StillSmart

From the moonshine TV thread...

FullySilenced wrote:Well i watched moonshiners and learned if you put sugar in your boiler while your distilling you can get more moonshine out the spout...

I have heard this before. I am sure it has nothing to do with quality but will affect boiling point.

My thinking... Would, say a table spoon, speed up an airstill strip run?

Won't the sugar "burn" on or near the element??? and give an off flavour??

Not a good idea. In general you try to minimise the unfermented sugar going into the boiler by correcting your wash.

Sounds like a recipe for burnt caramel bourbon?!

I was not thinking about it burning as it would be dissolved... But I get your thinking.

I have no clue really but any free sugar, even dissolved, around your element sounds like scorching & unwanted cleaning up!

think FullySilenced smiley, say's it all

Well, the prog is often entertaining to watch, but that's where it ends.

If you notice, they'll happily leave bits of bollocks in the programme, but are never particularly precise when it comes to ingredients, method/technique.

I guess the programme makers are spineless gits, with a government issued broadcast license to defend/protect.......

I think the segment it related to involved a submarine pot, all mashed, fermented & distilled from the same vessel. Whilst I'm not defending the editing or lack of detail I seem to remember them doing a run, then adding more sugar. At the time it seemed more of a way to recycle the grain to me, but as it didn't show them re-ferment & move straight onto another run then it could easily be viewed as "boiling sugar water produces alcohol".

I think FS was having a laugh.No?
I will join him.
And hats off and welcome to Squint, a newbie to spot this too, awesome!
Please stick around, we need sharp people like you here.

Robert.

Adding sugar to the boiler is idiotic. There is no way it can increase the alcohol level. If it could, then time would be well spent on coming up with a way of bypassing fermentation altogether.

The purpose of a stripping run is to eliminate non fermentable bits, solids, etc. The less you have to strip out, the cleaner your product is likely to be.

I believe the only honourable response here now is hari-kiri

Robert

A previous instructor used the phrase RTFQ.
Would increasing the temp decrease strip time.

@Benoit. Didn't watch it but am picking up on your comment re-Submarine stills.

The ones used at the time were of dubious construction. The SHAPE is fine in principle, and if constructed properly - I have seen a nice all copper one - they work as well as any other design.

The problem occurs with the way they were used at the time - which may explain the sugar comment.

As stated, you fermented in the boiler, slapped on a cap and then did a distillation run. Typically you would then add more sugar to the grain in the boiler, re-ferment, re-distil, and repeat that cycle another 3 or 4 times.

You can only imagine that the quality of the last distillation cycle was not that great!!!

Its how they were used which gives them the bad reputation. There is no point in adding sugar to a boiler before you fire it up for a distillation run.

I guess they were never meant for long term use or someone would have started adding drains etc. Everything I've read tells you to keep yeast out of the boiler, solids out of the boiler & they break all the rules in that respect. For a time when alcohol was banned, quality of product can't have been high on the agenda! The shape doesn't seem to lend itself to an easy electronic conversion so I dare say they will die out, I saw one on the HD forums that was recently made with the flake stand in a bucket that sat on top & it was a beautiful little thing but if you don't want to use gas then they have more drawbacks than positives in my mind at least