First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to test?

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Caile
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First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to test?

Post by Caile »

I have 3 batches of 1.5L sugar wash. I used ~2.85 cups white sugar per batch, just under 1/4tsp K1V-1116 yeast, and yeast nutrient. I inverted the sugar first by lightly boiling it with a bit of citric acid. I put balloons poked with 2 holes from a needle over the top of the bottles. I started the yeast then added it to the solution.

I put the bottles in a big plastic bin and filled it with water so the batches were submerged half in water. I then added a submersible fish aquarium heater to the water in the bin and put it to 72 degrees. The bin has a folding lid, so i closed it and left it a bit open by wedging an empty 2L pop bottle in there. I left it open a bit so it's dark in there, and humidity doesn't build up.

After a few hours the balloons expanded, so I figured it was working. 35 hours later the bubbles are still expanded and I can hear it fizzing away.

I don't have a hydrometer, so I'm not sure when I should expect it to be finished. I know that to test it, it shouldn't taste sugary and should not taste like vinegar or something went wrong.

When do you think it will be ready?
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Saltbush Bill
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Saltbush Bill »

If you cant hear or see it fizzing its done, If it no longer tastes sweet its done, if you put a few drops in the sun and let them dry and the resulting residue is not sticky its probably done.
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Caile »

I heard that if you put a bit of sugar in and it doesn't fizzle, it's done. If this is true, how much sugar should I put in?
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Saltbush Bill
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Saltbush Bill »

Put a bit of sugar or anything else in an active wash and ya better have a mob n bucket ready.
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Yummyrum
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Yummyrum »

To be honest I think you might be waiting a while . When I weigh 1 cup of sugar , its 230gms . If you used 2.85 cups per 1.5 liters , thats close to 10Kg of sugar in a 23Liter wash . Even a turbo can barely handle 8kG in a 23 liter wash .
So I can't see it ending well ...if it ends at all .
Next time try half the amount of sugar :thumbup:

And Salt bush Bills methods are bang on for testing without a Hydrometer ....except I think yours might end up being done but still full of sugar that the poor old yeasties couldn't handle :esurprised:
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Caile »

Yummyrum wrote:To be honest I think you might be waiting a while . When I weigh 1 cup of sugar , its 230gms . If you used 2.85 cups per 1.5 liters , thats close to 10Kg of sugar in a 23Liter wash . Even a turbo can barely handle 8kG in a 23 liter wash .
So I can't see it ending well ...if it ends at all .
Next time try half the amount of sugar :thumbup:

And Salt bush Bills methods are bang on for testing without a Hydrometer ....except I think yours might end up being done but still full of sugar that the poor old yeasties couldn't handle :esurprised:
I slapped myself on the head for realizing afterwards that I used too much sugar. But I have seen youtube videos where people use the same amount as I did and their end result was a success. They just said they re-added in yeast and nutrient when it stopped fizzling after a week or so. And I saw another tutorial video where the person did something similar but the timing was different, he may have shaken the bottle up and added more yeast.
Caile
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Caile »

Yummyrum wrote:To be honest I think you might be waiting a while . When I weigh 1 cup of sugar , its 230gms . If you used 2.85 cups per 1.5 liters , thats close to 10Kg of sugar in a 23Liter wash . Even a turbo can barely handle 8kG in a 23 liter wash .
So I can't see it ending well ...if it ends at all .
Next time try half the amount of sugar :thumbup:

And Salt bush Bills methods are bang on for testing without a Hydrometer ....except I think yours might end up being done but still full of sugar that the poor old yeasties couldn't handle :esurprised:
Also, the yeast I'm using is known to be very stable, fast, and eats everything up very quickly (EC-1118). After 7 days one person had reached 11%.
Now lets say after 7 days and mine stops fizzling, are there any protectionary measures I can take to hope that it comes out successfully? Might pouring a 1/4c of the wine out of the jug and reintroducing water, yeast, and nutrient ensure all the remaining sugar gets eaten up?
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Yummyrum
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Yummyrum »

The amont of sugar you have will be over 20 % abv . No normal yeast can handle that . You would be better off splitting the washes and adding more water now rather than later . Once a wash stalls , its almost impossible to restart it . Also as yeast start to stress out due to the high alcoholic environment they are in they produce smelly byproducts which makes the booze smell and taste horrible .
That is why you will find most recipes here only produce about 8-10 % abv washes . Happy yeast .happy drinker
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by just sayin »

Well said, Yummy! If your is main goal is to get drunk you don't even need to the still, just drink your "sugar wine". If you goal is to make something that pleasant to drink and doesn't give you a hangover you keeping the ABV near 8. If you drink too much your body will try to protect itself by making you barf out the poison (ethanol). Yeast react to toxic levels of alcohols by more or less barfing and crapping in your drink. Happy yeast will make you a much much better drink.
An experiment: save one of your jugs, let it finish without altering it. Start a second batch with less sugar and taste them side by side when they are done.
I know you will easily see why the lower ABV is the standard recommendation here...just sayin'.
Caile
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Caile »

Yummyrum wrote:The amont of sugar you have will be over 20 % abv . No normal yeast can handle that . You would be better off splitting the washes and adding more water now rather than later . Once a wash stalls , its almost impossible to restart it . Also as yeast start to stress out due to the high alcoholic environment they are in they produce smelly byproducts which makes the booze smell and taste horrible .
That is why you will find most recipes here only produce about 8-10 % abv washes . Happy yeast .happy drinker
OK, so I just removed 22% water from each bottle, added to another one. So now I have 4 that should turn out :ebiggrin: .....right?
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Lyonsie »

Way to much sugar. A wash/ mash will pull back when its done. I.e. pull a vacume in the ballons
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But then i found out i was mistaken.

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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Yummyrum »

Caile wrote:
OK, so I just removed 22% water from each bottle, added to another one. So now I have 4 that should turn out :ebiggrin: .....right?
Naa You have twice as much sugar as you need so you need to tip half it into another bottle and top them both up again with water . Actually I would make sure the contents of the bottle was all mixed up first so that you are pouring a slurry of yeast and trub into the other bottle as well as the sugary liquid .

But its been a few days now so you may have started to miss the boat on this
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Caile »

Oh well. I just started another batch with 1.5c sugar per 1.5L.
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by shadylane »

Caile wrote:Oh well. I just started another batch with 1.5c sugar per 1.5L.
That's 1 advantage to small ferments, the mistakes are small also :lol:
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cranky
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by cranky »

Yummyrum wrote:The amont of sugar you have will be over 20 % abv . No normal yeast can handle that . You would be better off splitting the washes and adding more water now rather than later . Once a wash stalls , its almost impossible to restart it . Also as yeast start to stress out due to the high alcoholic environment they are in they produce smelly byproducts which makes the booze smell and taste horrible .
That is why you will find most recipes here only produce about 8-10 % abv washes . Happy yeast .happy drinker
I know better than to say anything about this but in the interest of accuracy I can't help myself :roll:
1118 is rated up to18% and is actually perfectly capable of reaching 21% without excessively stressing the yeast given the right ferment. I have actually done this a few times on wine with good final results. That said, the "right" ferment is not what Caile did and even doing it with the right ferment I would never distill anything that high. The ferment Caile did will likely result in stressed yeast and as already stated it is best to keep distilling ferments below 10%. Another thing is Caile first states he used K1V-1116 not EC-1118. 1116 is only good up to 16% given the right circumstances, but again the recipe given above is not the right circumstances.

Edit: These calcs might be helpful
http://homedistiller.org/calcs/rad14701" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Pikey »

cranky wrote: ........I know better than to say anything about this but in the interest of accuracy I can't help myself :roll:
1118 is rated up to18% and is actually perfectly capable of reaching 21% without excessively stressing the yeast........
Takes forever tho cranky - doesn't it ?

I'm with Yummy just pour water in to double the quantity........ You'll still need to keep it all warmish, but ec1118 is low temerature yest - I don't know about your version. Again tho' ferment at low temperature takes ages !
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by Caile »

cranky wrote:
Yummyrum wrote:The amont of sugar you have will be over 20 % abv . No normal yeast can handle that . You would be better off splitting the washes and adding more water now rather than later . Once a wash stalls , its almost impossible to restart it . Also as yeast start to stress out due to the high alcoholic environment they are in they produce smelly byproducts which makes the booze smell and taste horrible .
That is why you will find most recipes here only produce about 8-10 % abv washes . Happy yeast .happy drinker
I know better than to say anything about this but in the interest of accuracy I can't help myself :roll:
1118 is rated up to18% and is actually perfectly capable of reaching 21% without excessively stressing the yeast given the right ferment. I have actually done this a few times on wine with good final results. That said, the "right" ferment is not what Caile did and even doing it with the right ferment I would never distill anything that high. The ferment Caile did will likely result in stressed yeast and as already stated it is best to keep distilling ferments below 10%. Another thing is Caile first states he used K1V-1116 not EC-1118. 1116 is only good up to 16% given the right circumstances, but again the recipe given above is not the right circumstances.

Edit: These calcs might be helpful
http://homedistiller.org/calcs/rad14701" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
The yeast I used is EC-1118. I must have made an error.
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Re: First batch. No hydrometer. How long should I wait to te

Post by cranky »

Pikey wrote:Takes forever tho cranky - doesn't it ?
I don't really want to get into too many details because it is another one of those tedious methods I use but whenever I've done it right it takes 10 days to reach 21%, it takes another 4 months to get it back down to 16% with residual sugar and make it drinkable followed by a year or more in a bottle to make it pure freakin magic. My normal fermenting methods are always low and slow it was only by mistake that I figure out how to hit 21% at all but since the final undistilled product was amazing I have since repeated it and it actually is repeatable.
Pikey wrote:I'm with Yummy just pour water in to double the quantity........ You'll still need to keep it all warmish, but ec1118 is low temerature yest - I don't know about your version.
I'm absolutely with Yummy in this circumstance, I am just noting that 21% can be done. If I were the first to respond I would have given the same advice but at only 1.5L these ferments are pretty darn small and if I were doing them I'd just chuck them and start over. However it is probably good to learn this stuff on small batches rather than lose large ones. If it were one of my large batches and I started with 1116 I would cut them in half, top up with water, make up a yeast bomb of 1118 and see if that can save it. Heat really isn't very important with 1116 or 1118, they both like 65-70 and can go down to 50 without problems, 1116 usually stalls about 50, 1118 will keep going down to 45. Neither like being warm so above 75 will start to stress them, I've had 1118 flat out quit slightly above 80 then start right back up once I got it below 80.
Pikey wrote:Again tho' ferment at low temperature takes ages !
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