Newbie with Air Still

[crunchie]

Hi All,

Newbie here.
So my lovely wife buys me an air still for my birthday, love her

I start a wash using ordinary sugar, the carbon and turbo yeast as per the instructions that come with the still.
Then I find this forum and now I'm wondering whether what I'm going to end up with will be awful or worse still (excuse pun )could make us poorly.

Don't get me wrong I love all the helpful info on here but having been reading some of your posts I wondering if I should ignore the instructions and be guided by you.
For example I've now found out about "puking" and am worried that maybe I should have left the wash a bit longer. Even though it's been fermenting for nearly two weeks and had got down to .980 SG it still had a few bubbles when I added the finings that came with the kit.
Also they, the makers of the still, say just distill the first 700ml once and then add flavourings and "you will have some lovely whiskey" or something like that. Whereas now I learn that you should double distill at least and there's fores, heads, hearts and tails.
Help! Can I get something half decent from this wash or should I chuck it and start again?

Cheers
Crunchie

[crunchie]

Oh I forgot to add that I thought that Aidanmac's best practice guide really helpful

[Normski]

Hi crunchie

1st thing. Welcome to StillSmart, You will find all of the info you need here to make fine spirits.
Don’t chuck the wash you have. You say it’s down to 980 so that’s great. It'll be fine, especially as a tester to learn what to do.
If it hasn’t cleared very well, you could just leave it a week or so longer and it will clear. I just rack it of to 2L pet bottles and leave it in my shed until it's clear.
You really do need to run it thought the still at least twice.

1st time is a stripping run. You collect everything until the spirit leaving the still is down to about 20% then switch off, chuck what’s left in the still.
Do this with all of the wash. If you are worried about Puking, get some Distillers Conditioner and put a capful in. Or a small amount of butter works too.

Second run is the spirit run.
You need to water the stripped spirit down to about 30%.
Follow the spirit run guide in Aidans or Mozrs chart. You will need quite a few glass jars or glasses to collect the spirit in. I use jars with labels, and label them with Numbers to show which order I collect them in.

1st Jar 50ml, keep for cleaning, DONT DRINK THIS.
2nd Jar 250ml Heads, Keep this, you can distil this another time as a Heads Run.
3rd Jar 500ml Hearts, this is the start of the stuff you are after.
4th Jar 100ml, 5th Jar 100ml, 6th Jar 100ml, 7th Jar Etc
Keep collecting in 100ml jars until what’s leaving the still is down to about 20%.
The reason in collecting in separate jars is so you can smell/taste them a day later and decide which are keepers and which are thrown back in with another run for further distillation.

Please Do use Aidan’s Guide and Mozr’s Chart, both very useful

Norm

[chill]

"3rd Jar 500ml Hearts, this is the start of the stuff you are after."

To my tastes, this will contain heads too. I usually find that the first 450-550ml taste of heads. So after the second jar, I collect 3 x 100ml before collecting heads. It is rare that the first two of these do not end up in the heads jar. The third can go either way.


Chuck

[crunchie]

Cheers fellas. All advice gratefully received and this is really really helpful.

However as is always the case with these things it prompts other questions

In the Air Still kit they supply a filter with active carbon filters included. Would you recommend I still use this with either the stripping run or the spirit run or maybe even both? Or is the active carbon filter really unnecessary?

Cheers

[Normski]

Hi crunchie
Ask as many questions as you like. Its nice frendly forum and you will get help and advise.

If you mean the tiny charcoal filter thats about 2inchs long. I supose its better than nothing but only just. I have built one thats a metre long.

Only filter the finished spirit after the spirit run. No point filtering something that is going to be run again.
Norm

[crunchie]

Thanks Norm, I'll do that.

The finings seem to have cleared my wash nicely which is good. I think I'm going to siphon it into some empty 2 litre coke bottles I've got so I can then take my time with the distilling runs.
It'll be OK in those for a short while won't it assuming I clean and sterilise them first?

Cheers
Crunchie

[shawry99]

sorry