StillSmart

I've started drinking my wares without flavourings but mixed with Pepsi Max...... Very nice.
Moving away from 3 pints a night of fine home brewed ale to one pint and a few cheeky homemade spirits whi Pepsi Max and ice.. Life is wonderful.

S4BB

Shush, you guys may wake the smegging malarky policeman!

Robert.

And for my first stupid question of the day, what does racking mean

PS I thought malarky was something that went on between the sheets until I joined this forum

When fermentation nears completion, or completes, the liquid will start to clear and the yeast will fall to the bottom along with anything else in the ferment (in the case of grains, or lentils, or kale, or what have you). Racking is the process of siphoning off the liquid into a different container and leaving the sludge on the bottom. It avoids off tastes from rotting sludge and should help it clear faster.

Thankyou for that... If I wait for it to clear naturally do I still have to use the turbo clear that comes with the yeast pack?
Thanks again, Sue

Chill gave you a great answer there.
I got 2 litres of sludge left behind in a 24 litre grain rack off this evening.

I might have been tempted with a reference to bedroom malarky, but I am biting down hard on my lip, and instead I am going to bed.

Robert

Wow, you posted as I tapped.
You can leave it to clear naturally,usually in a week or so,quicker in a cool place, or use the turbo clear, which really does seem to work in 48 hours 'ish.

Robert.

Vodka wrote: PS I thought malarky was something that went on between the sheets until I joined this forum

The Cambridge dictionaries quote for Malarky...

​silly ​behaviour or ​nonsense:...."I like the ​socializing but I can't be ​bothered with ​dressing up and all that malarkey."

Lateral thinking could cover... something between the sheets.... or something in that area...

Hi Everyone,

Well, what a busy week we've had making a very successful vodka !!!!! We followed all the fantastic advice on here and have produced a lovely clean spirit, thanks to all of you for your help.

I do have a question though ... we have no problems picking the tails but the fores and the heads are a different story ! To us they don't really have a bad smell or taste, they just smell and tast like very strong alchohol Any suggestions on how we can detect them ?

Mant thanks
Sue

Heads might not smell or taste with a well made sugar wash. There is also much less made in a sugar that grain washes. But they are what gives you a bad head.

IMO they gotta go.

I like a refractometer and a teaspoon to catch the drips.

Alternativey you won't go far wrong taking off the first 2 fingers in a tumbler. This is quite generous in my experience. But I also save the heads and use them for other things.. Cleaning, labels, surface sprays etc.


Other guys will have other ways.

The fores contain acetone, methanol, various esters and aldehydes, heads come after, and are almost pure alcohol, except that they smear with the fores...and are contaminated with trace amounts of unwanted cogeners.

Methnol to my nose is nail polish remover...some say they smell vinegar.
It's a case of you will learn as you do more....trust your taste buds..dip your finger in and try..

I think that Mash might have confused Foreshots and Heads. Discard the first 50ml and the foreshots are gone. Or as Mash said, keep them as a solvent.

Then take a sample of the next 100ml and dilute 1 tsp with 1 or 2 tsp of hot water (really, hot not warmish). Swirl it around your mouth. It will burn your tongue and taste a bit like some kind of artificial flavouring. But the burn is more the key than the taste. Spit it out. Rinse. Now you have learned what nearly pure heads are like. Remember that.

The burning sensation will gradually and slowly diminish as the hearts change into hearts. Keep sampling, or collect in small jars and sample later. When then burning is fully gone, and it might last longer than what you read on here depending on your wash, you are then collecting hearts.

Chuck

Chuck. My idea was an easy way to get all of it. Have I missed something?

Two fingers is not going to get rid of the heads. Two fingers in a tumbler is the foreshots and a bit of the start of heads. For 4L of low wines in an air still, I'd expect a bare minimum of 250ml of heads up to 500-700ml+ for a Turbo. Turbos in my experience produce a lot more heads than a lentil, kale, or similar wash.

With chill here, there are more than two fingers of heads in a spirit run.
Also I think that while you may not always smell heads (You cannot miss any Fores by smell), for me the taste of heads is always there.

Robert.