Home Distiller

Welcome to HD and look forward to your distilling experiences! Please post some pics of your still and setup in another thread when you get a sec. It's recommended to do the vinegar cleaning run and sacrificial alcohol run before running any keeper product and purchase a fermenter at least 3x the si...

It's not wasted - The ethanol gods will be extra happy and shine good spirits down on you in the future. Some might say they prefer a nice AG over a sugar wash? I know I do!

Cheers,
jonny

A little bit of explanation: Corn mashes can also produce a thick oily substance that some folks say looks like drops of mercury or a metallic kind of substance - Depends on the corn. Lot's of stillers put a cotton ball in the funnel to catch that and prevent it from getting into the low wines but I...

I did an an apple grain mash and also added honey. Heated apple cider/juice to mash temp and mashed the barley with it then topped up with honey & water to get SG to about 1.070. Apple cider by itself was 1.050 so mashing the barley with it made it a bit higher that I wanted so I used water/honey bl...

Is this the first alcohol run? If so that's a sacrificial run and you should chuck it. That's why it's called a sacrificial run.

Cheers,
jonny

To get a good reading of grape or fruit chemistry (including SG) I'll take a 1 cup sample of the must and run it through a mixer to best integrate all the liquids then strain out and/or squeeze any solids with a series of sieves and cheese cloth then warm up to room temp (microwave), degas by shakin...

Welcome to HD! I swear i licked for ten yrs before i joined up.

*lurked lol

Cheers,
Jonny

It might be smearing? Can you post some photos of your setup? How are you running it and doing your cuts?

Cheers,
Jonny

Did you add it to the low wines or the must/wash? Did you follow a strip/spirit protocol? Low wines can be pretty nasty but they clean up real nice in the spirit run.

Cheers,
Jonny

I put a couple drops of red wine in my S style airlocks so I can see from across the room whether they’re trending positive or negative pressure.

Cheers!
-jonny

I like the large mouth vessels for larger pieces of staves (not cut down to fingers) and have several one gallon size.

Wonder if you could get a cork to fit the 10l jar?

Cheers,
Jonny

This could be a very useful alerting mechanism if for instance a certain batch of feed corn were say for example to be found to be contaminated with high levels of pesticides. I’d like to know if i was feeding that to my yeasties.

Cheers!
-jonny

When you mash try to do a starch test with iodine to confirm that all starches are converted.

Cheers,
jonny

Good to hear Chauncey! We’ve got a room at the andrew jackson and reservations at oceana grill over thanksgiving and looking forward to a couple days in the quarter.

Cheers,
Jonny

Depends on whether you want to ferment on or off grain. I ferment on-grain normally and squeeze it when complete. I prefer to maximize extraction and feel like that helps.

Others ferment off grain and sparge like a beer.

Commercially it’s also done both ways.

Cheers!
-jonny

You can freeze the kale. I don't think it takes much. Super-Kleer usually works great on my wines if I even use it but I also sometimes start the ferment with a bentonite slurry. Time is the best clearing agent. Glad you're moving on from the turbo and charcoal dance. Better sooner than later. Cheer...

I make wine so have a bunch of wine bottles and also use either the reusable whiskey corks or a regular wine cork. I've got a handful of decanters too and will keep other cool looking whiskey bottles that I can re-label. If it's etched or I can't remove the branding then it goes in the recycle bin.....

I'll put my hand under the spout and rub em together like it's sanitizer and cup them into my nose to get a big wiff too.. Love it!

Cheers,
jonny

Here's a some in the Tried & True Recipes forum:
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=14

Welcome to HD and read all the beginners info till your eyes bleed lol!

Got any pics of your setup?

Cheers,
jonny

Bollox! It's either the angels sent by the whiskey gods taking nips along the way or you've got teenagers... What you need is a camera!

Cheers,
jonny

ps - congratulations on the barrel!

If you haven’t gotten it yet. If you already have it try packing some copper mesh in there to conduct a little better.

I don't have a particular thread - just what I've read about making sake. Ferment takes about a month and is typically at a lower temp and the rice additions are made over a period of days as well instead of all at once - from what I gather the conversion of starches to sugars doesn't happen all at ...

I have several "Distillery T-Shirts" of places I have done "The Tour" and no-one around here gives a sh*t what's on your T-Shirt. Just my $0.02!
Cheers,
jonny

My understanding is that gravity is not necessarily the best indicator in this koji scenario. I've done Sake's a couple times using koji/yeast and it takes a while for the koji to convert the rice to sugars. The yeast converts the sugars to alcohol as the starches are converted to sugars. This is on...

+1 on adding grocery store oats and maybe even a small (5-10%) addition of a specialty malt. Sometimes I’ll toast the oats in the oven. Gelatinization and liquid enzymes ensure a good conversion. Feed corn is cheap @ $7/50# here but i’ll also use grocery store corn meal 5# bags.

Cheers!
-jonny

The open design with a helmet on top would be pretty cool. Say 15-20x 1/2 tubes on a 4” fitting with some area for good air flow. 48”tall? 60”?

Cheers,
-jonny

Acidity increases as pH value decreases.
Alkalinity decreases as pH value decreases.

Cheers!
-jonny

So this is essentially an air cooled dephlegmator/column section?

Cheers,
jonny

When I do a large ferment I'll start a couple days early rehydrating one pack (or cleaned slurry from my fridge), add some stovetop low SG mash, move it up to a 5 gallon bucket and add some more mash (still low'ish SG) - Starting it all a couple days early with nutes (boiled yeast and/or fermaid dep...

I was wondering if anyone had used packed material (eg; copper mesh/etc) and incorporated j-tube or similar downcommers into the packed arrangement to separate sections of flooding/fluid-bath.

How might this affect the stacking and output WRT a packed column?

Cheers!
jonny