StillSmart

Hi Guys

I've been reading the home distiller site as I sometimes do, it starts to make more sense the more I learn about this craft of ours.

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

It seems treating your low wines with calcium carbonate or calcium bicarbonate can have a big effect on reducing the amount of heads in a wash by breaking down the Ethel acetates, this reducing the volume of the heads to be collected and at the same time increasing the available ethanol for the hearts collection.

Just wondering how many of you guys are doing this and how you find it?
Think I also read something about potassium permanganate reducing tales but my brain was getting a little overloaded by then lol

I think you would need a lot of bicarb. I use it to "break" the heads that I collect from an AirStill. I use 1.5 cups of baking soda, 1.6L of heads, and 1.4 of boiling water. It really fizzes when the reaction goes! Even so, my yield is about 1L of 70% drinkable spirit.

Chuck

I have tried using calcium carbonate in the past. First few times I added it to heads to be re-run on a VM I thought there was a small improvement in the concentration of the heads before I got to good alcohol, but not much.

Later on, when i was actually measuring the pH, I found the amount of carbonate I was adding wasn't really changing the pH much. I had to add a very large quantity to bring the pH close the neutral.
When running this the product definitely had a slight chalky taste. It ruined a few gallons of spirit, and didn't really clean up with carbon filtering.

I find an all heads run can produce a really smooth spirit which I look forward to, it was such a disappointment for me, so I gave up on the idea.

Given the amount of baking soda that I use and the generally low yield, I am not sure this is worth it unless you are desperate. Writing this made me realize how much cost and effort this was and question the value.

Chuck