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Best to just heat the fitting. You’ll get the hang of it.

You should’ve seen my first soldering back in the day…fugly.

Agreed, SBB. Hadn’t had my coffee yet…

Wow dreamer, that’s harsh. I think everyone here wants to help, but helping isn’t just spoon feeding. When folks try to direct you to searching the site they are correct. Not only will you find your specific answer, but many times I find that in the old threads also answer questions I didn’t know I ...

Don’t heat the actual joint. Looks like you burned your flux and that’s why the solder didn’t run smoothly.

You did use flux, right?

I’m not sure that dextrose offers any advantage…but I wouldn’t see why it would be detrimental, either.

+1 jonny

I don’t see any way that it would be a problem…

6 inch column takes a pretty large boiler charge…

Mashes use grains or fruits (must) as the primary source of sugars for fermentation. Washes use more refined sources of sugars.

I suppose the language may vary with beer brewing…

Im super new here but ive noticed that maybe we nitpicking a tad with the mash/wash language. Shouldnt your end mash specific gravity and wash gravity be the same thing? Not sure if you’re distinguishing mash (sugars from grains) from wash (sugars from sugar, molasses, etc.) or asking if both types...

Ummm…sorcery?

I’m surprised that your SG was so high, as straight cracked corn usually needs a good cooking to gelatinize properly. A finer grind will help.

If you have a grain cap, it’s fermenting.

I wouldn’t sweat the infection…

air balloons everywhere

Said my wife

If I read this right you didn’t have many tails because you were re running a finished spirit…

If you do the same mash the same way and distill the same way you will get a feel for where cuts are made. But that only tells you when to start incremental collection in jars, to later separate or include by taste. For example you might collect the first gallon in a jug before separating in jars fo...

I would recommend testing your well water. I’m fortunate to live in and area with plenty of calcium and magnesium so I don’t add anything to my water but grain (but still add shells to a sugar wash).

You don’t know what you got until you test….

Ferm solutions

+1 ss

Prevention of a pH crash is way better than correcting one. I like crushed oyster shells in a paint strainer bag. Add it at the start of a sugar wash no matter the starting pH.

The peat level varies among malts, and I tend to do an all peated batch to later blend with an unpeated barley product. That way you can adjust the blend the way you like. I suppose you could blend to your best guess with the low wines, but I like them as two separate spirit runs.

School fees :mrgreen: On the side, would sugar washes benefit from continual aeration? Absolutely not. The initial phase of fermentation is the budding/ reproduction phase of yeast. This is an aerobic phase, and benefit greatly from initial aeration. The next phase of fermentation is anaerobic. Aer...

Billy Strings is quite the talent. I’m not a bluegrass fan, but he knocked me out…

In a fish tank, my guess is lactic infections are significantly less desirable….

I’d guess it’s more likely a lactic infection. If it’s a whiskey wash this can even be somewhat desirable.

I get big corn flavor from my AG corn mashes. Just kicking around a different take since it’s panty dropper season…

I’ve got a bunch of neutral, so what the hell…

So indulge me for a sec… I’ve been anxiously awaiting the ripening of sweet corn in my neck of the woods. I’ve been disappointed (as were most posters) in the threads describing sweet corn mashes. But how to harness the goodness of sweet corn without mashing a truckload of it? Would a maceration of...

So indulge me for a sec… I’ve been anxiously awaiting the ripening of sweet corn in my neck of the woods. I’ve been disappointed (as were most posters) in the threads describing sweet corn mashes. But how to harness the goodness of sweet corn without mashing a truckload of it? Would a maceration of ...

White rum isn’t going to be super rummy. I’ve never tried using the rum oils as sweet water, but I’m sure that would kick up the rum flavor. It’s collected after the nasty tails, I don’t think that it would cloud your liquor…

Andrew_90 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:40 am Houston we have a problem.


Do I wait it out or is there a remedial action I can take?

Definitely wait it out. It’s not the end of the world if it stalled. But if gravity dropping it’s not stalled.

BTW I’m not overly concerned about a pH of 4.2 most of the time…

I use a 4”x72” packed with ceramic aquarium filter. I crawl the heads collection but when I’m clearly hearts I collect at almost 2 gallons per hour at 93% or so. That’s on 35-40% low wines. But the neutral is clean. I slow down whe I expect tails and shut down at first inkling of tails. I say that w...