StillSmart

Having read a few posts regarding tomato paste washes I have this morning taken the plunge and after a visit to my local morrisons purchased 2 x tins of purée and a tin of allisons dried yeast for just over a pound. Will put this wash on tomorrow as its too hot today to drag my sorry arse of the garden bench in this lovely weather.

Recipe

5kilo sugar (normal)
280g tomatoe purée
Juice of 1 lemon
75g allisons dried yeast
21ltrs water

Hope this is correct, please shout if not before it gets thrown together tomorrow.

I just have a couple of questions and hope you can help out

Will the wash require a fining agent (turbo klar or similar)
Will it be good enough so not to do a stripping run ( I have an air still)

Thanks in advance
Simon

if you leave it long enough it will clear itself in about a month.

the only problem with bakers yeast is that it wont tolerate high aclohol strengths so may die off at about 12%. Its purely speculative as to what final gravity it will get to, but the brewers yeasts are strains which have been developed for high strength yields.

Hi Knobby with those ingrediants you will make a wash with a start sg of 1.076 and it should finish at about 0.990 giving an abv of 11% because of this the yield from the wash will smaller than what you are use to from turbos but the brew will be the cleanest tasting you have made.if you decide to distill only once after you have disguarded 20ml foreshots you can expect to collect about 600ml per run, if your going to double distill then collect down to 20abv 1 litre per run.so why not do 2 x 600ml collections then 4 x 1ltr collections then double distill and then compare and let us know.
Cheers

You'll find the wash is a bit pinkish and you'll definitely benefit from siphoning so you leave most of the sediment behiond and then clearing with either Turbo Klar or even just wine finings from Wilkinsons, etc. No worse than a turbo though. Have fun!

For what it's worth, I've been doing a slightly modifed Birdwatcher's as my standard wash for the past six months or so. I've never bothered with fining or clearing agents of any sort. I ferment it in a warm room for 7 - 10 days, then rack it off to another bucket and sit it in a cold room for another 3 - 4 days.

I'm sure it would be OK after one pass, but I always strip it, sit it on sodium bicarb for a week, then run it again. I've been getting some pretty decent neutral that way.

Thanks wormwood, currently doing my first stripping run on a turbo wash and this will be my first double distill. Please explain why you use sodium bicarbonate in your spirit run?

Could you please be so good as to pm or post your modified version of bird watchers recipe for me to have a try.

Having great fun with the air still and can't wait to progress the revolutionary ladder to a bigger bit of kit........

Knobby
I read about baking soda on the home distiller site and a pal who used to make hooch in Saudi had used it
Supposedly it helps clean up the spirit for the second distill and helps to separate the cut points
I tried some on Saturdays run and it certainly did no harm
wormwood (or other learned ones) have you got the birdwatchers recipe please

Bird Watcher's Wash

I am partial to Death Wish's Wheat Germ from the same board. Make sure you toast the wheat germ first, if you get it raw (white coloured). I use a 350F oven and give it 20-25 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes, then every 3-5 minutes. The wash is good enough to drink as a wine before distilling!

Chuck

I certainly wouldn't call myself learned, at least not on this topic.

I've stuck pretty close to the Birdwatcher's recipe. For a gallon wash, I use:

1 gallon water (usually rainwater, as our tap water's horrible)
2 Tbs tomato powder (I buy big cans of the stuff from Honeyville Farms)
1 Tbs lemon juice
2 lbs plain white sugar
small pinch epsom salts
15g baker's yeast (Fleischmann's, again bought in bulk)

I generally ferment three gallons at a time, then do three stripping runs, taking about 1.3 - 1.4 litres each time. This gives me enough to fill the airstill for a spirit run. Recently I've been taking the good stuff from that run, diluting it and running it a third time - it's a bit of extra time and effort, but the finished product is very clean.

There's some discussion of the chemistry behind the use of baking soda here:

http://homedistiller.org/distill/dtw/strip

Hope this is useful.

Hi Knobby
I've been doing TPWs for about a year now (5 or 6kg sugar/250g tom paste/1/4 tspn citric acid/1 tspn bicarb and 90g bakers yeast in 22l water seems to work well) and I just let it ferment out (ie 2 weeks AND then some in the subtropics).
Eventually... you can siphon/tap it out as the solids really do settle.I dont use anything re finings etc. The colour of the wash will become less 'red/pink' with time and that's good enough for me. In an Airstill, the recipe '22 litres' means I'll get 5 runs and the wash dregs arent an issue .

Once fermented, the TPW will most surely be better employed via a stripping run IMHO. It makes a good neutral (indeed its the wash choice of many with reflux stills etc), as long as you can get the ABV high (say 70+% ABV, which, to me, means a double Air distill).
If you dont, its going to need some carbon filtering for sure(although, as Jimmy says not as much as a Turbo).

Anyway, you'll love TPW mate. Its cheap, easy, reliable and consistent....

Hi Frank

Well I have put my TPW on to ferment and within minutes it's going mad which must be a good sign. Didn't have any bicarbonate so hope everything goes well.

Hopefully get my final stripping run done tonight as I have been doing 2 a night, from start to finish (1.350 ltr) it takes 3.35hrs each time give or take a minute. The air still is a 320w rated from SS.

Just kegging 40 pints of an IPA, and with 70 bottles of home brew red laying down to rest her indoors thinks I have a problem >:D

Will keep you up to date with my first TPW, as first signs look very promising

Well it's 9 days down the road and it seems as though my first ever TPW has finished its ferment.

Starting gravity 1.090
Finished gravity 1.000
Alcohol content 11.61%

Does this seem right to you?
Has anyone got a TPW to ferment out to 0.990 - 0.980?

Will check SG again in the morning but no air bubbles can be seen in the air lock, looks like a weekend of stripping runs for me

Hi Knobby,

If you don't already have one... a cheap digital timer (those sold for household lights) with a count down feature (important, that one) is an excellent investment. For stripping runs, I just set the timer, plug it in and walk away. A run in the morning, after work, and before bed and I can strip 23L in two days with about 20 minutes total time of effort.

Chuck

Cheers Chuck

Will be purchasing said timer at the weekend........

Just check what load its rated to switch - I doubt there will be any problems (an air still is 350W? Right?) if you use a relay that isn't rated for what you are switching you risk it fusing in the "ON" mode and it wont switch off. It will work ok at first but will fail eventually.