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I use a thumper (doubler). I have a 50l keg as a main boiler, a 2" copper pipe to a cap with a 1" pipe extending from it, then elbow, union, elbow down into another 2" cap and pipe on my 30l keg thump. the 1" goes down through the 2" to the liquid and the vapour from the thu...

check it with a magnet if it sticks to the bottom of the pot it should work. And I did kind of use thermometers in my first one, one in the boiler's column and on on top of the thump, they DO serve a purpose for newbs to get the confirmation that the thump is actually working, and provide a bit of a...

I'll elaborate a little on what happened as well. You overfilled with kind of dirty wash, maybe not bad to look at but when it started heating, you got clumps of crap in it. Your boiler foamed up and puked into your thump, causing thump liquid to turn mash colour. Your thump, being too small, overfi...

I made the cuts and blended up and diluted my rum from yesterday. 4 gallons at 50%. 1 white, 1 with oak, cherry and maple, 1 dark with same wood, and 1 darker (maybe black?) with same wood again but will be spiced. 3rd generation on a Blackstrap/Demerara Rum. Amazing how much more you get than with ...

SOME of that drop in SG is due to the solids in the molasses settling out, I'm sure. Still sounds quite high, but not as high as you would think simply from the hydrometer readings. I agree with trying it out, and obviously not going that high again, but it may not be as bad as you think. The rum I ...

Not saying all mold is bad, but IF this is a bad mold that you need to remove, then to me wouldn't be worth it. But how do you judge whether this mold is acceptable or not, and when you've "cleaned" it, how do you know you've removed it all and it's actually safe to use. I suppose you coul...

I don't know man grains are pretty cheap... Whatever you do to try to clean this up or separate it is going to cost money and time, is it really worth it? Sure free material is good and all, but how do you even know that you've cleaned it all out when you're done anyway?

I'm just picturing the funk that filled my house when I got into the cheesy tails of that one rum. But like I said the rum was pretty damn good, so you never know what may happen. A complete waste of time, the best damn thing you've ever tasted, or something somewhere in between lol. You may just pi...

What are you making with this? a neutral or a cheese-it flavoured liquor of sorts? Because the second one to me sounds like it might just be all kinds of wrong... I could be wrong myself, but I don't think this would be good unless you pulled ALL the flavour out, and in that case, sugar would be muc...

Did you do a boil or cook on these or just the no boil method you were hoping for?

Welcome from another Canadian, Toronto as well. Definitely put a lot of thought in to what, and how much of that, you want to make before starting. A couple months on my first and I had to upgrade. Lots of great info and great people on here to help find it or answer any questions.

Yeah it says cherries, sugar, sunflower oil (<1%). So I would hope that means zero preservatives. It is from a grain supply place that has a lot of natural foods.

Also it is Montmorency cherries dried and pitted

Just to feed my curiosity... What are the chances that you could do this sort of thing with dried cherries? (May contain sunflower oil 1%) and if so, Maybe dump the cherries in a barrel, put water in until it's just covering the tops and mash it up...? I assume that would give you a slightly higher ...

I use 5kg blackstrap, and 9-10kg Demerara sugar in mine for a 15 gallon wash. Haven't really measured the SG as it doesn't do much for you with molasses anyway but I estimate 11-12% maybe and since the sugar is the darkest I can find around here, you get a damn good amount of molasses flavour. My da...

In my opinion, the use of staves cut along the grain with no end grain exposed is for two reasons. 1. Strength. Any piece of wood cut across the grain will break a million times easier than a piece cut along the grain. 2. Leakage. Staves cut across the grain with all end grain exposed across the ent...

Think I'm gonna grab a 15.5 gallon one and make one of these Guinness ones into a BOP for some steam heated mash cooking. Possibly give the other to my brother for the same purpose.... Wish I paid a little more attention when I picked them up but they just looked so damn nice and I love Guinness lol

yeah they the European ones, and apparently the two I just got, being guinnes kegs, are a different flange so I'll have to grind away some of the outside if I want to use them with my triclamp fittings, not to mention, cut 1/2" off the downtube going into my thump as it hits the bottom. so much...

That was kind of what I was thinking, just wanted to make sure at least a few people agree with me lol

Thanks Shadylane

I am going to be using a new (to me) keg as a thump. I already have a 7.5 gal thump and a 13.2 gal boiler, and want to use a second 13.2 gal keg for steam distillation on the grain. My question is, do I need to go through the sac run business again or is this safe to use as it has been used to store...

If you want brown sugar and butter flavour, then you should probably at least try out a couple rum recipes to start it with. I did a rum where I used bananas and raisins as a yeast nutrient and it smelled heavily of butter and brown sugar on fermentation. Still had a bit of the buttery goodness when...

Mixed up about 4 gallons of random fruit from the freezer, water, 3 kg Demerara sugar and 6kg white sugar, made a nice starter of ec1118 yeast (3 packs) and a 2/3 diluted bit of the wash (1gallon). Measured temp of the 15 gallon fermenter and it was at 31-32C or so I thought. The tip of the probe wa...

Curious if this works well with fully corked wine bottles (corked with a corker) or if simple tapered cork pressed on by hand is the only way for it to share with the angels?

One question as I was considering the insulation fairly soon. If I was to insulate the boiler and the pipes to the thump, would this make my thump more likely to run dry or less? I would assume it would make it more likely. Meaning that it probably isn't the greatest idea if even when I load my thum...

Well when I took it all apart and had a look, apparently I ran my thumper to the holes in my pipe. So I guess charge it a little more next time. Which is good because next time is going to be the whiskey where I put the wet grains in the thump and the liquid in the boiler. Anyway definitely better t...

FINALLY!!!! One 15.5ish gallon rum wash is on the go. Just about filled up the keg, then put the rest in the thump basically up to the first bump in the wall. Took two full wine bottles before collecting to drink, about 750mL each. Very excessive for foreshots, but I figure, first drinkable run.... ...

This little baby right here. Works amazing, don't get me wrong, but that paper towel sits on top for a reason. You get some good torque on there and it will just randomly shoot grain bullets across the room, into the ceiling, in your face, wherever and whenever it wants. With no warning. But. It tur...

Now that you mention the way you insulate, I may give that a shot for the time being, Danespirit. I was using an old sweater just to test out with my old 1300w induction and pot. It did improve things, so I may actually just do that and see how it goes, then figure something out afterwards. Not sure...

Well after some running around I only had time to do my final cleaning run, the sacrificial alcohol one. Had about 3.5 gallons of cider smelling stuff that came in my keg and was left in a carboy for this purpose, about a liter each of rum tails and whiskey tails and threw in a bunch of water to bri...

Still didn't work. So I capped them, and that is that. Running like a dream on the cleaning runs and I'm going to do some hooch tomorrow, we'll see if the thumper size is good enough to do grains in there without any trouble on my first big whiskey stripping run and the Rum should be absolutely no p...