Home Distiller

What they are calling High Wines, we call heads, so 75/25 is heads/water. What they are calling Low Wines, we call tails, so 50/50 is tails/water, however, the first retort may also contain some wash, dunder, heads, whatever the distiller desires. Where do you know? https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/...

Dissolving copper in a bit of car battery acid, would that work? Or is there lead in a fresh bought bottle? I don't think it works. The acid will only solve the copper oxide. Like any acid, you also could use the much less dangerous citric acid for this. If you want to dissolve copper you have to o...

By the diagram it states low wines 50/50 and high wines 75/25, does that mean what? wash plus low and high wines, trub/lees? 50/50 means 50%abv and 75/25 means 75%abv. At least this would make sense, because this matches to informations of other double retorts setups. To dilute the feints 50/50 and...

Bagasso and me...now adding copper in the boiler or...between distillations has become a regular part of our process. Can you quantify? I tried to read every post, but fail to grasp your conclusions.. eg I produce 25l low wines and store for a few months till I make another batch. I also store 25l ...

The switching on and off should produce a little "click"-sound. It's probably easy to hear next run. 1500W is way enough for a 5l still. So even if you only have 1000W in average because of the cycling, it should be fine. And if the output doesn't change much during the run, everything is ...

It's thermostate controlled. So it switches on and off all the time. No way to get for this cheap price something without cycling. Only very old used hotplates are perhaps available on ebay which doesn't cycle. And without sandwich bottom the hotplate will "think" it's very hot inside the ...

Ok, a 1/2" product condenser is probably enough. Depends on wattage of course. And a bit on water flow. Don't use more water than needed. In general lab glass liebigs are not for 5 gal boilers with appropiate wattage, right? Sorry, I have lost the overview when exactly it worked and when not, w...

I correct here my post: Many here run 2" with 2kW. Somwhere at 2.5kW perhaps it starts flooding. 2" diameter means 3.14 square inch. 3/4" means 0.44 square inch. 0.44 / 3.14 x 2kW = 280W. 280W is a good wattage for a 3/4 column. To use 280W instead of 2kW means, your runs will need 7 ...

Alchemist,
of course when you remove the reflux condenser also a 3/4" column works well. Steam doesn't flood.
And of course a 1/4" inner tube for a product condenser is way too small. It's dangerous IMO.
Why are you wasting your time with such dimensions? No way to get this running properly.

I think of a siphon. Or sucking with a drinking straw from an almost empty glass. Is this wrong?

But a surging sound is typical for flooding. You could try to run it without packing. If this works, try looser packing. All in all a 5gal boiler is large enough for a 2" column. If a 2" column works best with 2kW, a 3/4 column will work at 750W best. Edit: Wrong information. I will correc...

Hey der wo, try using potassium bicarb? It raises PH (reduces acidity) within seconds and is relatively potent (I use about 1/4c to raise 5 gallons PH from 4.5 to 5). Then it was a alcoholic wash, not a vinegar wash I think, right? An alcoholic wash and a vinegar wash are very different. Of course ...

A little update of my two vinegar washes: The one with the added yeast and vinegar mother fermented as expected. After a while silence a new fermentation started. I have bubbles like soap bubbles on the surface. No pellicle. But something is producing a gas, probably CO²? The smell is good. The one ...

Weegie, yes, this way or similar work all those double retort stills. The alcohol strengths vary from distillery to another. And of course cuts too. Salty, yes, I also know only one distillery using vinegar. But I know some scientific papers about this method. So it looks like it's not unique. But I...

Salty, It's not always easy to find out, if a distillery uses vinegar. Because it sounds a bit like cheating. Same like liquid enzymes in Bourbon distilleries, they won't tell you. But scientific papers would mention it. And Arroyo doesn't mention it. He neither mentions muck pits nor vinegar. But C...

Arroyo analysed many Rums. The more esters it has, the more acids it has too. It's true, that acids come over by distillation. And it's true, that time esterifies those acids. An unaged raw Rum has something like 5 times more esters than acids. Those acids don't seem to spoil the Rum. At least in su...

Now I understand you. Interesting arguments. :thumbup: It is true that an alcoholic ferment after a while will become an acetic one and then perhaps a butyric or perhaps a mold infection starts. But the butyric bacteria doesn't need the vinegar infection before. For example dunder doesn't contain ac...

Forget all of this. Vinegar in your boiler will likely result in vinegar in your collection jar SaltyStaves, you participated in many of the infections or high ester threads. That's why I wonder about this comment. Adding vinegar to a Rum distillation is one of the tools to increase esters. It's do...

You get more fusel alcohols. The good thing is, that the esters become more interesting ones. The bad thing is that those fusel alcohols itself aren't very yummy. This means you have to encourage esterification. Then you will have a bit less ugly fusels and you will have esters which cover the fusel...

I would use it at the stripping runs. Not because here it works best, but because if it was not enough, you can still add a bit to the spirit run. Before, during or after fermentation? I am unsure. On the one hand the fermentation will cause esters to evaporate, so you will loose many of them. On th...

I think you know my opinion: When playing with infections, the yeast selection is not important, at least for the taste. Maybe stressing the yeast will have a strong effect. So I would not necessarily follow the recommended maximum of 77 F.

It does cost more time. Because you have to do a direct comparision (one mash the rye or wheat together with the corn, another mash the rye or wheat after cooking the corn) or the opinion will remain a speculation.

Yes. But you can also use any other cheap vinegar. You will not taste a difference I think. I checked it out by neutralizing the acid of the cane vinegar with lime. And yes, it smelled a bit like molasses or raw cane sugar then. Perhaps like if you would stir a teaspoon molasses in a liter water. Wh...

I thought I would stop by; I was in an Asian grocery today and saw something that made me think of you all. A liter of 'cane vinegar' for about $1.50, right there for sale on the shelf. And how does it tatse/smell? I buyed two different ones from Asian stores. Both are pretty neutral. I don't smell...

There are a number of reasons you don't want to cook your small grains outside of their proper gelatinization range: thermal decomposition, scorching, and above all, creation of objectionable flavors. I doubt that it makes really a difference. It's finetuning perhaps. I think Odin's comment in this...

Homebrewers have to think more about tannines than distillers. And even if it would really go over by distillation, the most tannines would come from the wood anyway. And your grain bill will contain only 20-30% barley? Mostly corn? Then there will be even less problems (if there are any) with tanni...

Premashing. NCHooch's Carolina Bourbon mentions it. For me it was the key to a good conversion. The other key was to remove the BIAB btw.

When you are interested in a Whisky, it's always good to look, if ralfy has made a tasting video. E voila, he has: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMnV7zVSo3o" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow There are many Whisky tasting youtube channels. I may not k...

Then post him a few links with corn gelatinization temps. If he doesn't accept it, I would end the conversation.

It depends where you come from. If you are a brewer and you brew corn beer, you buy flaked corn from a homebrew shop. Those flakes are pressed with hot steam, what means they are already gelatinized. Same like horsefeed flaked corn BTW. But enough gelatinized for full conversion? IMO not enough for ...