First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

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CopperPotPete
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First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by CopperPotPete »

I wanted a lot of spirit to play with from a 5 gallon mash on my first attempt to distill. I did a partial sugar wash with some flaked corn, 6 row malted barley and rye to get some flavor and used champagne yeast to get a high ABV. I ended up with 14% ABV after 21 days of fermentation. I've been told on another thread that the SG was too high with the wrong yeast and I'll probably not get a quality product.

Add to that - I didn't research the actual time it takes to run a pot still so I ran a stripping run for only about 6 hours getting 4 quarts of spirits from the 5 gallons of beer. The last quart was 98 proof, so I missed a lot of hearts and tails. Since then I've done the research (and bought an ABV hydrometer) and learned that just because the output is no longer a somewhat steady thin stream, doesn't mean it's done. That determination is made with the hydrometer when you get down to somewhere around 20 to 40 proof depending on your patience. I really thought a distilling run would be an hour or so! Nope, I've read some go 11 hours! The pot temperature was only 210 when I quit. but that isn't measured at the head, instead it's below the liquid level. So, I lost a lot.

My second wash is fermenting now. It was a true all-grain wash of 7 lbs Flaked corn, 2 lbs 6-row, malted barley and 1 lb of malted rye. SG was 1.055 so I should get around 7% ABV from this beer. I used a gallon of set back in the wash and used only the saved trub from the first batch when pitching. Water pH of 6, reduced from 8 with lemon juice. I use a burr coffee grinder to take the 6 row barley to a course flour. This makes mashing go really fast. The flaked corn in the tun becomes like grits to stir until you reach the strike temperature for the barley. But as soon as that flour hits the tun, the corn frees up almost instantly. I'm not fermenting on grain, so sparging and wringing out the mash bag becomes quite the task. That flour doesn't like to give up it's liquid. I'm wondering if I could get more than 1.055 SG if I rolled the barley.. or would the lost surface area vs completeness of conversion be a net wash?

I basically do two conversion cycles in a 4 gallon drinking water cooler. First one starts at 170+ with just the corn, cools to 168 for strike temp of the barley, then stir frequently over 30 minutes. Drain and start over with 2 gallons of sparge at 165 in the hot tun, stir frequently over 30 minutes then drain. Then hang the bag from a ladder over the cooler and start squeezing. Fermentation started very fast with the bubbler releasing every 2 seconds by the next day. I'm excited about this batch.

Since the first batch was partly a sugar wash and I didn't wait to collect the tails from it, I'm thinking that for the next run I'll pour the stripping run of the first batch in with the second batch and then do a slow, controlled spirit run instead of another stripping run. I'm using a North GA Still company copper pot with thumper. I was surprised that the first quart during the stripping run reached 155 proof, which I thought exceeded expectations from a pot still and was more in line with the results from a reflux still. So, given that I can get high yield from this system on the first run and keep the rye and corn flavors, I want to skip stripping on the second run. Good? Bad? What do you think?

Also, with a gallon of 125 proof added to the 4.5 gallons of 7% ABV what should be my limit for fore-shots?
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by MoonBreath »

Sounds like your pretty close to being on track.
Rule of thumb for tossn fores/heads is 8oz for every 6gal charge.
I toss 8oz per 5gal charge volume.
Stay there and you'll always be safe.
Strip runs racked clean, run hard to sweetwater taste at 20%ish..Equal to a strong wash.
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by Twisted Brick »

Congrats on jumping in with AG. Some general thoughts to help your next batches improve:

1) Corn (especially if it isn't ground to meal) gels better at 190F
2) Malted grains will perform and taste better if added at 150-152F and rest between 145-148F. I typically get 1.060 this way from a mash like yours.
3) You will make a much better product from an ABV of 7-8%. Too high an ABV can cause yeast to produce off-flavors.
4) Backset will reduce your mash pH adequately. No need for lemon juice. Backset used over and over becomes prohibitively acidic.
5) A lot of us ferment our bourbon on the grain for flavor. After fermentation, with a brewing grain bag I can hand squeeze 12gal of bourbon mash in under an hour.
6) Strip quickly down to 10-15%ABV and run your low wines more slowly.
7) Stick with just double-distilling your bourbon and learn how your still works before you start mixing low wines and wash.
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CopperPotPete
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by CopperPotPete »

Thanks for the advice.

So, MoonBreath, on a spirit run mixing the low wines of two 5 gallon runs, diluted to 40%, I should dump 16 oz of foreshots, since I didn't dump anything from stripping?

Twisted Brick - I read that flaked corn was already gelatinized in the process allowing for less (no) cooking time. Or the brand that I bought was already gelatinized for that purpose. However, it was more expensive. Is that incorrect? And/Or are you saying that cooking gelatinzed flake only makes it better? Ultimately I would like to go with cheaper but better ingredients and add the sweat-equity to make up the price. I've seen suggestions for very, very good bourbon to use only certain strains of corn that can't be found at a brewing supply website already flaked. And if this hobby becomes a habit, I'll need to have sacks of the stuff!

Also, by taking the low wines from the first high ABV run and throwing them back into a mash for another run, wouldn't it reconvert whatever off-flavors might be stuck in there? In researching the flavors of whiskey, I've noticed several parts to this. There is the water that carries over with some of the fats and proteins of the wash and then there are the esters that formed from the yeast product which make for complicated variations on the Ethyl chains. Without diving into Organic Chem 101, can you take bad feints and make good hearts? Have you ever ran just feints to see what you got?
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by MoonBreath »

I would to be safe..Anytime you collect fores they're to be added to the next run's fores.
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by Twisted Brick »

CopperPotPete wrote: Twisted Brick - I read that flaked corn was already gelatinized in the process allowing for less (no) cooking time. Or the brand that I bought was already gelatinized for that purpose. However, it was more expensive. Is that incorrect? And/Or are you saying that cooking gelatinzed flake only makes it better? Ultimately I would like to go with cheaper but better ingredients and add the sweat-equity to make up the price. I've seen suggestions for very, very good bourbon to use only certain strains of corn that can't be found at a brewing supply website already flaked. And if this hobby becomes a habit, I'll need to have sacks of the stuff!
Here's a number of answers to probably the same questions you have. Just HD Google flaked corn or flaked maize for others.

I'm like you: willing to do the work instead of pay a higher price to have the work done for me. I bought a Corona mill and it works like a champ grinding cracked corn to meal. Don't worry about exotic corn strains right now. Get your chops down mashing and stilling, and when you feel you have stopped improving then try the fancy stuff. You'll be surprised at how good a sippin' whiskey you can make at home with the feedstore brands.
CopperPotPete wrote:
Also, by taking the low wines from the first high ABV run and throwing them back into a mash for another run, wouldn't it reconvert whatever off-flavors might be stuck in there? In researching the flavors of whiskey, I've noticed several parts to this. There is the water that carries over with some of the fats and proteins of the wash and then there are the esters that formed from the yeast product which make for complicated variations on the Ethyl chains. Without diving into Organic Chem 101, can you take bad feints and make good hearts? Have you ever ran just feints to see what you got?
I haven't come across any 'reconverting of off-flavors' regimes yet, just that spirits clean up over the course of subsequent runs. There are practices of blending a percentage of fresh wash with low wines for increased flavor in a spirit run, but the highest I have ever done was 1gal low wines into 12gal of wash. Initially, there is no substitute for just double distilling and practicing good mashing techniques.

No, there is no way one can transform bad feints into good hearts. All runs have fores, early heads, late heads, hearts, early tails and late tails. It's up to you to separate them on your spirit run and blend them back into something you like. It'll take some practice (like lots of batches) and is more important to the finished product than corn varieties or blends for spirit runs. I haven't done an all-feints run yet cuz I have a bunch of different feints and want toexploit them in subsequent spirit runs of the same original recipe.
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CopperPotPete
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by CopperPotPete »

I may have a stuck fermentation. Yesterday I noticed that the air seal had stopped bubbling with the cap no longer pushed up to the top. My fermenter has a trub collector so I dumped the trub and took a gravity reading of 1.01 from a starting gravity of 1.055. It has been 8 days since I pitched. My yeast source was only the yeast that I collected from my first batch. The first thing I noticed was that instead of having a nice dense layer of gray dormant yeast, the trub collector was filled with thick, soupy, yellow "pudding". I took a sample of this and proofed it in warm water with sugar and it appears to be dead yeast instead of dormant as there was no activity (bubbles, foam, etc.) I assume that what I got for trub was something like a "beer puss"; a combination of dead yeast and dead bacteria.

Which brings me to a question regarding Open Fermentation vs Sealed. When I toured the distilleries in KY on the "Bourbon Trail", at least one of them had an open fermentation tank as part of the tour and invited people to stick their fingers in it and taste it. As a beer brewer, this caused me mental anguish! While I kept things clean, the final part of my wash required me to hand squeeze the mash bag for an hour, after things cooled a bit. So there would naturally be some bacteria and natural yeast from my own body included. How do the pro's manage to get complete fermentation without the sterile environment like beer brewing? It must be that their yeast is hybrid and fast acting and/or immune to bacteria and they don't bother to let fermentation go longer than 4 or 5 days before prions can convert the yeast.

The taste of the beer was dry and tart and the smell was as expected. I imagine I'll get about 5% ABV from the batch. But my next opportunity to set up the rig isn't until Saturday. How long will the beer last given that yeast killing bacteria are (were) present? There is alcohol, so supposedly anything but yeast is dead. Hopefully I will have just a little bit of immune yeast left over that I can use to breed my own resistant strain.
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by Wild Bill »

Don’t overcomplicate things to start. I suggest starting with UJSSM in tried and true recipes. It will give you enough product to learn how to run your still and how to make good cuts. It will also teach you about the sour mash protocol and makes a pretty decent drop when cuts are right. Once you have run 4-5 generations, you will have good handle on things and can branch out a bit and tackle other methods and recipes.
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by Twisted Brick »

CopperPotPete wrote:I may have a stuck fermentation.
Yeast vitality can diminish with successive generations. Nothing wrong with a ~6% beer. You might want to wash your yeast from a first ferment to start your culture.
CopperPotPete wrote: I assume that what I got for trub was something like a "beer puss"; a combination of dead yeast and dead bacteria.
Beer puss is when the wife has had too many and doesn't want to play.
CopperPotPete wrote: But my next opportunity to set up the rig isn't until Saturday. How long will the beer last given that yeast killing bacteria are (were) present?
A number of folks here intentionally age their washes for clearing, diacetyl; some for the opportunity to capture a prized lacto infection. You got time.
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by MoonBreath »

Orrr, you can run that 1.01...
And go on to the next one.
Don't expect much tho.
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by CopperPotPete »

So, if anyone is following this thread...

I decided against informed opinion and experienced advice that recommended I do a second stripping run and instead dumped my liquor from the first run distillation of a partial AG + Sugar wash into the AG second batch for a spirit run. I dumped the first 12oz of foreshots (actually, I used it to clean the Super Glue off the kitchen counter that my son left a few years ago and also to take the adhesive from the black electrical tape off of my still from my first run. Useful stuff!)

I ran the pot still with thumper for about 8 hours until my last 6 oz came out at less than 20% ABV. I expected about 40% of the total liquor from this run to be "quality" product with the rest to be heads and tails. HOWEVER, from what would be a 10 gallon run, I used about 50% with more tails than heads to age-out a gallon of 110 proof liquor. I blended my cut into a gallon pitcher with hydrometer until it floated just above the 110 proof mark. I wanted the fat from the tails balanced with the kick from the heads. The end product is absolutely atrocious! and that's with a whole quart of early heads waiting in a Ball jar for the next run along with a half quart of tails to make up my feints.

The reason why I've been inviting, yet ignoring, the inputs of my peers on this forum is to make "informed" mistakes. I did X and got Y... and y'all told me not to do "X" and tell my the "Y". Punishment is that I distilled some total crap... at first.

1. EVERY cut from my still was not good. It all tastes heavily like metal. I did a vinegar run on the system for 3 hours before I ever did a stripping run or spirit run. The copper came out nice and pink after. I rinsed it all out. But everything smells like copper to me.
2. I'm aging the white-dog on dark charred oak. I bought spiral cut charred oak and inserted into used Beam 1.75l bottles for aging my liquor. I move them from the garage to the refrigerator every few days to get the affects of a Kentucky Winter and Summer cycle. I've read that the oak barrel (or insert) acts as a sponge. When subject to the warmth of a Kentucky Summer, the oak expands and absorbs more product. When Winter comes the wood fibers shrink and expel same... imparting caramelized wood sugars to the product and releasing some amount of the most toxic Methanol and Acetone vapors through the pores (as I do by opening the bottle for a minute to vent off what's on top).

The first "thief" test after a simulated year (2 days in heat with 1 day in refrigeration) was... really horrible. Tasted like burnt Cheerios with some copper pipe. The second "thief" test was tonight. The bottles have been through 3 heating cycles and two cooling cycles and the taste has really mellowed out. But there is still a metallic smell.

Anyone have any insights on why the metallic smell? Can I age it out? I drank some Beam tonight also, and it is starting to taste like copper. Is this common after seeing how the "sausage" is made?
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Re: First Run - what I did wrong and what y'all will add!

Post by Expat »

1. EVERY cut from my still was not good. It all tastes heavily like metal. I did a vinegar run on the system for 3 hours before I ever did a stripping run or spirit run. The copper came out nice and pink after. I rinsed it all out. But everything smells like copper to me.
Did you do a sacrificial run after the vinegar?

It might look clean but it isn't until you alcohol steam through it.
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