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If you can find a vineyard in your area you might be able to get grapes at a reasonable price. 200# will make about 12 gallons of wine to charge the boiler so 500# would roughly yield two strips and a wine top up for a 1.5 in a 15g boiler. 500# of grapes is about ten five gallon buckets. I purchased...

I see evidence of passive reflux on my small still. It has a tall wide riser and the bulk of a spirit run takeoff is in the high to mid 80%abv. Still very flavorful though however i’ve not done a side by side spirit run comparison.

Interested in what you find.

Cheers,
j

That is your dunder. You can keep some to help lower the ph of your next rum run. And if you let it "grow" it can add some esters and thus flavors. I don't have much experience with dunder pits but some people add banana peals or other fruit and let it "rot". Search for dunder p...

Contra, that’s some serious aging protocol! I hope the flavors have extracted and and melded to your liking over that period :) the bottles do have a story. Cameras are to the eyes like microphones are to the ears - both of which are wired deep into the soul. Use them in anger. Use them in love. IMG...

I'd suggest an off-site email thread instead of a group DM on the forum for the bulk of comms. I think we're limited to 100 msg's stored on the forum and the bandwidth eats that up pretty quick which then requires deleting msg's to allow new ones to flow. Happy to trade emails in PM and I would like...

I just do this as a hobby! But the idea of ​​having your own old rum. Which has matured for a really long time. And being able to drink it as I get older really appeals to me! Especially when I found a recipe that I like best! Thank you very much for the quick answers! I just want to be able to sto...

I’d suggest that for 190l of product 300-500 isn’t bad once you consider the considerable effort and materials that goes into producing 190l of barrel strength product. For reference: A new five gallon gibbs barrel including shipping is just under 250. For five gallons of barrel strength or about 7 ...

I’m currently running a 4” 3-plate flute with average bourbon results. My product lacks complexity so I’m probably stripping a lot of flavor. I have some xtra copper and want to try a thumper. I’ve read that a pot still + thumper is 1.5 distillations. Would a 4” packed pot still with some minor ref...

This does sound good! A little select honey to back-sweeten might work well along with a very small amount of cinnamon

If you can get apple peels into the vapor path it will help with flavor - if not, try putting them into the boiler.

Cheers,
jonny

I don't use mason jars for aging due to the stock materials on the underside of the lid not being 100% stainless or PTFE material. I don;t want plastics to be in contact with my likker for extended aging periods (or short periods for that matter). I did pick up some toasted oak and cherry discs fitt...

Read up on rye a bit. You might want to mash is separately at a lower beta glucan rest temp like 110*F then add it to the 145-150*F when you add your malts and gelatinize the corn with boiling water and high temp enzymes.

Cheers!
-jonny

For distilling AG's, the grain bill is part of the recipe. Double distillation, 1.5 distillation, recycling feints, spirit run parameters, cuts, aging, wood treatment, finishing, blending, etc are all parts of the recipe (or Protocol) too as well as still type/size and how you run it... Cheers! -jonny

This is your first TPSW?
What was the ferment environment like?
SF / FG?
Temp?
What yeast?
Duration?

What’s the pink stuff you cleaned it with?

You said new copper packing. Did you clean it with a sac run?

Cheers,
Jonny

I did a search and found 0 results so, let's talk about pecan wood. I've lightly charred pecan wood and put in a jar with favorable results. I wonder what a mellowing/flavoring over pecan charcoal would do. Has anyone tried it? Think I'm going to try a bit of my next run and see how it works. I kno...

Welcome to HD and +1 on Subbrew's comments regarding capacity and info to be explored here on HD. I have a 2.5g still for small batch and gin type macerations. It yields about 1/2g barrel strength after cuts when charged with low wines so with a 1g boiler you might expect about a liter of good likke...

Welcome to the group of registered HD users! Glad you have spent some time getting up to speed and looking forward to your input :) There's a number of phpBB features that I feel are very beneficial for registered users. The "New Posts" query in the upper left quick links dropdown is one I...

Welcome to the crew Grim. Looking forward to which direction you go for your setup - or directions - because the rabbit holes might tend to branch at certain points and sometimes loop back on one another…

Cheers,
J

. You were light on the DP of your grain bill. I didn't do the math on diastatic power and I trust TB's estimate that you were a bit light on DP for best conversion. I do find that even when using malts it's good insurance to add adequate Gluco Amylase in order to ensure best conversion - even doub...

The Baker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 25, 2023 2:00 am Deplorable said, '
charging to a level 4.'

I guess that means "Charring".

maybe the dreaded autocorrect?

Geoff

Just maybe he's charging it with fire?

lol,
jonny

When stripping with a straight pot still I'll strip until my average low wines abv is 25-30% like SB mentioned. This is close to 0% off the spout for me or approximately 212*F vapor temp at the top of my riser (i don't have a thermo in there anymore but consistently saw that temp when I did and used...

Fingernail polish sound like early heads or fores... Plenty of folks use charred oak sticks in glass.. If it is fores you could re-distill it and take a fores cut. Five gallons would be a bit much to lose.. I'm not convinced that the barrels are completely unusable but I haven't reached a 4-5 use th...

Almost have everything to get my kit running, just time to finalize the power source. My initial plan was to plug into the 4 prong dryer outlet in the basement, but then I learned the receptacles can wear out easily from constant plugging and unplugging. Bummer. So now I'm thinking I need to add a ...

Really? Three uses and done? Can’t neutral barrels be used for storage with fresh charred adjunct staves added as needed? I don’t intend on retiring my BadMo’s and Gibbs if I can get fresh oak into them other ways… I’m currently experimenting with using a stave packed mason jar topped up w/likker to...

I don't see any reason to put feints on oak. At least not until after they've been run as an all-feints run. I do it for all my feints and it makes me feel like I've made progress when it sits around for a year and get's all dark :) Sometimes I take a bottle of the oaked feints and put it in the pa...

Welcome to HD! Lots of very useful info here and an active stillin' community :) For corn mashing look up SCD'd Large Batch Mashing technique. Works great with just boiling water, hi temp enzymes for gelatinization and thinning the mash, gluco amylase enzymes for converting starch to sugars, and mal...

IMG_2069.jpeg I recycle feints in every spirit run for whiskey or bourbon. Spirit run this morning included three gallons of feints cut aged for a year on oak and cut specifically for that purpose. 11g low wines, 3g feints, and fresh ferment to top it up. Feints cut from this run will go on oak and...

IMG_2066.jpeg IMG_2068.jpeg Harvesting some 2yo red white and blue corn 5+ grain from the gibbs. I shouldn’t be testing this while running the still but damn it’s smooth af ;) 118pf barrel exit, approximately 2yrs in a five gallon gibbs. Testing and angels left me about 2.5g @ 118 pf (mostly testin...

Water doesn’t turn into etoh. Grain does turn into etoh. Once I wrapped my head around that I stopped worrying so much about SG and focused more on the consistency of the mash and what is easiest for me to work with :) 2#/gallon give or take depending on the day and not sweating the details too much...

Did you do a stripping run first? Sounds like it puked if it came out amber.

Spirit run should be clear.

Cheers,
j