StillSmart

I ran my first birdwatch sugar wash tonight letting things cool down will report tomorrow.

I started one on Tuesday but changed the yeast to Lalvin EC-1118 because of the colder weather, also to see if I could get the ABV up a bit, the last one only got to 10.7%. The one thing about this recipe is that it smells great.

I abandoned the Birdwatchers recipe because I found that problems I was having with low yields and stalling ferments were down to the variable acid content of the tomato paste. This was causing the pH of the wash to crash and put the yeast cells to sleep before all the sugars were consumed.

After much faffing around trying to find a reliable way to stabilise the pH I was advised by Scarecrow to abandon the Birdwatchers and use Lentils instead.

Long story short...I've never looked back

AM

Hi A mac
You said lentils. Can you expand on that.
regards
R man

No prob RM, here's the link, viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2679

AM

As odd as this sounds to me, AM usually knows what he is on about. I bought some red lentils today, but won't get a sugar wash on for a couple of weeks. I've been experimenting lately with using flaked barley, wheat, etc in place of the lentils. Result have been OK but it still takes a couple of weeks to ferment out.


Chuck

Lentils provide a great range of nutrients that will make the yeast very happy. If you check the link I posted earlier you'll see a photo I posted and if you click on it you'll get a full size view in which you can see a healthy thick Krausen on the wash indicating a high level of happy yeast activity

One thing the lentils don't provide is Nitrogen, which yeast cells like, but my Lentil washes finish out in 6 days and if I rack off to a clean fermenter it will clear completely in another 3 days.

With that kind of turnaround I'm more than happy and for a sugarhead wash I'm not going to mess with what's not broken!

AM

Well my first sugar wash is in the books. Got reasonable yield but not very good abv% I'm getting 92 to 93 % using turbo yeast washes and got 83% with the sugar wash. I may have done something wrong but I think I will keep looking for a wash that I prefer. I will try the lentil wash next.

Regardless of the wash strength you should be getting the same strength output from your still. The difference between a 10% wash and a 15% wash will be in the volume of spirit produced from each wash.

The higher you try to make the wash ferment out to the more off tastes/flavours you wil create and these will affect your end product. The Lentil wash is about getting cleaner/clearer wash for striping and producing better quality low wines for the spirit run not stronger/faster.

If you want high ABV in your wash you have to accept that you won't be getting top quality spirits. Keep in mind that spirits made from grain start off as un-hopped beer with less than 7%abv More work and takes longer but definitely worth the effort.

AM

I did two TPW,, and ran the spirit runs,,
one more question fro the experts,, Do I need to carbon filter??

For neutral I always Carbon Filter using an Essencia Filter system and I'm planning a new build of a similar lager capacity filter in Stainless Steel for the new year

AM