This is a great site and I've been reading as much as I can to try to get a handle on things. I used to brew a lot of beer, but I'm excited to get into distilling. For now I am using a 6L SS pressure cooker running into a worm in a bucket condenser. I ran vinegar and water, then some jug wine and it went pretty well. I'm not sure if I'm having trouble with my wash:
4.6 kg brown sugar
100 g black strap molasses
1/2 C Active Dry Yeast (Red Star)
1 gal of water (filtered with an old filter to hopefully remove some Cl, my water is a little on the hard side, sorry don't have a ppm measurement)
-mix all and heat to 180 deg F
-held for 30 minutes or so to kill some of the nasties
-cooled to 85 deg F
-poured from several feet up to aerate
-topped up to 3 gallons total in a plastic bucket with airlock in lid
-pitched a heaping 1/3 C ADY
-fermenter lives on on a bathroom counter where it probably doesn't get much below 65, and may get up to 75 when the heat kicks on
After < 2 hours, heavy foam head, 24 bubbles/min
At 14 hrs, 60 bubbles/min
At 22 hrs, head gone, visibly bubbling & generating C02, 48 bubbles/min
At 2 days, cloudy, lots of tiny bubbles, 36 bubbles/min
At 4 days, clean wine-y smell, 8 bubbles/min
At 10 days, very cloudy and still visibly creating tiny bubbles, smells clean, tastes sweet and alcoholic, I finally got a new hydrometer at this point and measured 1074 (!?) which I assume in inaccurate due to the turbidity (sorry, no OG measured). At this point I don't know if it's stuck, if there's too much alcohol for the bread yeast, or if it's slowly finishing so I added 2 tsp of DAP and 1 crushed multivitamin (inc B6, B12, Ca, Mg, etc.), fizzed up quite a bit due to the carbonation, stirred it around a bit.
At 11 days, no additional activity, re-pitched with 3 gm (1-1/8 tsp) EC1118
At 12 days, that's today, still nothing new, no new activity, no clearing, just lots of tiny bubbles, CO2 and ETOH smell.
Any thoughts? Should I:
1) Need more info, get a pH kit and get back to us.
2) Pitch more EC1118.
3) Add a pinch of magical mystery nutrient.
4) Be patient, grasshopper; your future will soon become clear, and so will your wash.
Thanks a bunch for any feedback.
First wash (rum), stalled?
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