StillSmart

I made a corn flake wash befor christmas.( got the recipe fro home distilers forum) its easy to do but you only finish with about 15-16 ltrs because it throws alot of sediment,I am only taking 500ml from each 3ltr run at 40% its just a trial to see if its any good, im going to store it for a few months with some toasted oak chips

sounds great, wonder if it'll work with coco-pops?

chocolate vodka! mmmmmmmmm
lol

I'm trying one of these at the moment, here's my recipe :
6 kg white sugar

500g crushed cornflakes (Morrisons Value - 45p)

Half tin Allinsons bakers yeast

Top up to 25 litres with water
It's in the corner of the room now and going like nobodies business, so looks good so far!

lol you lot do inspire me.
Well I haven’t got any cornflakes but I have found a box of out of date weetabix so for the price of a bag of sugar I am going to give it a go

I'm a little confused by all this, why are you trying this ?

Is it to make a wash that imparts a flavour in the finished alcohol ?

Is it to make a cleaner (neutral) wash - thus cleaner alchol ?

Is it to save money ?
Regards

Ian..

I'm a little confused here...........
I read Jimmy's post about his tequilla recipe and now this one, I assume the cornflakes etc are for flavour as the alcohol comes from the sugar.
I am now confused because I thought that the still would pretty much strip the wash down to just clear flavourless alcohol. This would render the addition of flavourings pointless, so what would be the point.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
(edit-I've just seen Umpa's post, it seems we're both in the same boat)
Regards, Q

I beleive the cornflakes are for nutirients for the yeast in place of the tomato.

But beleive everyting you read on the internet

What I am trying to do is make a [b]strong clear vodka type spirit without using turbo yeasts, reason being that I have read so much on the net that it is supposed to be a lot better.
I suppose if I’m truthful I like playing as well.

Ok,

Well in that case I suppose what's needed is to mention the SG at begining and end of ferment, that way others could adjust the basic recipe to make it stronger. I have made sweet wines that started out 1080 and gone all the way down to 0.990, off hand I can't remember what abv that translates to.
At the moment I'm still playing with turbo yeast (still in nappies) but have distilled beer to make whiskey.
My last effort distilling a tripple still yeast, was hard but rewarding. Tripple distilling it I got 4 lts of 85% although my hydroMeter may have read high because of high temp.
Oh and I think that pot stills like our smart stills do make flavoured alcohol, it's just the turbo/sugar washes we use makes flavourless vodka type alcohol for use with the flavourings we use.

I have reused the yeast from that batch, and will look forward to seeing if it ferments well enough to make a half decent wash.

The reason that I am doing this is because I want to make a version of a corn whiskey, similar to the original moonshine. A lot of the recipes call for cracked corn which I can't be bothered to track down, so this one seemed easy enough to have a go with! It's just a bit of fun, trying something different to a normal sugar wash.
As anyone who tries the tomato paste wash knows, even sugar washes taste different (to a point) with different ingredients, because a SmartStill (or another pot still) isn't efficient enough to strip out just the alcohol. If you distill a few times and take fine cuts, then carbon filter you will end up with a fairly tasteless alcohol no matter what you put in, but the idea here is to keep some of the flavour in, and make it a NICE flavour instead of the off-taste from a turbo. It's not that turbos are bad, they're just not supposed to be there for the taste, they expect you to carbon filter that part out. When making a whiskey, brandy, etc the cuts you take are more important, and you want to keep some of the flavour in. That's why it's fun to see what is going to happen!
And for those who are too lazy to try, wait and see how we get on first!

Loving this stuff, very interesting.

Well the weetabix surprised me.
I only test things in 1 gallon lots and it just seem so wrong to try and stuff weetabix in to a demijohn so I broke 100grams of them in a pan poured 2 liters of boiling water over them a good stir left it to start boiling in the pan and then turned it right down and simmered it for half a hour.
After letting it cool strained the lot through a siv in to the demijohn (there was surprisingly little solids left) well that didn’t get through the siv.
Dissolved 1.3 kilo of sugar in a litre of boiling water and poured it all in to the demijohn added 1 teaspoon of citric acid and 3 teaspoons of yeast nutrient checked the temperature it was 80 so kicked it of with the yeast, its now going about twice as fast as the tomato puree wash ever did and I would say on par with a turbo wash, so fingers crossed.
Sorry I couldn’t get the SG as it was to thick and gloopy, I tried but the hydrometer leaned over so it was never going to be accurate.

Iam thinking of doing a barley wine, and a sake brew both with high alcohol yeast

How’s he cornflake wash jimmy?
The weetabix wash has been going vigorous and just starting to slow down now, I might try taking the first lot of without filtering it see how it taste, if its pap I can always bang it through again.
Didyou do a barley wine P?

Not done barley wine yet no!!

Iam gonna wait until summer, but its on my listof things to make and do