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Thanks for your input NZ Chris, always nice to see your contribution. Maybe I should bury the jamaican style rum I made in the yard haha. After the rum has had time to settle, I've changed my mind. I probably will do this again because I'm very happy with it. It tastes like plantation 3 star which ...

As previously mentioned in this thread, added sugar and glycerine are the secret ingredient in "premium" rums out of South America. Most of these rums are dosed up to 20g/L of sugar since the new EU rules on rum. They also add tend to add vanillin, things like prune wine etc. If you search...

Question: what yeast are you planning to use? I use Hornindal Kveik in my Panela rum, throws lots of flavorful esters, get lots of dried fruit notes similar to prunes. I used bread yeast because I only had that and EC-1118. Next time I'll probably do a bit more research on alternative yeasts. You c...

Purists (e.g. SBB) leave now, you will see nothing that you like here! I have made a lot of rum in the last six months and I'm now waiting for it to age. Predominantly I have used a slightly modified version of SBB's rum recipe, but using a method more similar to Pugirum where I store and use deep t...

Having just had a devil of a stuck rum ferment (adjusted pH, more nutrients, more yeast, diluted multiple times... bastard is stuck at 1.06 from an inital SG of about 1.075 I'm still trying to work out what the commercials do to avoid this issue. Seems to me that your problems are because you havnt...

Having just had a devil of a stuck rum ferment (adjusted pH, more nutrients, more yeast, diluted multiple times... bastard is stuck at 1.06 from an inital SG of about 1.075 and still isn't moving) and doing a deep-dive on it, from what I can work out rum dunder is full of potassium chloride. As you ...

Wine here is an order of magnitude cheaper than I can buy grapes or grape concentrate, and I like brandy and other distilled grape spirits. Here is the results of my research: If you put sulfites in wine, it's not removed by copper. This is clear. Most bulk white wines here probably have 100-200ppm ...

Hi Odin, do you have any idea how much sulfite is too much? I think normally a dry white would have around 100ppm. Wondering if I need to reduce this with hydrogen peroxide. I'm a bit confused about your numbers. If I have 30L of wine at 11% ABV, I will end up with 3 or 4L stripped. Then run again w...

How does one know if sulfites are a problem? Especially if you are distilling commercial wine it has to be the same as buying juice pails right? I have read on here that you should remove them with some food grade hydrogen peroxide before running, but I've also read that doing so strips flavour. I ...

I've got the brandy in progress. I recently ran a stripping run of some second wine grappa I made last year. I found it hard to find a clear point were the heads to hearts transition was to make the cut. Is this common? It's not as obvious as bourbon. I'm not really sure I'm happy about my confiden...

From what I can work out, at least one of the neurotoxic compounds in paw paw seeds are stable at 160 degrees celcius. I don't know acetogenins/polyketides carry over in distillation (someone else here might), but it's not an experiment I would fancy running by finding out if I got atypical Parkinso...

Ebay came before Amazon, but Amazon soon surpassed them. Its like a yard-sale or flea-market compared to a modern retail store. One sells predominately old used stuff, the other sells all new stuff. That used to be the case. These days eBay is merely a bunch of vendors rebadging stuff direct from C...

I speak French and can help with translating anything you need, but be warned that stuff like this is often passed on orally, not written down on the interwebs. I'm still planning on taking a tour at one of the Calvados distilleries. If I remember to ask (and the guide seems worth asking) I'll see ...

i've been using oak teas for years. it started off accidentally, where i had been aging on some sticks and forgot the last number of liters in the bottom of a SS barrel. there was actually more wood than booze.... about a year later it was like syrup. it was far too woody to enjoy in cup, so i thou...

Well it looks as if no one is going to respond to your thread. Not too many of us parlez français either. A quick answer would be no; not exactly. But yes in a roundabout way. People here do roast sticks of wood to different stages of “char” - which is similar. Others have taken chips and shavings ...

Most cheap commercial vodka has up to 1g/L of citric acid added, up to 2 g/L of sugar and small amounts of glycerol or sorbitol (<0.5%) for smoothness. Most expensive vodka probably still has the first two, although this is banned from Polish vodkas (and maybe other places). I will have to experimen...

Hi all, New here, just posted my intro in the welcome section. While I was doing some reading recently about whisky, I came in a round about way to discovering "le boise". Boise, if you are not familiar with it, is an additive to cognac and brandy to "correct" the tannins and mai...

Hi, Probably like most new members, I've been lurking around here for years but I've finally got enough questions that I can't find answers to that I have to create an account to ask them. So far I've just been making sugar shine with a mate's toxic old T500 but the more that breaks on it, the more ...