StillSmart

Early december, I decided to put on a few extra buckets of wash to make sure that I didn\'t run out of drinkies over the festive period.
All SS triple distilled turbo\'s.
I normally just make a bucket up and leave it in the outhouse, where it usually stays warm enough to finish within the suggested times.
Anyway, mixed up 3 buckets which all started fine, but yes, I suspect you\'ve guessed it, the temperatures outside hit the deck big time.
In fairness, the temps etc earlier in the month have been exceptionally low. And while the 3 buckets managed to get close to finishing, they all got down to about 1.000
To try and rescue them, I\'ve had one indoors, one in the outhouse with a heater belt on it and the other one is left \"as is\".
The rescue attempts have involved aeration and warming up, though it appears that it hasn\'t worked.
So my word of caution is to make sure that you keep an eye on the likely temperature of the wash, because if we get another cold snap, it\'s likely to put paid to the yeasties and that it seems that while you often do get some temperature build up during the ferment, a normal sized batch of wash isn\'t enough to keep the ambient temp of the wash high enough so that the yeasties will still do their thing.
I\'m in the process of clearing and running them now to recover as much as possible, though I expect yields to be lower because of the failure of the wash to ferment completely dry. I\'m not gonna project how much down the yield is likely to be but whatever I get, will have to do on this occasion.
I\'m gonna have a hunt round as I\'d prefer a heater belt that will do 20C, and the one I\'ve got at the moment will only do a fixed 24C - I\'m happy to ferment lower as it does seem that the lower temp washes run cleaner when they\'re coming out the still.
Luckily, a dose of the seasonal flu has meant that the drinkies have been rather curtailed.....
Ah well, hopefully, back to normal eh.......

Im quite new to all of this. For the last batch i used Alcotec 48hr with 8kg sugar.
I brought a fish tank heater and kept a constant temperature of 26 Deg c.
Ive only just brought my tester for sg so not sure what it ended up at.
Do you think i would be better lowering the temp?
Cheers

Rob

Im quite new to all of this. For the last batch i used Alcotec 48hr with 8kg sugar.
I brought a fish tank heater and kept a constant temperature of 26 Deg c.
Ive only just brought my tester for sg so not sure what it ended up at.
Do you think i would be better lowering the temp?

Hum? well I don\'t like using a fish tank heater, because, being someone who makes wines and other stuff, I\'m used to running air tight fermenters, a fishtank heater is designed to be in the liquid so it\'s difficult to keep it/make it air tight.
As for the actual temp\'s, I\'m used to using yeasts that have a temperature range so I try to keep somewhere in the middle, though with wines etc, it seems like they ferment better, well, cleaner, with less other possible flavour issues.
Now it\'s fair to point out that we\'re not making the wash for it\'s flavour, but there\'s always a possibility that any off flavour that\'s produced during a ferment could carry over to the distillate. Hence I like to keep the temps down.
Apart from that, I don\'t routinely worry about temps, after all, this has only shown up the issue because of the particularly back cold spell we\'ve been having.
If you keep your wash in the house (I can with 1 bucket but get nagged if it\'s more, as was the case this time round), then you can just let it do it\'s thing at room temperature - you\'ll get some variation at different times, but invariably room temp would average 18 to 20 degrees C which is fine.
I don\'t know what the actual range for a lot of the turbo\'s is, but I\'d guess that once things drop below about 10 C or so, then there\'s likely to be an issue......
S\'up to you after all.......