for three full days bubbled like mad. The temperature was hovering around 20-22 degrees.

Then the temperature got cooler in the house, dropping to 18 a couple of days back.

So now, it has been nearly 10 full days.

I took a reading with the spirit hydrometer and got 992-3. I then took a reading with the alcohol hydrometer I got only 8%.

I know I am to expect 980-990 on the spirit hydrometer, and hoping for 13-14% alcohol ABV in the finished wash.

I have put it in a slightly warmer place, and will check it again tommorow.

Am I doing right?

Do I need to kick start the end of the fermentation?

How long can I/should I wait?

Thanks,

Mozr.

hi your alcometer is only accurate in spirit or diluted spitit you can work the strength of the wash by start and finish sg your wash at the moment is 13.3abv(start sg 1.090 -992 devide 7.36) measure the sg daily until its the same 2 days on the trot hope this helps

Thanks bill.

It was the same yesterday.

So should I be hot to trot at .992?

Thanks for the info about the spirit hydrometer. That had me worried.

Cheers,

Mozr.

So long as you get the temperature back above 17 degrees (and that means liquid temperature of course not just the room) then it should kick off again if it needs to, it'll just pause at below 17. If you go above 40 though the yeast (most types anyway) will tend to die permanently so you'd need to pitch in some more.

One thing to bear in mind is that yeast converts sugar into alcohol ONLY when denied oxygen, otherwise it makes more yeast instead. When you're fermenting, there will be a layer of CO2 gas on the top of the mash which provides a protective layer and keeps the yeast working on making alcohol. If you mess with it too much (i.e. taking the lid off, stirring it, etc) you'll introduce more oxygen and the yeast will eat sugar to make more yeast, so your total yield will be lower than you might expect. Just worth bearing in mind, at first it's tempting to crack the lid off and poke about a lot but it's best left alone!

One more thing - best way to work out your strength is to measure the SG before and after fermentation, but if you haven't done this then don't worry - this is how I tend to do it anyway as I'm lazy - I run stripping runs for the first distillation, which then allows me to use my spirit hydrometer (alcometer) to get a reading of the ABV to use when calculating 'proper' runs.

It's a lot to take in but you'll learn fast and hopefully have fun - any questions just ask, this lot are a friendly bunch and they're very helpful!

Thanks for the welcome Jimmy.

Well I got excited and thought 'sod it'

I degassed for an hour and a half manually.

I put part A of the turbo clear in last night, and folded part B in this morning.

I already saw it clearing as I left for work this morning.

The room temp has always been above 18, and under 24 degrees Celsius. My wash bubbled for a good solid three days, then the air lock went quiet so I assume the yeast was full up.

Also, I did not take the lid off for the first 8 days, so I don't think I have compromised the wash with too much oxygen.

I am guessing I have not got a full harvest this time. If I get 80% of 'decent' 40% ABV alcohol (roughly 5-6 70cl bottles) I will be happy. The one issue being fluctuating temperature. I think I am going to get a heat pad for the next wash.

I am still a long way off from introducing 'notes' of tomato paste in my alcohol like some of you nutters on here.

One question, when using turboclear, should the lid/airlock be on, off, or resting on the bucket?

Doesn't matter about the lid, it's just keeping dust out so whatever works for you.

Next part to learn is when distilling, go for quality over quantity - you'll be tempted to try to wring every last bit out of each run but you'll soon realise that even small amounts of heads or tails will change the flavour of the whole batch if you're not careful.

Also, sounds like you're managing so far but common sense dictates you should make notes of everything you do and what you measure, so you can compare later. Everyone is performing a different 'experiment' if you like, because we all have different equipment, yeasts, sugar, water, fermentation location and temperature, etc etc. You'll soon suss out what works for you!

Another good one is to predict what you think you'll get out of the still using the calculator and then see how close you were by measuring with the alcometer.

Oh, and immersion heaters like the Electrim are WAY better than heat pads!

Electrim75 it is.

I will report back when I siphon and start distilling.

I was going to chuck 10-20ml out of each run to get rid of the acetone (foreshots).

When am I to expect the tails?

Richard at wineworks says collect until you get 800ml, but I assume you lot feel that the last few ml are mucky?

I know it's not an exact science, and part of where the artisan comes in is the ability to sense the heads and tails. But it's my first day!

Cheers,

Mozr.

Don't worry, I remember how petrified I was the first time, thinking I was about to wreck weeks of preparation and fermentation!

There are a couple of schools of thought on the best way to run your distillations. If you know the strength of your wash, you can calculate more accurately when to start and stop collecting the drinkable part. What Richard is suggesting (and many people do) is to trust that you're going to have roughly the same amount of alcohol in your wash given that you used a known product and quantity of sugar. It's the simplest way, worth trying and it'll give a reasonable result so long as nothing went wrong with the ferment - what I mentioned before still holds as well, measure what you get out and then work backwards to calculate what the strength of your original wash was, make sure you understand it. I don't like using this method because it's sort of 'black box' distillation, you don't know what you're putting in and you don't know what you're getting out, you're just trusting it'll work.

If you don't have an accurate figure for the wash strength, the other way is to double distill, in which case you don't care so much about the quality on the first run - the idea being to create batches of 4 litres to run again. If I have a 25 litre ferment, I'll perhaps lose a litre to sediment and siphoning, so I reckon on running 6 batches of 4 litres = 24 litres. I'll literally stick them on and leave them, collecting (in a glass jar as I ditched the plastic jug) a litre from each batch. I then stick three of these litres into a demijohn, add a litre of plain water, and then I have two more batches of 4 litres but crucially these have been refined already and also can be measured with the alcometer. Once I know exactly how strong they are, I can use the calculator to view how strong the alcohol coming out of the spout is at any point during the fermentation. I can then decide when to stop collecting - usually you can see a point where the strength drops off a cliff and that's when you've gone too far.

If this is too much to think about then do it the simple way, nothing wrong with that - just this gives you somewhere to go after that if you want to experiment or you're not happy with what you got. That's why I started this site in the first place, lots of people saying 'do this do that' but nobody saying WHY!

I siphoned my wash into a clean bucket this morning.

The was was nice and clear, with a few bits of black carbon floating around.

My wash initially had a strong yeasty/wine smell (in fact it smelled exactly like a bottle of champagne I had last night!).

Now it is has been siphoned, the smell is still evident, but only just noticeable.

I assume these are still the off flavours, which will be removed during distillation and carbon filtration?

I am going to start distilling tonight.

From what I have understood about heads, hearts, and tails, is that during the distillation process (the actual evaporation and condensation of alcohol), there will be a percentage of heads and tails for any given batch.

So in a 4 litre batch, the actual volume of heads and tails will be smaller than if I distilled the 25 litres in a t500, because even though the percentage would be the same, the amount will decrease as the percentage is worked out.

Now this percentage fluctuates with the variables associated with any given fermentation. This is where the knowledge of the distiller comes into effect.

What Richard at wineworks proposes is that 'black box' approach, making sure all the variables are as constant as possible (ingredients, cleanliness, temperature).

Plenty to ponder.

Thanks.

Yeah, black box works and is the easiest for people to grasp, but it doesn't help when something turns out differently to how you expect or when you want to experiment.

I think a lot of the problem with this hobby (not referring to you here at all, or Richard for that matter!) is ignorance, people have heard rumours or believe old wives tales and some things are regarded as gospel without any form of proof. That's why I think that people should understand as much as possible about what they're doing and then they can make up their own minds!

So, distill to your hearts content and treat it as a learning experience - for one batch, take off 50ml of foreshots and keep them to one side. For another, take 20ml. Then you can sniff and measure the strength of the two drinkable portions and see what effect it had and which you prefer. And so on and so forth, it's addictive!

But in there lies the question regarding the difference between the air still and the t500 'idont'.

Are you saying that in your experience, when using the air still, you did not detect any foreshots from the air still, but now you have the t500 they are clearly evident?

This difference I think is in the efficiency of both products.

The airstill compared to most stills is relatively inefficient, but with that comes a certain amount of safety. The efficiency of the t500 means that it extracts a greater amount of alcohol from the wash, meaning it also extracts a greater amount of foreshots, heads, and tails, as well as better hearts.

Richard says to dump the first 200ml from a 24 litre wash in the t500, which is roughly 1%. So 1% of 4 litres is 40ml.

This is what Jimmy advised. Try runs where I remove the first 20-50ml of each batch. Contrast and compare quality and strength.

I suppose I should do some work...

in my experience, i was new and green so i listened to what i got told....i got told that you don't have to remove the fore shots when using turbo's and an airstill so i didn't and thought nothing else of it until i got the t500. its not that i didn't detect them, its more that i didn't know any better and left them in.

even with my first run with the t500, i still left the whole lot in and didn't even think about the fore shots until i read and read about the t500 and the different cuts to take off, and only then did i take the fore shots off and did the taste/smell test and i was shocked to death lol.

they DO smell and taste like hell and id definitely take them off with an air still and not leave them in like i got told to do..

its all part of the learning curve and I'm still learning every day with the help on this site !

Here's my two-cents worth on this subject.

The Airstill, and similar, works but is quite crude - sledghammer & walnut scenario. It's a good starter still because you are using small batches so you can learn, relatively cheaply, and produce a reasonable product provided you keep to certain hard and fast rules about the operation.

You learn about sterile routine, procedures, do's and dont's, cuts, etc.

You can play around with ingredients, different wash types, etc., and you can re-cycle your cock-ups, but you should never, never, and I mean never, play with safety in relation to still output.

Chuck the first 50ml of liquid from your Airstill down the drain, clean windows with it, use it as a cleaning agent but never consume or re-cycle any of that 50ml regardless. Yes, it's overkill, by a couple of spoonfuls, but I suggest even a hangover is just not worth that extra few spoonfuls.

I have discovered, over time, that the Airstill is like a junior bike with stabilisers.
The T500 and similar is the junior bike with the stabilisers taken off.
A self-built still is what you use when you have graduated and you will get there if you want to. If and when you do get there you need to have all the routines, the mundane and repetitive tasks down to instinct and you'll need to have learned patience by the bucketload because at the serious end you need your full attention on your output and cuts.

The Airstill is a great training bike.

I'm still using my Airstill but I'm gathering the parts for my build - I'm building a VM with a SS Beer Keg as boiler and a 2" full sized reflux column and a separate Pot Head.

I was going to get a T500 but I've learned enough to skip that unnecessary stage.

Whatever you do - do it safely!

AM

Thanks guys.

I am coming to the end of my first run now (yes it is 12:25am, and I am in work at 9am).

I have chucked the first 50ml.

I am going to collect 700ml in my container, as Richard says don't collect anymore than 800ml total, so I am knocking 50 from each end of a batch.

I am going to leave it to filter overnight after diluting to 40% ABV.

Question. The alcohol still has that faint vinegary/wine smell. Does that disappear with the carbon filtering?

I have already cleaned, sterilised, and put another wash on.

I love this stuff!

Mozr.