bad taste!

[jdub]

hello. I am very new to this. I have been making wine for years but just recently got into distilling. I have made two batches so far with different recipes and both taste exactly the same....and it isn't good.

My first batch was made with 2lbs. cornmeal, 5lbs white sugar, and water to top up a 5gal. bucket. Used alcotec 24hour turbo yeast and fermented for 3 days. Ran this batch through a basic homemade pot still. Discarded the first 3 ounces of distill and the end result was a bad smelling bad tasting clear liquid. It def. it had a sort of a feet smell and taste. (best way I can describe it)

My second batch was made with about 4 inches of sweet feed (horse feed) in the bottom of a 5 gal. bucket, 5lbs sugar, and water to top up bucket. Used alcotec 48 hour turbo yeast. Fermented for 6 days then distilled the same way as first batch. The end result was exactly the same as the first batch. I don't know what I am doing wrong. Thanks in advance for any of your advice.

[rad14701]

Sounds like you need to get rid of the common denominator, turbo yeast, if you want decent tasting spirits... That's the first change... After that, use better methods of making cuts which you will learn during your research here, which we consider mandatory... From there you start seeing vast improvements in your spirits... And give one of the Tried and True recipes a try until you get comfortable with the various procedures... Jumping from recipe to recipe won't help much during the learning process...

Are you pot stilling or refluxing...??? What still do you have...???

[jdub]

Thanks for your reply rad. I was thinking it could be the yeast but was always told in the past that turbo yeast was best for distilling. I am using a home made pot still. It is a 3 gallon stainless steel stock pot with a 1" copper pipe coming straight out of the lid of the pot, then a T at the top with one end quarked with a thermometer in it to measure temp. of the steam and the other end has a piece of 1/2" copper angled down with a sleeve over it for circulating water. I have distilled different batches of wine before to make some brandy and it has come out fine so I don't think my problem is the still. I was thinking maybe I wasn't letting my mash ferment long enough? But def. will try something else besides the turbo yeast. Any reccomendations on that?

Thanks you

[rad14701]

The problem is that the turbo yeast sachet has all of the nutrients required for full fermentation... Therefore, when you combine additional ingredients, which act as additional nutrients, you end up with off tastes and smells... You can also end up with thermal runaway which will stress and kill the yeast colony, leaving unfermented sugars in the wash...

We have quite a few good sugar wash recipes in the Tried and True Recipe forum, including the two linked in my signature... They were intended to help ween novices away from turbo yeast, which I consider best used for fuel... And while it can be used successfully I find it overrated...

We are striving for quality, not quantity... I'm happy to be able to push to ~14% using bakers yeast and end up with very clean spirits, whether as neutral through a reflux column or flavored from a pot still... Most here stay in the 12% - 14% ABV maximum range regardless of the yeast used...

[jdub]

Thank you very much. That makes a lot of sense. I have also been reading a lot about the cuts and found out that i knew nothing. What I read before this forum was to discard the first couple of ounces and the rest was good to go. I knew nothing about the heads, heart, tails. I appreciate the help. going to check out the recipes

[bentstick]

Jdub
Take rads advice ditch the turbo, Never used it but what has been posted it makes bad product. I have only used bakers have had good results. Been doing sweetfeed and ujssm since I started this obsession and the results have been very well received from my wife and family, the learnin curve takes awhile to sort out, but with enough reading and practice it only gets better. I run a pot still with much success. I believe I will try my hand at a flute. Jdub when I first started I thought no way will I ever be ready for something like a flute but I believe I can do it now. As everyone should do read, read and reread it will click as you progress. Have fun, enjoy and be safe P.s practice your cuts Quality not quantity

[MuleKicker]

soggy feet smell? Sounds like yer keeping tails.

[SherrodBrown]

Well I did a similar run. Coobra 48 Turbo and the Mash hit abv 12 after just 36 hrs ( I did a double distill and finally got ABV 42. )

So That 5 gallon Mash I threw into the boiler for the 1st Wash Distill and on the other side came out 1.35 Gallon/33ABV( I simply stopped at 1.35 or at around 5100 ml) and dicarded the rest. No Cuts Yet there.

Then I poured in 5100ml for the 2n Spirit Distill in to the cleansed boiler and got 2380 ml on the other side. I threw away 950 ml foreshots and 600 ml tails. I was left with 830 ml of fine smelling ethanol hart. I hope this cut will help despite it's being very narrow indeed. No coal filtering. Next time I will also filter it.