StillSmart

Hey all, I don't do turbos, never have cause of the bad feed back. I've always Been curious why the turbos need filtering though?. Thanks

Cheers

I don't use turbos, but I do use an AirStill (aka run-away pot still). The carbon removes some of the sweetish and other tastes and results in a more neutral product. If I am doing fruit macerations or such, I don't bother filtering. But for Gin, I find it makes for a dryer, cleaner result. No where near as good as you can get from a fractionating still, but better than not filtering it.

I have heard the turbos produce off flavours and that the carbon helps to remove those too. I have no direct experience with that and am not keen on getting any.

Chuck

@Googe (hi mate hows that new still going anyway?),

I dont use carbon (filter) and I dont use turbos, however I did use turbos way back in the beginning....and the end product, esp with an airstill or similar, leaves quite a lot of skanky smell and attendant taste, some of which a good carbon filter will help alleviate.

The thing is (as far as I can tell) people use turbos for gaining 'maximum' ABV% yield from the ferment and the turbo yeasts are 'designed for'/capable of working under significant duress for the ferment (hence the 6,7,8kg sugar wash recipies etc)....and, as you would know, any stressed yeast will produce undesireables in the result.....etc

In moving away from turbos more than a year ago, I still filter though using an LM for neutral. I found that it still needed polish despite taking narrow cuts.

What I do is to filter the most neutral hearts first through the unused carbon filter, noting that I use the SS EZ Filter System. Then, I filter the remaining hearts separately. This way, I get the most neutral sugar vodka and then have very clean neutral for flavoring.