SherrodBrown wrote:I was planning to distill a 20 ABV Sugarwash with a worm. What can I expect in the first run if I keep a portion in the middle?
Hi Sherrod, you sent me off to look at your other posts, so here I am. Are you trolling?
Two weeks ago I suggested to you that you should forget trying to math your way to a result, but you appear to be insisting on it.
The way to distill product is not to decide on a target output ABV then do a calculation to decide on the ABV the wash needs to be and try to ferment to that point.
First, pick a tried and true recipe, they have received acclaim for consistently good results. When you brew it, you get whatever ABV you get. It might be 8%, it might be 12%. It might be 6%.
Split into say three washes and strip deep into tails. Whatever the output ABV is, that’s what you get.
Combine the low wines from the stripping run. If it is over 40%ABV combined (unlikely if you stripped deep into tails) dilute to 40%ABV. Do a spirit run.
As the distillate comes off on the spirit run, collect into a series of small jars. 500mL or pint jars are popular. If you measure the ABV of each, they will all be different, and this is ok. The later ones will have increasingly lower ABV.
Then you carefully go through the cuts and decide which jars are nice and which are not. You pour the nice jars together for storage, and you collect the rest together to add to the low wines for your next spirit run.
You can now measure the ABV of your keeper distillate. And the ABV will be:
whatever it happens to be.
Ok? There are no targets. If you
make targets, even if you hit them, you will not achieve other more important goals - like quality.
Well, there is a target. After you have done the above, let’s say your ABV is too high (it usually is too high to drink). So you dilute it to the right level.
But I hear you say: I want a higher ABV than this process gives me! The answer to that is “why?” Are you just chasing numbers? But let’s say the answer to that is: ‘I want the cleanest neutral vodka I can” - in that case, the answer might be to ensure your still design is capable of extracting to those sorts of levels. Without changing the still, you might try a triple distillation but again, dilute to a 40%ABV boiler load. Again, the target for the output would be good taste and not ABV. Because whatever the output ABV you get, it is what it is. Ignore the alcometer. What does your tongue tell you?
Make sure you dilute down to say 30% for tasting.
I’m begging you. I can almost see the gears shifting in your head as you try to precalculate the results. Just stop. Listen to what we’re telling you. That isn’t the way to go, seriously. Snap out of it, and get in a different head space. Start thinking about quality. Go read the recipe sections, and see what people are doing to bring out interesting flavours and subtleties. Read the mashing and fermenting threads about keeping your yeast happy. Re-read the guides in the New Distiller Reading Lounge on running stills. Start dreaming about small volumes of high quality spirits rather than large volumes of high ABV stove fuel.
Please.