StillSmart

Turbo= (insert spew emote)
tpw=

Well see all the criticisms etc are a little pointless aren't they.

Turbos will generally "do what it says on the tin" when the guidance/instructions are followed. Of course YMMV but they're about convenience and when it's a largish bag of yeast with the nutrients for about the £3 mark instead of the £1 or so for an easily obtained and reliable wine yeast plus the cost of nutrients etc, which can be a pain when you don't know what you're doing and by stressing the yeast its easy to get the telltale of H2S/rotten egg smell, which doesn't, by the way, magically disappear when the ferment finishes (extra nutrient and good stirring/aeration is generally needed), when you factor in the time and effort, cost of it all and so on, turbos can indeed be convenient.

Yes I have tried TPW and other basic sugar based versions, but they all produce pretty much the same result. Hence YMMV....... I just find its more about using the still carefully and not hoping that some sort of "quick" yeast is a magic bullet. Hell, turbos, TPW etc all seem to take me about 7 days to ferment, which is plenty quick enough to my mind.

Yet because I can be a lazy t**t, I might make a wash and it'll be in the bucket for 2 months before it gets run......just depends on whether I've got something to drink or not.......

OK! I've searched, cogitated and ruminated but I still can't figure out 'YMMV'.....go on, put me out of my misery

AM

aidanmac wrote:OK! I've searched, cogitated and ruminated but I still can't figure out 'YMMV'.....go on, put me out of my misery

AM

Your Milage May Vary..... >:D

I bet aiden thought it was a different type of wash

Checked my last two turbo washes this morning and both have finished fermenting . I stir the crap out of them to remove gasses and added part a. This time I am making sure to do everything exactly as you guys recommened. In one hour I will add part b and gently stir just until the part b all in. I didn't use carbon on these two just to see the difference. Hydrometer on both show .998:-) :-) :-) :-). I noticed on these two washes that there is very little odor and their odor is not offensive like my first run. Also I am going to run these two and save both and dilute to 40% and do a spirits run.

ed, did you rack the wash off the yeast bed before adding your clearing agent, its a lot easier if you did
alan

No but I added part b and it Started clearing almost instantly, that is a good idea though and I will definitely do that on the next wash, wish I would have thought about that this time. It would have sped up the clearing process I am sure. I can't run them until Monday anyways so they should be nice and clear by then. Thanks for your input

Holy cow, I don't know what I did right or wrong but within an hour of adding turbo clear the mash is almost clear. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

I placed my turbo wash in the sun room, to finish clearing, at this time of year the outside temperature is very cool so I should be able to do the stripping run tonight.
I did rack it off the lees before adding the clearing agents,, a very wise step in the process.
I am leaving the roboRum to sit a bit longer to finish clearing

Phantom wrote:Well see all the criticisms etc are a little pointless aren't they.

Turbos will generally "do what it says on the tin" when the guidance/instructions are followed. Of course YMMV but they're about convenience and when it's a largish bag of yeast with the nutrients for about the £3 mark instead of the £1 or so for an easily obtained and reliable wine yeast plus the cost of nutrients etc, which can be a pain when you don't know what you're doing and by stressing the yeast its easy to get the telltale of H2S/rotten egg smell, which doesn't, by the way, magically disappear when the ferment finishes (extra nutrient and good stirring/aeration is generally needed), when you factor in the time and effort, cost of it all and so on, turbos can indeed be convenient.

Yes I have tried TPW and other basic sugar based versions, but they all produce pretty much the same result. Hence YMMV....... I just find its more about using the still carefully and not hoping that some sort of "quick" yeast is a magic bullet. Hell, turbos, TPW etc all seem to take me about 7 days to ferment, which is plenty quick enough to my mind.

Yet because I can be a lazy t**t, I might make a wash and it'll be in the bucket for 2 months before it gets run..run....just depends on whether I've got something to drink or not.......

I can't see how being busy or lazy impacts on it. I'm as lazy as homer.
TurboTurbo
Cost~ss yeast $12
clearing agent $11
Filtering system, no idea on price, Im guessing expensive?.
8kg sugar~$8 at a good price
= 30~40 once all done?.
Please correct me.with prices if I'm way off.
Tpw
80g bakers yeast~$1
5kg sugar~$5
200g tom paste~$1
=$7
These are estimates but close.
Takes me about 10 mins to put a wash down, no time spent adding clearing agent and filtering end product, that would add time. I'm not trying to be an ass, I just want people to know options that may or may not work for them, I would want to know. Cheers

We all tend to stick with what we know and are happiest with. I don't find any real cost saving with TPW. I certainly don't make enough to worry about that.

Thanks for the info mate, do you do tpw with turbo yeast?. I know bugger all about turbos but have re d enough to be scares. why do you need to carbon filter?. Do you do cuts and filter the hearts, or just do a bulk distill and filter that?. A dude at work does turbos and filters and uses essence and it's way to sweet for me, that's my tastes . I did notice the heads taste in his though, even after filtering.

googe wrote:Thanks for the info mate, do you do tpw with turbo yeast?. I know bugger all about turbos but have re d enough to be scares. why do you need to carbon filter?. Do you do cuts and filter the hearts, or just do a bulk distill and filter that?. A dude at work does turbos and filters and uses essence and it's way to sweet for me, that's my tastes . I did notice the heads taste in his though, even after filtering.

I tried TPW with wine yeasts that I had kicking around. I did one with the same amount of nutrient/energiser that was suggested for home brew wines, and another with half the recommended amount (both for 25 litre batches).

Some like to make cuts etc, but with sugar turbo's there's little gained, because unlike rums, whiskies, etc i.e. where the resulting flavour can depend on the ingredients of the base wash/wort/mash/whatever you want to call it, sugar wash is just that. I've even tried using the more expensive dextrose, but you use more of it (it's something like 78% as sweet as sugar, so for a 6kg of table sugar batch you end up using about 7 and a half or so, of dextrose to get the same starting gravity).

I sometimes dump the foreshots on first distill, sometimes not. If not then I take a bit more from the redistill i.e. about 50 mls from the first/strip run, or 100mls from a distilling run but not from both, just one or the other.

If you find some essences and sugar turbo distillate are too sweet for your taste, you can make the base spirit a bit stronger, say 45% instead of the usually suggested 40%, as that gives a slightly drier taste.

Or whether the result from a TPW would give you a drier or at least less sweet result as I'd guess that any acid element in the tomato paste might give a different tasting residual in the distilled spirit.

Personally, last time I tried it, I couldn't tell the difference.......though next time I have a go, I might try the "1 tsp of spirit and 3 tsp of water" tasting trick and see if I can notice anything then......

{edit} oh and the carbon filtering seems to reduce the "rough" taste of my spirit when it's been let down to 40%{/edit}