slight yellow tint to my distilled moonshine

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slight yellow tint to my distilled moonshine

Postby Mojave » Mon Jun 28, 2010 10:07 pm

i recently made my first batch of shine with an 88 year old man who has been

making moonshine since he was 15. fermented cracked corn yeast and sugar for

8 days. my still was a stainless steel pressure cooker, with brass elbow,

and flexible copper tubing running through a pot of cooled water. the run

was succseeful, so i decided to try it with my own still. I made the mash

the same way. i coppied his still design, except my pressure cooker was

aluminum. i did three batches single distilled the first day, and got clear

white lightning to three gallons of washing i was dispposing 150-200ml of

foreshots. the second day, i decided to throw salt in the wash as experiment

for flavor. about half way through my distillation the output picked up a

slight yellow tint, and a bit more debris was coming out. it was still

crystal clear, just a yellow tint. after the run i flushed the nasties out

of the tub with water. on the next run the output was clear at first, the

the yellow hint came in. on the last 2 runs the entire batch had a slight

yellow tinit. what does this mean? if you respond thank you so much for your

time!
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slight yellow tint to my distilled moonshine

Postby marc83 » Tue Jun 29, 2010 12:31 am

What colour is the wash?im thinkin Some has come through maybe??is the %ABV very high??

OR has the wash cooked to the bottom of the pot(cleaning clears it up then back to yellow after a while).I am not too familiar with other washes than plain sugar washes,or other still types.Maybe change your pot,as you said this was the only thing different.Wonder what the Alcohol vapour does to Aluminium.
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slight yellow tint to my distilled moonshine

Postby Ancient1 » Tue Jun 29, 2010 2:23 pm

Two points occur to me:
1. Over the years that I have been involved in producing anything containing alcohol, I have always understood that one should avoid using aluminium at all costs as is is susceptible to attack by the alcohol, leading to contamination. There are possibly those with more technical knowledge who could give more information on this?

2. I think that possibly you have a degree of carry over from your wash, leading to the discolouration. One would need to cleanse thoroughly the entire system as residual sediment could remain throughout. When distilling a wash such as you mention, this is not unknown and a reason why it is usual to put rather less than normal for a sugar wash into the still.
Good luck with it though!
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slight yellow tint to my distilled moonshine

Postby Jimmy » Tue Jun 29, 2010 6:46 pm

I wonder if the salt has caused a reaction with the aluminium...?
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