My Home Cousin's Process Plan

[Beerswimmer]

I have started, the boiler is heating up now. But there's a long way to go. My plan is:

Using a boiler and thumper do a spirit run with wash and old dunder in the boiler, dunder and cane vinegar in the thump. Separate the high proof and low proof spirits.
The liquid in the thumper will have lime added to get to 7 PH and be boiled down to about 20%, 10% if it doesn't take forever, stirring often with a fan blowing on it. Save this reduced slop.
Do another spirit run, keep the high proof spirits and boil down the thumper liquid and save.
Continue until I have about 5 gallons of high proof spirits, and 5 gallons of slop.
Add sludge to the high proof and add sulfuric acid(I have it) to get the PH down and let sit for 2-3 days.
Strain liquid, add to thumper. Do a spirit run with new wash plus the lower proof spirits.
Enjoy the super estery rum



What am I doing wrong, and what do I need to do to improve this?

[Beerswimmer]

So I did the run. I slowly ran the first half and kept it separate(the high abv), then bumped up the heat and stripped the second half and kept the low wines. Then I emptied the thumper and began to reduce it and ran into a problem....it was barely working. Could be due to using water in the bain marie instead of oil, shape of the pot, and relative humidity. After discussing with my co-creator of the plan he suggested just mixing lime into the thumper juice and then letting it settle out. Then once settled siphon off the top half of the liquid and discard, keep the bottom half. So that is what I'n now doing instead of reducing.

So where I'm at:
Tomorrow I will rack off the top half of the liquid and discard it. Add sulfuric acid to the bottom half to release the esters and acids. Separate from the sludge, keep the acidic liquid and discard the now spent sludge. Once I have a good amount of the keeper liquid built up, mix with high abv alcohol for a few days. Then add that high proof acidic liquid to the thumper for the spirit run.

Tomorrow is run #2 of about 4-5 planned

[NZChris]

If you’ve done it correctly so far, there will be salts in solution in the liquid you intend discard.

[Beerswimmer]

If you’ve done it correctly so far, there will be salts in solution in the liquid you intend discard.

I'll have to accept a % of loss, the reducing just wasn't working for me. Thanks for reading, do you have any suggestions?

[NZChris]

My salts are completely dry. They used to evaporate the water by putting it above a pot or retort, I used solar.

If you dump your ‘excess’, you throw out your baby with the bath water.

[Beerswimmer]

This morning I put the limed thumper juice into a carboy, after an hour I see that there was settling

Since then the top has been coming down too

[HDNB]

why you raise the PH initially? seems that would neutralize the vinegar...which makes me wonder why the vinegar if not for acidification.

as you prolly surmised, i'm no chemist...

[Beerswimmer]

I added vinegar to the thump to increase the creation of esters. Then after the run the PH is raised to bind the esters to the lime salts. That "locks them in" so that they either don't boil off when reducing, or so that they sink with the salts when settling.

[NZChris]

In my experience with making table salt and lime salt, there is a lot of dissolved salt in the saturated solution when the salt is starting to precipitate out. The liquid should not be discarded. You have spent time, money and effort getting it to this point, so don't waste it. You don't have to completely dry it, (as I did so that I could store some for later), but you shouldn't toss valuable, concentrated, lime salts out because it looks like water.

[Beerswimmer]

Here's where it's at at about 24hrs

I will rack off the top, acidify and put in my dunder pit. The bottom half will be acidified and separated again.

[NZChris]

Why put them back in the dunder pit? You’ve already captured and concentrated them in the jar, where you want them.

[Beerswimmer]

For future use. The majority of the salts should be in the bottom

[NZChris]

Not if you raise the pH.

[NZChris]

Now that you have them in a jar you can keep them as salts. I dehydrated mine in a roasting pan in the sun and store them in a jar.

[Beerswimmer]

It's a carboy with about 4 gallons in it

[NZChris]

It'll take a while then. I give mine the hurry up by aiming a 4' mylar covered satellite dish at one of the pans.

[Beerswimmer]

Just an update if anyone is interested: I'm currently running the 4th of 5 pre-spirit runs. I racked the liquid top half of the carboy, acidified it, and added that to my thumper for run #3 and WOW did it up the esters! I did the same for #4. Run 5 will be in about a week once it's done fermenting. I'm going to do run 5, then wait about a week for the spirit run.

My runs have been to slowly run and collect high abv for about an hour and a half, then switch collection containers and increase the fire to full speed stripping and collecting as low wines. The spirit run will consist of the thumper and the kettle will be the low wines and some leftover thumper juice from these runs.

The bottom halves of the carboy were acidified, and added to a keg. After run 5 I'll add in the high abv alcohol and add more sulfuric. That will be left to sit for a few days and then added to the thumper for the spirit run.

[SassyFrass]

Your experiment is definitely of interest. Thanks for documenting it.
SF

[NZChris]

Racking into the thumper sounds like a much better idea than putting it back into the pit. I'm not surprised you are happy with the result

[Beerswimmer]

Today I was in the garage doing some cleaning and noted that have too much low wines for a spirit run, so now I'm getting ready for a spirit run. Strip #5 will be a regular run later on, for comparing or blending. I separated the solids from the liquids of the acidic stuff I kept, and mixed with the high abv. Spirit run should be Tuesday!

[Beerswimmer]

Due to a co-worker having a family emergency and me filling in for him, and the drive shaft in my daily commuter exploding I'm going to have to wait a bit.......

[Beerswimmer]

Due to boredom I stripped the last ferment since it only took about 5 hours all together. Now I have 22 gallons of low wines and 8 of high abv for the spirit run that will be in a few days

[Beerswimmer]

The spirit run is about at the halfway point. My findings are:


IT WORKS!!!!!! Holy shit is this stuff strong!!!! Cuts will be made tomorrow afternoon, and I'll post up a tasting along with more production notes.

[tombombadil]

Very cool, thanks for documenting this.

[Beerswimmer]

You'll need a good amount of old dunder for this, plus lime and sulfuric acid in the 92%+ range if possible. You only want the bare minimum liquid in the thumper, just enough to make it it work except for the spirit run. I need about 3 gallons to make mine work, and that's what I removed after each run.

My process was:

New wash plus old dunder in boiler, enough dunder plus cane vinegar or sulfuric acid(to lower the PH) in the thumper to cover the bottom of the inlet spear(just enough liquid to make it work), run slowly to get a high abv. The higher the better. Separate the high abv from the low abv and keep in separate containers. Keep the low abv as low wines.
Take a few gallons of the thumper juice, add lime to raise the PH and put into glass carboy to settle overnight.
Rack off half of the liquid above the settled solids, acidify(outdoors!) and add to the thumper. Make sure that this will only be about 50% of the thumper charge needed. Add dunder to the required level.
Acidify(outdoors!) the bottom half and the solids with sulfuric acid and let settle overnight. Rack off the liquid and keep, discard the solids.
New wash in boiler plus old dunder, the thumper should be filled already. Run slowly to get a high abv, separate and continue this process until you have enough acidic liquid to fill your thumper 25%.
Do stripping runs until you have enough low wines for a spirit run.
Add the acidic liquid to the saved high abv(acid + alcohol = esters) and add to thumper, let sit a few days stirring occasionally.
Spirit run with low wines in the boiler, high abv acidic liquid in the thumper.

This will be a very high abv spirit run, but will have an overwhelming amount of esters!

[Beerswimmer]

I ended up with 10.5 gallons after cuts. I separated the cuts into 2, the first and second half. The first half is being kept white @ 79.5%, the second half went into a used 5 gallon bourbon barrel @ 74%.

Tasting of the white mixed 50/50 with water, around 40%:
Nose- Sweet, grapes, dark fruits like plums, rummy, sugars, slight ethanol, mild industrial notes
Taste- Thick mouthfeel. Sweet, grape soda, dark fruits, apricots, pineapple, sugars, mild industrial notes
Finish-Grape soda, rummy, sweet, more rum, dark fruits. 20 mins later my mouth is still full of rum like I just had it

[tombombadil]

What's your "old dunder"?

Just dunder infected by whatevers in the air in your area and then given some time to get funky for a while?

I've got about 5 gallons of funky stuff from last year. I took dunder and added oyster shells, sugar, fruit, dry malt extract, a bottle of lambic beer. Left it uncovered until it attracted bugs, filtered the bugs out and covered it with a lid and airlock.

It's had many smells over that time. Two different pellicles. Now it's just fruity and funky.

I'm trying to decide what to do with it, how to integrate it in to my next rum run.

[Beerswimmer]

What's your "old dunder"?

Just dunder infected by whatevers in the air in your area and then given some time to get funky for a while?

Bingo!

[tombombadil]

Hmm.... so I should do my normal fermentations but use the old dunder in the spirit run and thumper?

[Beerswimmer]

Use it in the ferment, and yes for the spirit run and in the thumper