Have I gone wrong Stilling

[Xr4play]

Great Board ,great info some much reading I'm sure i missed hours of sleep catching up,anyway.

So i came across a very cheap setup which was a bargain in my eyes,
got every thing right in my eyes until i got to still part.

Now after reading what i have is not the best some bte super reflux still ( looks same as http://www.homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=11265)as seen in my brew shop.

so my first run downloaded the intsurtions for the shop and followed to tea ,
problems that happened.
1/ started to collect at 78* binned the first 200mls .collected around 3litres in around two hours,more was coming but was starting to have a yellow tint to it. at around 82* shut down, all was collected in 500mls lot's.
2/this got me stump (my smell is not good at the best of times) every one of them all smell the same no difference to me, which to me all i could smell was metho, to the tea, i use it a lot for work, which in big sniffs feels like my nose was burning.
Going By the aclo test all was at 90%,not knowing what was going on and hours of searching still nothing broke it down to 40% and am letting it sit as i type,
any idea's.

Now today my second run of a wash,
but one did not follow there book, but more kiwistiller just with out the stripping runs.

So now collection time was a lot longer running water a lot faster then 500mls per min as state above,just run it hard from about 50* letting it sitt about 20mins then slow it down so the temps rise the speeding up to maintain temp at 78*
collected the first 200mls binned. then the rest in 500mls batch to 3 liters again which took around 3 1/2 hours i guess i could of gone longer but stop due to the fact.
it all smells the same and taste the same just like metho . and once again came out at around 89% then broke it down to 40%

this metho smell what is it =, and how does it come to it. when tasting what am i looking for as this would be more of test then my nose.

So not sure what the problem is here was hoping some nice people out there can send me in the right way as i got another wash ready in about 3 days.

And i should say was using dex as it came with kit 60 kgs of the stuff and ss classic yeast to many packets to count.

so cheers for the help

[rad14701]

First, welcome to the forums, Xr4play...

The scenario you have described sounds like a classic case of purchasing a kit a a brew shop expecting that the friendly folks there know what they're selling... It's not usually the case, unfortunately... You're probably using turbo yeast and pushing for an extremely high %ABV wash... You won't get clean spirits by simply distilling it if your wash is as I described...

You CAN get decent results, however... What you need to do is to only use half as much sugar and half as much yeast as the kit instructions recommend for the same volume of water... This will reduce the %ABV of the resulting wash as well as reducing the amount of off tastes and flavors imparted by the excess nutrients and heat produced during the fermentation process...

Once your turbo yeast is used up, or before that if you so choose, try one of the sugar wash recipes we have here in the forums... Any of them will yield better results without a lot of effort... Look for the recipes in both the Tried and True and Recipe Development forums that have the most activity... They will be the ones to study... Deathwish Wheat Germ, Gerber, Wineos Plain Old Sugar Wash, Birdwatchers, All Bran, and several others are easy to make and produce clean spirits without much effort...

By keeping the potential %ABV of your wash in the 10% - 14% range, with 14% being too high for some yeasts, will allow you to use inexpensive bakers yeast, wine yeast, or distillers yeast, instead of turbos... Several of the recipes can have the ingredients sourced at your local grocery store so you can say goodbye to the brew shop folks that just want to take your money...

Good luck...

[Xr4play]

ok so

I'm taking it as the turbo and the amount of sugar was used give's the smell of very strong metho .

I was planning of doing wineo's wash as soon as i used up all of the stuff that i got with it , i should mention that i only pick it for ,

i will trying halfing every thing next wash.

think i still got around 50 kgs of dextrose left to play with so back to making a wash

[rad14701]

The sugar (dextrose) isn't an issue, aside from the amount used... It can be used for other recipes, like Birdwatchers... The turbo yeast is the culprit...

[Xr4play]

Ok so the yeast is to blame anyone want 14 packets.

going to make up two lots of birds watchers wash.

[kiwistiller]

Ok so the yeast is to blame anyone want 14 packets.

haha chuck it on ebay or something like that. someone will want it.

have you tried diluting to 40% and then sampling? 90% will have a bit of a burn to it no matter how good the stilling.

[Xr4play]

i tired it, put both together and diluted to 40% drinking as we speak not bad but not what i was wanting not the best taste but better then having something then nothing

[Xr4play]

Thought i might give an update on my progress to this wonderful world.

So since last i got the birdwatchers wash going on broken down in three 25l wash (5kgs sugar,1 lemon 1 jar of tomato paste 250grams ,some sort of bakers yeast around 70grams)
So all is fine there, just run one batch hell of a lot cleaner and have one going now.

Only collected around 100mls forshots heads around 400mls, heart's was just over 2l with tails beening about 1l before strong smell came though shut down.
some reason was a tomato sort of smell. most came out 85%

So now i had a bit of a play around and enjoying myself i going to take the next step and build a copper one and hope for a better end product .so i'm of to the parent site for some reading