So, the answer was copper

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Bagasso
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Re: So, the answer was copper

Post by Bagasso »

der wo wrote:At least in acidic environment perhaps oxidized copper (patina) reacts more than clean copper because it gets solved more, so there are more copper ions in the mash.
It seem like I was partially wrong about copper's reactivity. Seems the main reaction is with oxygen and not much else. I say partially because dissolved oxygen and CO2 in water solutions might cause a constant oxidation and the acid striping it off, would, in practice end up with more than just the patina of the copper going in into solution.

The 100ml of wash with copper, left there since friday, is staring to get a blue-green tinge.

Those two points match with your observation, that the sulfur reduction needs much time.
Right, that is why I would like to take the variable of how much contact there is in the boiler or the condenser out of the equation.

Don't have the time now but I do intent to try a copper wire in the fermentor as soon as I get a chance.
Last edited by Bagasso on Tue Oct 11, 2016 12:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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SaltyStaves wrote:I think rinsing with water is important, but it doesn't seem to keep things from eventually building up.
It isn't build up. I detect it in the wash and just took a whiff of my coil and no salty cheese or much of anything, other than the smell that comes from copper and the oils in our hands.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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What, exactly, did you put in your latest musty wash?
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Bagasso wrote:Don't have the time now but I do intent to try a copper wire in the fermentor as soon as I get a chance.
I now filled a bottle of my pH 5.8 - 6 grain low wines and dropped in a copper pipe (75g). I want to distill it in one or two weeks. So the copper has much time to work. I keep you informed if I recognize something.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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NZChris wrote:What, exactly, did you put in your latest musty wash?
16 l water
2.75 kg sugar
3 tbs yeast red star dry bakers
1 tsp 20-20-20
1/2 cup wheat bran

Fermented dry in 5 days

ETA: As far as i remember they have all been musty to some degree.

Makes no difference to me now. I already have the solution.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Bagasso wrote:1 tsp 20-20-20
I've never used it, tasted it or smelled it and even if I had it would be from a different supplier. What does it smell & taste like?
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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NZChris wrote:What does it smell & taste like?
Don't recall right now and not near any but probably similar to bicarb. I'd imagine that it would be about the same as DAP.

I have not always used it. I suspected it could have been the problem a long time ago and started using grains and boiled yeast as nutes. That fault always seemed to be there.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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It turns out I have to buy some for my berry garden today, so I'll have taste. Five days is pretty quick so I might even try it in a wash sometime, but not with wheat bran as my only bran experiment didn't get passed by the Quality Controller (me).
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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I had the bran left over from who knows when. Actually wanted to free up the container it was in. It was a little off by itself but the batch before had been the same volume of water and sugar but had tomato paste and no 20-20-20 and took about 2 weeks and was just as musty, if not a little more.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Just had a check of my 6 day old TPW and it smells beautiful. Bloody ants have discovered a nice warm place under the lagging to start a nest and are bringing in eggs. The little bastards are going to die.

Might you be getting a bacterial infection?
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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I don't think so. Things usually go pretty fast. I've had 3 infections in the 8 or so years I have been stilling. 2 were lacto, with the white powdery growth on top and one way back that was a bad calc with the amount of sugar and it stuck I tried to split it and water it down but got one if those infections that produce butyric and smells like puke. This is not like that.

There have been a few times here on the forum where I repeat an old timer's phrase that good flavors cover bad flavors. The reason is that when I started pH treating it seemed like my runs would go from fores straight into tails. As if the heads were masking over the tails that seemed to come over throughout the entire run.

ETA: Back at home and made a beeline for the 20-20-20. The one I have smells a little stronger than table salt and taste like MSG but stronger/sharper but it doesn't have that savory smell that MSG has.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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So I put down a small batch on Tuesday night.

0.5 kg sugar
1 tsp 20-20-20
1 tbs dry bakers yeast
made up to 3l (approx. 10%ABV potential)

The secret ingredient was a 10 cm piece of copper wire. I'm guessing around 18-20 AWG. I don't have a gauge so I can't give an exact measurement.

It was a small batch since copper is known to be toxic to microorganisms, including yeast, but I had no way of knowing how much was too much and didn't want to risk a large batch. It hit 0.990 today "5th day fermenting" and it smells really clean. The copper didn't seem to give the yeast any problem at all.

If memory serves me, I have never had a batch smell this nice, of course, YMMV.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Bagasso wrote: 16 l water
2.75 kg sugar
3 tbs yeast red star dry bakers
1 tsp 20-20-20
1/2 cup wheat bran
Bagasso wrote:So I put down a small batch on Tuesday night.

0.5 kg sugar
1 tsp 20-20-20
1 tbs dry bakers yeast
made up to 3l (approx. 10%ABV potential)

The secret ingredient was a 10 cm piece of copper wire. I'm guessing around 18-20 AWG. I don't have a gauge so I can't give an exact measurement.
For 16l 1 tbs fertilizer and for 3l too? And comparatively much more yeast for the 3l wash?
Lack of nutrients or yeast is a possible reason for sulfur smell. And IMO 1 tbs is not much for 16l.
So either it is the copper wire or it is the higher nutrients and yeast content causing the better quality.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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der wo wrote:For 16l 1 tbs fertilizer and for 3l too?
Sorry, I made a mistake it was 1/4 tsp of 20-20-20 in the 3l batch.

Also, I have pitched up to 1/2 cup of yeast and 1 tbs 20-20-20 (and/or boiled yeast, tomato paste, different grains as nutes) per 16l-20L batch and the higher yeast and nutrient content never helped.

Although it isn't scientific, if the yeast easily ferment to 10%ABV in 5 days why would you, generally speaking, think that there are a lack of nutrients?
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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I don't doubt your observation. I only want to eliminate the last other possibilities. In my experience yeast needs no nutrients to convert much sugar, "a bit" nutrients to convert everything with a normal speed, "a bit more" to speed up and "much" that there is no stage with sulfuric smell. This sulfuric stage is after two days of fermentation normally and then the smell disappears normally. Because it disappears, I don't think, this is the problem of your mashes. But I wanted to clear it and see what other perhaps write about.

I will definetely try out, what a copper scrubbie does in my next mash.
With the copper pipe in the low wines I will have results in a few days or a week.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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der wo wrote:I don't doubt your observation. I only want to eliminate the last other possibilities.
I don't mean to sound aggressive. I just want it to be understood that I have been distilling for years and have tried every bit of advice offered here except doing all grain.
In my experience yeast needs no nutrients to convert much sugar, "a bit" nutrients to convert everything with a normal speed, "a bit more" to speed up and "much" that there is no stage with sulfuric smell. This sulfuric stage is after two days of fermentation normally and then the smell disappears normally. Because it disappears, I don't think, this is the problem of your mashes. But I wanted to clear it and see what other perhaps write about.
I saw you mention that above. The problem in my washes was that "it", if "it" is the same thing, never cleared. Maybe you won't see a difference in your final wash because it corrects itself.
I will definetely try out, what a copper scrubbie does in my next mash.
With the copper pipe in the low wines I will have results in a few days or a week.
Of course it would be nice if others tried it and saw if there was anything to it.

I remember people talking about "sugar bite" and, like NZChris mentioned before, some of the descriptors used on-line don't really describe things, for example, "sugar bite", people say that when they do sugar washes their wash ends up "cidery". Read this on homebrew (beer) sites as well. Some thread here had someone asking if anyone knew how they could get rid of that "homebrewed" smell from their products and we have no way of knowing if we are talking about the same thing or not.

This little experiment got me thinking about a post/thread made by raketemensch about getting something so nice from the fermentor that you just skip the still and instead pasteurize and bottle.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

Post by der wo »

One week since I filled from the same low wines two one liter bottles. In one of them I have a copper pipe. No blue or green color after the week. But today I opened it, filled two noising glasses and took a few sniffs. The bottle with the copper did a little fizzle when opening, the other not. So probably there has happened a reaction.

!It is fantastic!

It is definetely a difference. The "copperized" low wines are cleaner. Cleaner from what I describe yeasty tails smell. And I am 99% sure, this smell has only downsides to the final spirit.
But "sugar bite" is different IMO, "homebrewed" I am not sure, "musty" is a good word.

Hard to believe that this thread is the first one about it. The most threads/posts only say, that we need "some copper" in the vapor path and more copper wouldn't hurt.

It's the smell which usually hinders me to go deeper in the tails. I stop when this smell arises.
Less yeast tails smell -> less rectification needed or longer hearts -> either cleaner result or more good tails without more bad tails. And a bit more yield.
But at least some of this smell disappears fast with aging. So perhaps partially the benefit is, that you get a good aged spirit faster. And it would help you much with cuts, because it would be easier to cut after some aging.

I don't know if copperizing low wines is the best method or if copper in the mash would bring more faster. But treating low wines allows a 100% trustworthy comparision. Splitting a mash and ferment one with and one without copper not.
So I really recommend to try it once. If you have some waiting low wines, try it out. It is no effort, we spent often much more work for less results.

My still is not mainly copper but I have:
-Potstill for stripping: The potstill head (filled with a copper scrubbie) and the liebig are copper. And I have a copper agitator.
-LM column for everything else: 1/3 of the downer packing is copper. Everything over the packing is copper. And I use the copper agitator here too.
-For mashing grain I also use the copper agitator.
Not much copper compared to a Scotch distillery, but more than many here have.

I now will copperize all my low wines and will try it with the next mashes.


Thank you much Bagasso, IMO it is a huge detail you found!
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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That's an interesting test on the low wines Der Wo. I'll give my current batch of BW a rest with some copper in it. Unfortunately, I won't have two spirit runs worth so I won't have a control sample to compare it to.

Copper in the wash, or having a copper fermenter, can interfere with the yeast, but it shouldn't do any harm to put some copper in it towards the end of the ferment.

I'll try both with my current batch, but unfortunately/fortunately, it already smells beautiful, with no noticeable faults. I haven't got any of the previous BW left to compare it with :(
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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der wo wrote:It is definetely a difference. The "copperized" low wines are cleaner. Cleaner from what I describe yeasty tails smell. And I am 99% sure, this smell has only downsides to the final spirit.
Good to hear that it made a difference.
But "sugar bite" is different IMO, "homebrewed" I am not sure, "musty" is a good word.
I understand. I was just using examples of how difficult it is to express what our senses perceive through just words.

I think I said it above but what used to confuse me was that I would get what I thought of as tails after a couple 100 ml.

I dropped the piece of copper in my cleared wash just on a feeling of "let's see what happens" but, after reading the article on ss vs copper in stills, the terms "sulfury", "meaty" and "tailsy" as descriptors of the flaw made things click. They all stem from the same factor, sulfur.
I don't know if copperizing low wines is the best method or if copper in the mash would bring more faster.
I'm not sure either but it takes no time to add a small piece of copper into the fermentor so, why not do both? The only reason why I would add copper to the wash and not low wines would be if I could get away with a single run.

I took the 10cm piece of wire that I had in my 3l batch and the batch isn't as clean as I thought it would be but it is much better. I also expected the wire to be a little more pitted or corroded but it looks like it was just cleaned. I was going to say that a copper scrubbie might be too much but now I'm not sure.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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I'm cleaning up a dirty old piece of flexible copper pipe that I found. It's in citric acid at the moment and I'll put it in my barely fermenting BW when I'm happy with it, then in the low wines once they're done. I've never had a sulfur smell out of my still, only ever smelling it from another distiller's copperless SS column.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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NZChris wrote:I'm cleaning up a dirty old piece of flexible copper pipe that I found.
That is one of the uncertainties, clean or tarnished?

The wire on the bottom is what I pulled out of my fermentor and of course it is shiny due to the acidic wash. Theory says that co2 and the low pH should oxidize and then dissolve the clean copper but I have no way of knowing if it works this way or if the only thing dissolved was the tarnish. Might explain why I felt a little more cleaning would have been beneficial.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Just a couple of points I would like to make. One is most of the credible folk that claim to make a good product in a single ran pot are using some form of doubler or tripler in the form of thumpers etc, I'm not sure you can really class that product as low wines or even singlings at all as they have essentially been distilled multible times in a single run. They are no more low wines or new make than what you would get from a plated column. I'm not going to pick at scabs raising the copper in the descending issue as this could never be an issue with either double ran or doubler ran product.
I live in a previously volcanic area much disturbed by a long running gold rush and world famous for its mineral springs. The water here is reasonably high is sulphur yet no one around here reports sulphur issues in their product. The answer indeed is copper and the water/ferment will determine how much is needed. A few guys around here even utilize copper boilers, ie EG I think Blanik and a few others. I don't but all my stills have always been pretty much 100% copper, my 2" potstill had 2 ft of column and prolly 6" more in the head plus 6 ft in the liebig, never had a sulphur issue in my final product yet
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Interesting observations de wer. I would like to hear if more volume of copper for a shorter period of time would yield the same result for you.

I use copper tube in my stainless steel boiler (and copper funnels for pouring the wash/low wines into it), but it is only in contact with the low wines for an hour or two at the most before the heat is applied. So I don't really know its benefits (although I've had sulfur washes but no sulfur smelling products).
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Bagasso wrote:That is one of the uncertainties, clean or tarnished?
I'd like to see a copper fermenter between ferments. Does anyone still do that? My research concludes it's a bad idea as it comes close to stopping the yeast multiplying.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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SaltyStaves wrote:Interesting observations de wer. I would like to hear if more volume of copper for a shorter period of time would yield the same result for you.

I use copper tube in my stainless steel boiler (and copper funnels for pouring the wash/low wines into it), but it is only in contact with the low wines for an hour or two at the most before the heat is applied. So I don't really know its benefits (although I've had sulfur washes but no sulfur smelling products).
I don't think the short contact to a copper funnel helps much.
"sulfur washes but no sulfur smelling products" Yes, same like me. But how smells the sulfur after distillation? The brewers boil their wort to reduce sulfur compounds like DMS. If they don't, they describe the taste of the beer "cooked vegetables". But smell cooked vegetables sulfury? No. But at least this compound boils off and comes over in our spirit, because we don't boil our converted mash normally before fermentation (I tried it two times. And yes, the spirit is cleaner. But you have to add enzymes after boiling or you get unfermentable sugars. And I don't know, what's after aging. If the spirit of the boiled wort is really better. And btw phenols also boil off. So if you make peated malt, boiling will reduce the ppm too, sorry off-topic) How does it taste in the spirit? I don't know. And then all the sulfur compounds of the yeast. I don't know, how they taste in the spirit.
So I am confused and have started to think about all bad tastes found in spirits perhaps being sulfury compounds.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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I also like my old spirits. But I have to make cuts as we all have. I have to make cuts, because there are unpleasant aromas arising. If there aren't any, I didn't have to make cuts. So "I never had a sulfur problem" or "all my mashes normally don't have a bad taste" is no argument here IMO. Generally I think it is not possible to handle with arguments against this idea. Try it or don't. If you try it, it's a good idea if you have an untreated sample for comparision. Treating a mash would have more motion around the copper and a lower pH. Treating low wines has more comparability, no problem for the yeast (if there is any) and you can give the reaction much more time.

Of course also Bagasso has not produced only shit since he joined here in 2009. I think he found a regular detail he doesn't like as we all even if we like our drinks much more than the store bought stuff recognize faults in our spirits. And probably if he never had found a cure he never had written about. And perhaps he has another palate more sensitive to this detail. Perhaps because he noticed the regularity and now is fixed to this smell. And then perhaps he drinks a cheap JB, notices a dozen faults but not the one he notices in his own and is unhappy.

Of course I don't expect that I don't need to make cuts in future. But I expect a few changes and benefits.

Polished or unpolished copper? Because some say it MUST be polished and other say it MUST be patinated (see earlier in this thread) I think both is possible.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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der wo wrote:So I am confused and have started to think about all bad tastes found in spirits perhaps being sulfury compounds.
Exactly, that is why I mentioned the article posted earlier in the thread because the descriptive terms used were "sulfury", "meaty" and "tailsy" and the all copper still reduced all of them. It wasn't just the obviously sulfury flaw.

I have had a few batches (less than 5 in all these years) where the flaw was sulfury but, the persistent problem that I had was "tails" in my heads. 5 gal still on a residential propane stove or a 1kw electric stove wired directly. No real chance of going too fast and always did multiple runs.

The best I have ever made was 1.5l of 40%ABV after a strip-strip-strip-run (counted as 2 runs) and watering down and running again 3 more times. 5 passes through the still. Collected in 100ml jars aired out and sorted the next day. That was less than 7% of the run kept as hearts. Long story short, I ended up using carbon if I wanted to keep a decent amount and even then it didn't sound like what others here were making.

Now, this copper treatment helped with my flaw but, if der wo is representative of the average member here, it may also improve the distillate of those who don't think they have a problem. I think it is something everyone should try at least once to see if it should be included in their set of distilling tools.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Bagasso wrote: the persistent problem that I had was "tails" in my heads.
This is a detail where we differ. I don't smell tails in my heads. But in theory it is reasonable.For example DMS (dimethylsulfide), which the brewers always boil off before fermentation, has 37°C. So it would be found mainly in the heads, when it is in the fermented mash. And would evaporate while aging in a barrel.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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der wo wrote:This is a detail where we differ. I don't smell tails in my heads. But in theory it is reasonable.For example DMS (dimethylsulfide), which the brewers always boil off before fermentation, has 37°C. So it would be found mainly in the heads, when it is in the fermented mash. And would evaporate while aging in a barrel.
Of course we differ but, again, you are forgetting what I mentioned earlier, it never went away with just a stripping and spirit run. It came over throughout the entire run, going into heavier and heavier tails.

After 4 or five runs I would start to see hearts come through. Obviously, unlike you and most here, I have a real problem.
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Re: So, the answer was copper

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Okay, I've read enough. I've posted before about the smell of my product and wondered how I could get rid of what I perceived as a flaw. Not sure how I would describe it but I didn't like it. In my next batch of low wines (probably a rum or a AG barley. I usually get about 10-12 L of 30% low wines from a batch) I will add a measured piece of copper tubing for a measured length of time and see if it makes a difference. Most interesting.
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