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I know at the start of the journey, if I wasted 25L of sugar wash I would have been devastated. But now I know it's cheap compared to other ingredients. Get in, get your hands dirty and try it. Best way to learn and find out if you're doing anything wrong. If this all sounds like a lot, probably rea...

Simplest answer is... It depends... Lots of variables in your questions... Sugar wash, run it as fast as your system can handle. Nothing much else should be in there to cause any foam ups. Anything beyond that, be it grain, molasses, fruit... they all have different properties. Proteins, fats, unfer...

Also, those mason jars have a rubber seal on them. Not great with high proof spirits...

Yeah, if I found potatoes that cheap I'd probably have a crack at them myself. A steam stripper would probably be the best bet for that, that's a lot of chunky sediment. You'd probably be able to run it on exposed elements after racking and cold crashing a few times, but there is probably a good chu...

Seriously, how many different things are you trying to do all at once? Seems like you keep popping up in so many different threads every day, different washes, different mashes... Potato vodka, corn mash, steam stripping... Maybe just slow down a touch, try making one thing a couple times. Learn fr...

Seriously, how many different things are you trying to do all at once? Seems like you keep popping up in so many different threads every day, different washes, different mashes... Potato vodka, corn mash, steam stripping... Maybe just slow down a touch, try making one thing a couple times. Learn fro...

Without having tried it, I find myself wondering if you could make something similar by making a 100% corn mash, then doing a piloncillo sugarhead on the spent grain and then blending the two for a spirit run? Sounds about in the ballpark from the article, not that there's also any real guidelines ...

After smelling the low wines of the last rum I made, (and I admit, a taste or two off the finger) I thought it was going to be absolutely arse... Weird, too bitter, all the nasty aspects of molasses. But after a spirit run it gave me real hope. I think this might be my best rum yet. It's melding nic...

Well, most of the ingredients should give a rum like flavour, the brown sugar and treacle are the highest percentage. The wort? Well, I don't know. Malt flavour for sure, but beer wort ranges from light swill, through to Belgian triple, to english stout, through to Baltic porter (one of my favourite...

Update: Just shy of three months, tannins have died down and have started to get interesting. Will definitely put a little more on the heads side next batch, it's a little flat on the front. Any tailsy notes have changed completely, the hint of wet cardboard has gone now. Deep, funky, molasses hit, ...

My thoughts, If you're aiming for neutral, you want to keep the yeast as happy as possible. Slower, less temp stress, cleaner ferment = more clean neutral hearts, with less off flavours. For whisky, some of the congeners, esters etc. help make your whisky more interesting in the long run. A little b...

A big problem with airstills is lack of power control, it'll more than likely smear heads, hearts and tails all together. By the time the sting is gone from the heads into hearts you'd like to keep, you're probably pushing tails as well. Makes cuts kinda hard. If you can run the condenser and boiler...

Otherwise, blankets, cardboard boxes etc around the fermenter to help hold a steady temp. Sometimes low tech just works nicely.

Makes cold crashing simple too...

Don't know how easy they are to find in the UK, but an old fridge helped me a ton brewing beer and again now with wash/mash. It doesn't even have to be a working one, but that does help during summer. Basically it's an already built fermentation chamber, it'll hold latent heat and keep the overall t...

Take a step back. Your still is 5 gal. You want to make something good out of it, you will need more than just 5G of mash. Research strip, spirit runs. 5gal of mash might net you one half decent bottle if you're lucky with your cuts. Think at least 15 gallons of mash, then maybe you can do some dece...

Looking good, mid 1.135ish starting? Almost 1.1 now? Hopefully should drop a bit more yet. Keep it warm it should come up okay. Hope you're ready to deal with a thick wash like that though, keep temps low, hope you don't puke. If you do, back off the heat. It'll make a good mess in your still if you...

Hey Dathhu Molasses Rum that I have made takes at least 3 months to taste ok. I throw a vanilla bean in with the oak staves too. I know this stuff isn't going to taste great for a while now. I intentionally went a lot wider than I have done in the past. Not looking to add any other flavours, spices...

Hasn't stopped me tasting it though, while I'm not loving it now, I see something good in the future.

Ferrica, i hope your rum is tasty.

Mine is mediocre at best, but it is less than a month old. A day, a week, a month, still probably not so good.

Hope you got some good hearts if you want it for Christmas, me, I'm hoping for a bit longer... If I can keep it until next Christmas I'll be good.

Hope you can keep it warm enough ferrica, rum is more of a summer thing for me. I'm letting it go nuts here right now in the southern hemisphere. Hope it works out well, I hope you have something ok for Christmas, but I hope you stash more away for a few more months. By summertime in the UK you shou...

So... The empress...


She's against blowing with electricity then

No sparks, sorry no deal.

Best of luck ferrica!

Thought I was paying too much for molasses in Australia, but that still probably works out better than popping down the offy for a bottle. Hope it works well for you and you can keep your hands off it long enough to give it time to be better than the swill at the offy

Yeah, I'm with all above. You can make a concentrated favour bomb, but it will use all the alcohol you put into it. You'll be left with a very high proof, very concentrated flavour addition. If you want that flavour bomb, you've got to give up the alcohol to it and leave whatever is left in the stil...

Ended up getting pretty much bang on 4L at 68%. Chucked some oak into it and now it's time to wait. Not too far off my initial estimate of 5L at 60%. (Works out to be about 4.5L at 60) Definitely not as clean a taste as the fancy molasses stuff I've run before, watering down a taster to about 30% it...

Ok, I think I messed up the tails cut... I'm pretty sure I cut too soon. Got about 4L of what I think will be hearts, was getting a flavour I didn't quite like though, so ramped up the power into a jug for feints. Just tested the output, was still at about 50% ABV. After running another litre, I kno...

If you can, get a power controller. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, digital etc. A simple potentiometer, like a dimmer switch, works well.

Makes cuts on the spirit run a lot easier with less smearing, and more keepers.

Might go for a little of the mid to late stuff, I'll have another smell and taste in the morning when my house doesn't smell like a rum distillery:)

Running the spirit run of this now, the early-mid heads smell reminiscent to Bundy. They've definitely got that jaggy harshness that Bundy rum has, sort of fruity, sort of plastic almost smell. I guess that is what makes Bundy rum though, but I'm aiming a little bit higher than that mark. Plus, I do...

I'm happy with the money I spent on mine, but I did pick up a second hand one for $200au. Haven't touched the column that came with it for a while now, found it very fiddly from the get go. First I fitted a pot with shotgun on top, made good stripping runs then ran it through the column. Then got a ...